Dehumanizing Our Neighbors: Political Contempt Threatens Both Faith and Freedom

I. When Politics Starts Talking Like a Lynch Mob

In the last few weeks, American political discourse has crossed lines we once assumed were immovable. The sitting president has launched into a stream of insults, tantrums, and open threats, calling journalists “stupid,” labeling immigrants “garbage,” mocking women’s appearance, and, most chillingly, declaring that elected lawmakers were guilty of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He then amplified a supporter’s proclamation: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”

In December, following the tragic stabbing deaths of actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, at their Los Angeles home—a crime for which their son has been charged with murder—President Trump took to social media to politicize the tragedy by suggesting Reiner’s death was “reportedly due to the anger he caused…with a mind-crippling affliction known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” When pressed later, Trump doubled down, calling Reiner “a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned,” an apparent attempt to frame political disagreement as pathology rather than tragedy. Trump’s comments drew rare bipartisan criticism for their insensitivity and for injecting political contempt into a family’s profound loss.

It would be easy comforting, even to dismiss all of this as “just rhetoric,” the familiar theatricality of contemporary politics. But rhetoric shapes reality. Words pave the road our political imaginations walk upon, and lately those roads are narrowing into something more dangerous: a worldview in which disagreement is treason, political opponents are enemies of the state, and violence becomes thinkable long before it becomes actual.

What we are witnessing is not merely the coarsening of public dialogue; it is the normalization of demeaning, dehumanizing, and demonizing speech directed at fellow citizens. And every time we shrug, laugh, repost, or silently tolerate such language, we participate in its power. We incentivize it. We reward it. We help it grow.

But there is something even more troubling beneath the surface. Many who would condemn this behavior in any other context, especially Christians, have begun excusing it when it comes from “our guy.” They defend it as honesty, celebrate it as strength, or rationalize it as necessary for the cause. In doing so, we are not just losing our manners; we risk losing our moral compass and our constitutional guardrails.

This essay is not about one politician. It is about a pattern or a mode of discourse, that corrodes the soul of a republic and the soul of the Church. The stakes are not theoretical. Dehumanizing rhetoric has measurable psychological effects that increase polarization, reduce empathy, fuel extremism, and make real-world violence far more likely.

If we want to preserve the fragile experiment of American freedom, and if we want to bear faithful witness as followers of Christ, then we must reclaim the lost art of civil discourse. We must learn again how to disagree without dehumanizing, how to critique without hating, and how to speak in ways that honor both truth and the image of God in every person.

We must stop normalizing the rhetoric that dividing and destroys us.  And this goes for both sides of the political spectrum.

“The practice of violence and outrage tends to debase and brutalize the minds of those who are engaged in it.” – Alexander Hamilton

II. Case Study: Trump’s Rhetoric as a Symptom, Not the Whole Disease

Before we go any further, we should be clear about one thing: the problem before us is not just Donald Trump, nor even the growing list of journalists, immigrants, lawmakers, and political rivals he verbally targets. Trump is a particularly vivid example, unfiltered, repetitive, and amplified by a massive digital ecosystem, but he is not the origin of the rising tide of political contempt. He is a symptom that helps us diagnose the deeper pathology of our political culture.

Still, the specifics matter, because rhetoric always reveals something about the underlying worldview. In just the last few weeks, the pattern has accelerated:

• About Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene leaving office and dropping support of Trump: “Marjorie Traitor Greene”
• To CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?”
• Of New York Times reporter Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”
• To Bloomberg journalist Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
• About Somali immigrants: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”
• And most alarming: calling lawmakers “SEDITIOUS” and their actions “punishable by DEATH,” followed by amplifying a post proclaiming, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”

These are not isolated insults tossed off in the heat of a moment. They represent a structured communication strategy, one that scholars of political psychology, propaganda, and influence describe as a pattern of demining, dehumanizing, and demonizing opponents.

And it is not new. In fact, Trump’s habitual use of derogatory labels is so well-documented that Wikipedia has a lists titled “List of nicknames used by Donald Trump.” These labels are not political arguments; they are perception frames (linguistic shortcuts that collapse a human being into a caricature). Their purpose is not persuasion through reasoning, but identity scripting, shaping how supporters should feel about enemies, rivals, and critics. It is effective because it bypasses our critical thinking skills (system 2) and goes directly to our emotional brain (system 1).

