Charlie Kirk’s murder is another milestone on America’s dark path of political violence. Political violence has been growing for decades, and the Kirk killing is only the most recent and greusome spectacle. This terrible act will contribute to the cloud of despair, rage, mistrust, and hatred that has fallen over the land. We should all be asking how to reverse course and prevent the next act of violence. The only answer is to restore hope.
Restoring hope is slow, hard work. Hearts hardened by repeated conflict, toxic rhetoric, and algorithms designed to polarize us will be resistant to change. Voices that call for civic virtues like trust, honesty, respect, patience, compassion, and dignity for one’s political opponents will be called naive. They will be maligned by those who seek a fight or say the moment is too urgent for civic virtues.
Conversely, calls for “civility” have already flooded our media. We swim in an awareness that our civil space has become uncivil. But the sea of civility cries is a micron deep. Civic virtues cannot be nourished by public statements. Instead, they are cultivated by experience and repeated exposure to fellow citizens willing to abide by them. Virtues must be practiced in community.
The most effective way to do this is through the civic institutions which transcend any particular political moment. Faith institutions are a key part of that civic infrastructure. America has 370,000 houses of worship, many of them small. To put that in perspective, America has around 131,000 K-12 schools, roughly a third of the churches, synagogues, masjids, and temples in every neighborhood and local community. These houses of worship have buildings, professionals, and traditions with the non-partisan roots to sustain our virtues and restore hope.
We started faith250 because we felt that next summer’s celebration of the Declaration of Independence was a once-in-a-generation opportunity we could not miss. We felt that picnics, bar-be-ques, and historical exhibitions were great, but not sufficient for our moment. How much more urgent is the moment with this latest act of terror, hatred, destruction, despair, and violence.
Our program is free and easy to adapt to any local community. Please, if you are clergy, contact a colleague and start a local cluster. If you are not clergy, find (or better yet, join) a local house of worship, contact the cleric, pastor, priest, reverend, imam, rabbi, cantor, sheikh, sister, brother, swami, guru, deacon or para-clergy leader and encourage them to check us out. Our upcoming info sessions are always listed here. Let’s use this year to push back the darkness and flood the zone with hope next summer.
We send prayers for courage and strength to the Kirk family and all who love them.