But this is where we must be painfully honest: Trump is only the clearest mirror held up to our cultural moment. The outrage economy rewards the strongest emotions, not the best ideas. Social media platforms have monetized contempt. And millions of ordinary citizens, some of them Christians who claim to value truth, neighbor-love, and integrity, are liking, reposting, and rationalizing rhetoric they would condemn if against them.

The point is not that Trump is uniquely sinful; it is that he makes visible a moral danger we have allowed to grow. We are witnessing not merely the incivility of one man, but a cultural permission slip that has been signed by many:

“If the insults serve our cause, we will tolerate them.”

“If the cruelty helps our side win, we will excuse it.”

That is how republics unravel. Not usually through a single tyrant’s actions, but through the slow corrosion of public conscience, one insult, one chant, one “repost” at a time. I set the stage: not to fixate on Trump himself, but to illuminate the operating system of contempt that now powers too much of our political discourse.

“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter 1

III. What Name-Calling Actually Does: Framing, Dehumanization, and Influence

In Section II, I dealt with the facts of the rhetoric, in this section I will explore its function. Name-calling is not childish bluster, nor is it merely bad manners. It is a deliberate form of framing, a cognitive strategy as old as propaganda itself. As Tolkien observed, evil cannot create; it can only distort and mock. And in political life, mockery becomes a tool for reshaping public perception.

A. Epithets as Frames, Not Insults

Researchers in communication theory note a difference between descriptive language and framing language. Descriptions tell us what happened; frames tell us how to interpret what happened. They define reality for the listener.

Trump’s epithets of “Crooked,” “Sleepy,” “Piggy,” “Garbage,” “Radical Left” are not arguments. They are identity scripts: preloaded judgments that compress a complex human being into a single emotional concept. Cambridge University Press’s meta-analysis on political metaphors confirms that these linguistic frames bypass rational deliberation and instead trigger intuitive moral judgments. (See Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 Thinking)

A label becomes a lens, and once the lens is in place, everything looks like the label. Arguments are unnecessary; the frame has already won. I’ve written elsewhere about how labels collapse a person’s identity into a single dimension, flattening the richness of a human life into a caricature. This is another example of how labels deform both self-understanding and public discourse. They are destructive not only to personal identity but to society as a whole, because people are always more complex, infinitely more, than any label can ever convey.

B. Dehumanizing Language and Its Psychological Effects

Dehumanization begins subtly. Not with overt hate, but with linguistic cues that inch individuals away from the status of “fellow citizens” and toward “problems,” “threats,” or “contaminants.” That shift is the psychological fulcrum on which violence eventually pivots.

Studies from Berkeley Haas and SAGE Journals show that dehumanizing rhetoric produces:

1. Reduced Empathy and Moral Concern

When people are described as “garbage,” “animals,” or “traitors,” the human mind begins to treat them as if they lack the capacity for suffering or moral reasoning. This fosters moral disengagement—the mental permission to overlook harm done to the out-group.

2. Distorted Strategic Thinking

Once opponents are framed as irrational, evil, or subhuman, negotiation becomes betrayal. Political disagreement becomes a zero-sum battlefield where persuasion is pointless and domination is the only viable strategy. This mindset is the polar opposite of republican self-government, which assumes that disagreement is not treason but part of the civic fabric.

3. Echo-Chamber Reinforcement

Dehumanizing rhetoric tightens the boundaries of in-group identity. “We” are righteous; “they” are corrupt. Research shows that this dynamic accelerates ideological siloing, making individuals less willing to revise their views or even listen across differences. In such an atmosphere, truth itself becomes tribal.

4. Increased Susceptibility to Authoritarianism

When the in-group is convinced that the out-group is dangerous, degraded, or evil, extreme measures feel justified. Authoritarian impulses grow naturally from a worldview divided into saints and enemies. Threat inflation becomes the justification for coercion.

5. Political Narcissism as a Normalized Virtue

PsyPost’s analysis of political narcissism notes that when people begin to see their group as uniquely virtuous and uniquely victimized, they grow more comfortable with dehumanization. Contempt becomes a badge of honor, a proof of loyalty. Cruelty becomes a form of belonging.

C. Why This Is Not “Just Politics”

The American experiment relies on the premise that disagreement is not equivalent to disloyalty. Our system assumes that opponents are legitimate participants, politics is a contest of ideas, citizens are not enemies, and words are not weapons. Dehumanizing rhetoric violates all four. It alters the moral landscape before any policy debate even begins, and because these frames operate beneath conscious awareness, they shape both individual judgment and collective behavior in ways that feel natural, even righteous. This is why dismissing such rhetoric as “harmless venting” misses the point entirely. It is not harmless. It is not neutral. It is not inconsequential. Language is formative; frames are formative; mockery is formative. It shapes the moral imagination of a nation, one insult at a time.

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

IV. The Bias Stack: How We Let “Our” Politicians Get Away with It

By this point, a reasonable observer might ask: Why do so many people (especially people who claim to value decency, character, and Christian virtue) excuse language they would discipline their children for using? Why do they defend the very rhetoric that inflames division, degrades neighbors, and undermines the civic fabric we all depend on?

The answer is not found in politics alone. It is found in the architecture of the human mind.

The tragedy is that most of us are not malicious; we are simply biased, and our biases stack into powerful distortions. Once in place, these distortions make moral clarity difficult and moral compromise easy.

Below is the bias cascade most commonly at work when people excuse the inexcusable.

A. Special Pleading — One Rule for Them, Another for Us

Special pleading is the cleanest diagnostic tool here. It works like this: when their politician insults, it proves their deep moral corruption; when our politician insults, it’s justified because he’s under attack or fighting for us. The standard shifts depending on who is being judged, and no principled reason is ever given for the double standard because the double standard itself becomes the principle. It is moral relativism disguised as moral passion and it is the first crack through which all other distortions flow.

B. In-Group Bias — The Emotional Engine Behind the Excuse

Humans are tribal creatures, and psychologists have shown that people will form in-groups over even the most arbitrary distinctions. Once a group identity forms, loyalty begins to guide perception: we interpret our side’s motives favorably, we interpret the other side’s motives suspiciously, and we forgive in-group sins while condemning out-group flaws. In-group bias makes the absurd feel reasonable—“Sure, he shouldn’t have said that… but look at what they’re doing!”—and this is how contempt ends up baptized in the waters of loyalty.

C. Moral Credentialing — “We’re the Good Guys, So It’s Fine”

Once we believe our side is morally superior, a subtle license emerges: “We fight for truth and righteousness, so our harshness is justified,” or “He’s uncouth, but he gets results for the cause.” This is moral licensing—the belief that past virtue, real or imagined, permits present vice. Christians who would never tolerate cruelty in their own homes suddenly defend cruelty on public stages if they believe it advances the kingdom or at least the “culture war.” But this is not the biblical approach. The biblical vision is one of justice that requires unbiased treatment and a love that extends even to our enemies. We love people into the kingdom; we do not beat them into it.

For Christians: As Paul reminds us, we are to ‘overcome evil with good’ and ‘as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone’ (Romans 12). And Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5). The kingdom advances through compassion, not coercion. We win people through love, not through the tactics of the world.

D. The Fundamental Attribution Error — Circumstances for Us, Character for Them

This bias is stunningly consistent across domains and is a classic example of the Fundamental Attribution Error, the tendency to excuse our own side’s behavior by appealing to circumstances while attributing the other side’s behavior to character flaws. When our politician behaves badly, we blame the situation: “He’s under attack,” “The media pushes him,” “He didn’t mean it literally.” But when the other side behaves similarly, we insist, “It exposes who they truly are,” or “This proves their corruption.” Identical actions become evidence of righteousness or wickedness depending solely on the jersey being worn. This is why political conversations so often feel impossible: we are not even applying the same moral mathematics.

E. Bias Cascading — When Distortions Combine Into a Worldview

Bias cascading occurs when individual distortions, each manageable on their own, begin to combine into a worldview. Together, these biases create a kind of cognitive fortress. One that shields our preferred leader from ethical scrutiny and shields us from the discomfort of reconsidering our loyalties. The process is subtle, but the structure is predictable.

It begins with In-Group Bias: the instinctive belief that “my side is inherently good.” Then comes the Fundamental Attribution Error, which insists that when the other side fails, it reveals their character, but when our side fails, it was merely the circumstances. Special Pleading follows, allowing us to claim that our exceptions are justified while theirs are condemnable. Moral Licensing then grants permission to bend rules because, after all, “we’re fighting evil.” And finally, Confirmation Bias settles in, selectively reinforcing every distortion that came before it.

Scholars call this bias amplification, motivated reasoning, factionalism, or self-deception. Jesus had a simpler term: a log in the eye. Whatever name we give it, the effect is the same—we train ourselves not to see sin when it stands on our side of the aisle.

This is how dehumanizing rhetoric thrives in a culture that claims to value civility. It is how Christians come to defend behavior Jesus would never bless. And it is how republics unravel—not through sudden collapse, but through gradual corrosion, one rationalized cruelty at a time.

“We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” – Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

V. The Christian Question: Can Followers of Christ Excuse This?

After examining the psychology of bias, we arrive at a harder and far more personal question—one that reaches beyond research papers and cognitive models. For Christians, political rhetoric is never merely a strategic tool or a matter of cultural style. It is a moral act, and every moral act must be weighed against the teachings of Christ.

In this sense, political rhetoric confronts us with a discipleship question: What does it mean to follow Jesus in an age of contempt? Many believers affirm that character matters, that speech reflects the heart, and that every person bears the image of God. Yet when political passions rise, those convictions are often suspended so long as the cruelty comes from “our man” and is directed at “the right enemy.” But Scripture does not authorize this suspension. The ethic of the New Testament does not pause for election season, and loyalty to Christ does not make exceptions for moments of political convenience.

What follows are four moral fault lines where Christian discipleship collides most directly with dehumanizing rhetoric.

A. The Image of God and the Assault on Human Dignity

The Christian vision of humanity begins with a simple but demanding claim: every person is made in the image of God. That truth does not evaporate when the person is an immigrant described as “garbage,” a journalist mocked as “piggy” or “stupid,” a political opponent labeled a “traitor,” or an elected official targeted with insinuations of execution. To demean a person is to deny something of God’s own imprint upon them; to dehumanize is, quite literally, a theological error. Christians cannot affirm the doctrine of the image of God in theory while politically sharing, liking, laughing at, or excusing rhetoric that denies it in practice. As the apostle James asks, “How can blessing and cursing come from the same mouth?” (James 3:10) Many of us would do well to ask the same of our newsfeeds.

B. Loyalty, Idolatry, and the Confusion of Allegiance

The early church had no difficulty grasping a hard but essential truth: loyalty to Christ and loyalty to Caesar are not the same. Believers died by the thousands because they refused to confuse the two. Polycarp’s famous declaration still echoes across the centuries: “Eighty and six years have I served Him… how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” His words remind us that Christian allegiance has always been tested precisely at the point where political power demands moral compromise.

Christians today rarely face the threat of martyrdom, but we do face the temptation of idolatry in a subtler and more socially acceptable form, the fusion of faith with political identity. When loyalty to a leader overrides loyalty to Christ’s teachings, when believers defend cruelty, violence, or dehumanization because the speaker “fights for our side,” we cross a dangerous line. In that moment, we have not merely misjudged a politician; we have misplaced our allegiance.

Christians do not follow a president, and Christians do not swear fealty to a party. Christians follow Christ alone. Everything else must remain subordinate to that confession.

“We have no master but God alone.” – Tertullian

C. The Oath of Office, Sedition, and the Constitutional Order

The Constitution of the United States draws a clear line of allegiance. Every public servant, every soldier, and every elected leader swears an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That oath is not to a president, not to a movement, and not to a faction. When lawmakers urged military personnel to refuse illegal orders, they were fulfilling, not violating, their constitutional duty. To label such fidelity as “seditious behavior, punishable by death” is not merely a rhetorical distortion; it is a moral inversion. It demands loyalty not to the law, but to the man, and that, in historic terms, is tyranny.

D. Christian Witness and the Cost of Silence

Every generation of Christians must decide whether it will mirror the culture’s contempt or challenge it. Too often, we have mirrored it. Too often, we have excused what Jesus would not excuse. Too often, we have remained silent, not because we did not know better, but because speaking would cost us social belonging within our political tribe. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that the greatest tragedy is not the cruelty of the wicked but the silence of the good, and the tragedy of our moment is how many believers have chosen silence in order to preserve proximity to power.

But Christian witness has never required power, at least not the kind of power the world recognizes. Jesus offered a radically different vision, one rooted in love for our neighbors and even for our enemies. The Church was never meant to grasp power but to hold up a mirror to it, exposing corruption and calling evil what it is. That kind of witness requires courage: the courage to say, “This rhetoric is wrong,” “This treatment of others is unacceptable,” “This language dishonors the God whose image they bear,” and “I will not amplify, repost, or condone it.” Silence may keep us safe, but it does not keep us faithful.

E. A Forgotten Fruit: Civility as a Christian Virtue

Every person is made in the image of God—a bearer of the divine imprint—and as such must be treated accordingly. This is not an optional ideal for Christians; it is part of what we accept when we take up the cross. Civility, therefore, is not weakness. It is not timidity, nor is it a refusal to confront injustice. Civility is the disciplined practice of honoring image-bearers even in disagreement, insisting that truth and dignity are not enemies.

Paul describes this posture as the fruit of the Spirit: gentleness, self-control, patience, and kindness. These are not optional extras of Christian ethics but visible markers of spiritual maturity. Any political strategy that requires Christians to suspend the fruit of the Spirit has already exacted a cost—it has cost us our integrity. The world is watching not how we vote, but how we treat those we oppose. Our rhetoric will either enlarge the kingdom or shrink it.

“We must obey God rather than men. If our loyalty is divided, we have already chosen the wrong master.” – Bonhoeffer, paraphrasing Acts 5:29

VI. Civic Stakes: Why Civil Discourse Is a Guardrail for Freedom

If the previous section asked what is at stake for Christian discipleship, this one asks what is at stake for the republic itself. Moral concerns and civic concerns converge here, because contempt is never merely personal; it is political architecture. The way a nation talks determines the way a nation thinks, and the way a nation thinks determines the way a nation lives—or fails.

We often imagine free societies collapsing through dramatic events: coups, invasions, tyrants seizing power overnight. But in reality, republics erode through quieter means—through language that erases opponents, erodes trust, and normalizes violence long before any law changes. History’s tragedies were seeded not in deeds, but in words.

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” – Thomas Jefferson

A. Free Societies Require Legitimate Opposition, Not Enemies to Eliminate

The American system rests on a fragile but essential assumption: those who disagree with you are still your fellow citizens. A constitutional republic cannot survive if disagreement is treated as treason, sedition, moral corruption, or an existential threat. Yet dehumanizing rhetoric makes precisely this shift. Opponents are no longer merely wrong; they are dangerous. Critics are not misguided; they are branded as garbage, traitors, or enemies of the people. Political rivals cease to be contestants in a shared republic and are recast as obstacles to be defeated at any cost. Once this shift takes root, civic friendship dies, and with the death of civic friendship comes the death of a republic. Lincoln understood this when he warned, “We must not be enemies.” He had seen what happens when a nation ceases to treat disagreement as legitimate—and we are flirting with that danger again.

B. Loyalty to the Constitution, Not to the Personality

The Founders feared tyranny not because they imagined a foreign king would one day seize power, but because they understood human nature—its attraction to strongmen, its vulnerability to faction, and its susceptibility to charismatic leaders who promise to punish enemies. To guard against this, they created a radical oath structure in which all public servants swear allegiance to the Constitution, not to a man. This design was intentional; it was a guardrail, a theological insight translated into civic form: no earthly leader is ultimate. When a political figure frames lawful dissent as “punishable by death” or labels criticism as “sedition,” he is not merely expressing anger but attempting to reverse the hierarchy of allegiance by placing himself above the law. A free society cannot survive that inversion.

C. Rhetoric That Incites Violence Becomes a Self-fulfilling Prophecy

We have already seen this once in our generation. On January 6th, gallows were erected and chants of “Hang Mike Pence” echoed through the halls of Congress. Those chants did not arise spontaneously; they were seeded by the language that preceded them; language that cast political opponents as existential threats and moral degenerates. When a leader amplifies phrases such as “punishable by DEATH,” “HANG THEM,” or “enemies of the state,” the moral imagination of followers begins to shift. Violence becomes thinkable long before it becomes actionable. Scholars of political psychology warn that dehumanization lowers the threshold for aggression, law enforcement warns that extreme rhetoric increases threats against public officials, and history warns that nations collapse when political rivals are transformed into enemies to be neutralized. Words do not stay words.

D. The Fragility of Democratic Norms

We often assume democracy is self-sustaining simply because we have never known anything else, but democratic norms are not self-regulating. They require constant reinforcement through shared expectations of restraint, civility, the peaceful transfer of power, respect for lawful dissent, and recognition of political opponents as members of the same civic body. Dehumanizing rhetoric corrodes every one of these norms. It trains citizens to accept the demonization of opponents, the dismissal of lawful institutions, the romanticizing of vengeance, and the gradual transfer of loyalty from the Constitution to a personality. A republic cannot long survive such habits of mind.

E. Why Civil Discourse Is Not “Softness” but Strength

Civility is not the refusal to argue; it is the refusal to destroy. It does not mean silence but self-governance which is a discipline essential for free societies. In this sense, civility is the civic equivalent of the fruit of the Spirit: gentleness, self-control, and patience. These are not signs of weakness but of maturity, both in individual citizens and in nations. Strong republics do not fear disagreement; they welcome it. Weak republics fear disagreement and punish it, while tyrannies eliminate disagreement altogether. If we want future generations to inherit something better than a slow descent into factional hatred, we must recover the ancient virtue that makes freedom possible: a commitment to treat opponents as neighbors, not enemies.

VII. Practical Application: What It Means to Stop Normalizing This

If civility is a guardrail for freedom, then each of us becomes its steward. Civil discourse does not emerge from institutions; it emerges from habits, small choices, digital gestures, and the tone we carry into public life. The deterioration of civic culture is not merely a top-down phenomenon. It grows from the bottom up when millions of ordinary people click, share, laugh at, excuse, or remain silent about rhetoric that corrodes the common good.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about responsibility.

A. The Everyday Choices of Ordinary Citizens

In a digital age, we routinely underestimate the moral weight of our own participation. A single “like” or repost may feel insignificant, but algorithms do not treat it that way: they amplify what we reward and magnify what we tolerate. The economy of outrage is fueled by our attention, which is where Christian ethics collides directly with digital citizenship. Clicking “like” is never neutral; it publicly endorses tone as much as content, shaping the kind of discourse that rises to the top.

Faithful participation therefore requires discernment and courage. Reposting rhetoric that labels opponents as “traitors,” “garbage,” “animals,” or “enemies of the state” does not advance political critique, it deploys psychological weapons. Rationalizing cruelty by saying, “Well, he’s fighting for us,” only disguises moral compromise; ends do not sanctify means, and cruelty in the service of a righteous cause remains cruelty. Christians are called to speak up with gentleness and moral clarity when friends, pastors, or political allies share demeaning content, saying, without hostility, “This doesn’t reflect Christ,” “We are better than this,” or “This language is beneath the Gospel and beneath the dignity of our republic.” It also means championing leaders whose rhetoric reflects strength without contempt, because we often get the politics we reward. Each of these choices may seem small in isolation, but together they form a counterculture of integrity.

B. Questions That Help Us Discern What We Are Amplifying

Before posting, resharing, or reacting, Christians can practice discernment by asking a few searching questions. Does this honor the image of God in the person being discussed? If not, it has no business being shared. Would I want this said about my spouse, my child, or my pastor if they were on the opposing side? Empathy often begins with imagination. Is this argument truly about ideas, or is it an attack on someone’s humanity?

The true enemy is never the person holding an idea but the idea itself, especially when that idea is false, harmful, or unjust. Christians are called to confront error without destroying those made in God’s image. Ideas should be critiqued fiercely; people must be honored steadfastly. And finally, does this speech flow from the fruit of the Spirit or from the passions of the flesh? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control are not optional extras in Christian ethics. The Christian life is, at its core, a continual apprenticeship in attention: what we choose to dwell on and amplify is what we slowly become.

C. How to Respond When Leaders Use Dehumanizing Rhetoric

When leaders use dehumanizing rhetoric, Christians are called to respond with clarity rather than convenience. The temptation is always to shrug off the sins of those on “our side,” to excuse what we would condemn if it came from the other camp. But discipleship requires something different. It requires naming wrongdoing for what it is and refusing to soften language that should unsettle us. Sometimes faithfulness sounds as simple, and as costly as saying, “This rhetoric is wrong, and I cannot endorse it.”

Just as importantly, Christians must refuse to spread the toxin. Dehumanization survives by repetition, and the easiest way to weaken it is to stop echoing it. What we choose not to amplify matters as much as what we publicly condemn. Silence can be complicity, but amplification is endorsement.

Christians are also called to hold leaders to a higher standard, not a lower one. In Scripture, prophets confronted kings and not the other way around. Power was never a shield against moral accountability; it was the very reason accountability was required. The Church, after all, is not an arm of any political party. It is an embassy of the Kingdom of God, owing its ultimate allegiance elsewhere.

This means refusing to let political fear override Christian virtue. When fear governs our speech or fear of losing influence, access, or belonging, it has already begun to govern our allegiance. Evangelicals often insist that Christians should “hold each other accountable,” but that accountability must extend even to those in positions of power, and especially to those in positions of power. A president is not exempt from Christian ethics, and Christians are not exempt from the obligation to speak truth to power.

D. Civility as Christian Witness in a Fractured Age

I am not claiming that non-Christians are incapable of this kind of restraint. My concern here is narrower and more urgent: I am calling Christians to account and pleading with them to live up to the vocation they profess. Scripture calls believers to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. But it also asks a sobering question: what happens when the salt loses its saltiness? In a culture increasingly shaped by outrage, the simple refusal to dehumanize becomes a countercultural act of faithfulness.

Civility, rightly understood, is not passivity. It is resistance, specifically resistance to the logic of contempt that insists cruelty is strength and domination is conviction. Civility bears quiet witness to a different truth: that strength does not require cruelty, conviction does not require contempt, and disagreement does not require dehumanization. To speak this way in a fractured age is to testify that another way of being human is still possible.

Ultimately, the way we speak to and about others is one of the clearest public tests of what we truly believe. If our rhetoric contradicts our faith, it is not the rhetoric that needs to be excused, it is our hearts that need to be examined. Civility is not the enemy of truth. Civility is what gives truth room to breathe.

“There should be no bitterness or rancor. The existence of political parties is not itself an evil, but their misuse to inflame the passions of men.” – George Washington

VIII. Conclusion — For Faith, Freedom, and the Future of Our Republic

If there is a thread running through this entire reflection, it is this: the way we speak is not incidental to the life of a nation or the life of the Church. Words shape thoughts and feelings, and thoughts and feelings shape actions. When contempt becomes normal, cruelty becomes acceptable. When opponents become enemies, violence becomes thinkable. And when loyalty to a leader eclipses loyalty to God or the Constitution, we enslave ourselves.

The stakes could not be higher. We are living through a moment when political rhetoric increasingly resembles a battlefield rather than a civic forum. Insults have replaced arguments. Dehumanization has replaced debate. Threats have replaced persuasion. And many Christians (often unknowingly) have helped to normalize this descent by clicking, sharing, laughing, and excusing words they would never permit from their own children.

We are not powerless and we are not spectators. Every citizen, and especially every follower of Christ, has the capacity to slow the corrosion or accelerate it. We wield more influence than we realize that not through grand speeches, but through the tone we cultivate, the media we amplify, and the courage we display when we refuse to echo the world’s contempt. This does not mean withdrawing from political life. It means participating in political life with integrity.

It means remembering:

• that every person we speak about bears the image of God;
• that the Constitution, not any individual, anchors our civic loyalty;
• that freedom requires opponents, not enemies;
• that the fruit of the Spirit is not suspended during election season;
• that strong arguments never require weak rhetoric;
• and that the Kingdom of God is never advanced through the tools of Caesar.

If we want to preserve our freedom, rebuild our civic trust, and bear faithful witness to the world, we must begin with something deceptively simple, We must stop normalizing the rhetoric that destroys us.

Speak truth without cruelty. Disagree without dehumanizing. Demand accountability without vengeance. Defend the Constitution without idolizing its officeholders. And above all, follow Christ without apology, even when it costs us political comfort. Because in the end, the health of a republic is not measured by the volume of its passions, but by the dignity with which its citizens treat one another. And that dignity begins with us.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams

Excerpt

As Trump’s insults grow harsher, our republic grows weaker. Dehumanizing opponents destroys civil discourse and erodes the moral foundation of freedom. If we normalize contempt, liberty cannot survive. Christians especially must refuse to echo rhetoric that mocks, belittles, or degrades our neighbors.

References

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