A few weeks ago my wife and I went to dinner at a local pub with some good friends. At one point, “Joan,” a practicing Catholic, asked me, “How can I stop hating Trump supporters? I need help with that one.” She nodded her head in the direction of patrons who she had reason to believe support Trump.
Versions of this question are being asked these days by serious Christians baffled by the fact that so many Americans could vote for a politician who is so greedy, cruel, and narcissistic. Joan is particularly dismayed by the fact that 54 percent of Catholics—and 60 percent of white Catholics—voted for Trump, a man whom she regards as the antithesis of what Christ is all about. How can believers in a God of love vote for someone who scapegoats migrants, denigrates women, and mocks people with disabilities? On a personal level, Joan wants to know how she is really supposed to love people who endorse a politician who shows nothing but contempt for what she holds most dear.
We should not take Joan’s worry as implying that she believes that either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris are immune from serious criticism, or that the Democratic Party is in no way morally problematic—far from it. She is aware that many sincere people of faith might turn the tables on her and ask how any Catholic could take the side of a political party that supports an unrestricted right to abortion, shows little regard for families, seems to care more about spotted owls than loggers, and does not even try to hide its obvious disdain for the Christian faith. Whatever you think of these accusations, there is little doubt that serious Christians from both sides can ask how they are expected to love people who support political figures, movements, or organizations that they perceive to be not just compromised and flawed but corrupt, brutal, inhumane, and anti-Christian.
One way to try to soften Joan’s sense of outrage might be to point out that the category of “Trump supporters” is not monolithic. It comprises a broad and complex spectrum that runs from the fanatical and violent Stewart Rhodes and his Oath Keepers to “low information” citizens who voted for Trump only because they don’t want “more of the same.” One group of Trump supporters say they don’t like him personally but think his policies might help lower inflation, generate better-paying jobs, and control immigration. Another group voted for Trump but do not approve of the specific ways he has been pursuing his agenda since he took office—e.g., the pardons for January 6 rioters, ICE raids on schools, revenge firings, and freezing international aid even to desperately poor communities. Yet differentiating among the various kinds of Trump supporters does not really negate the fact that they all either explicitly endorse his leadership and broad agenda or at least don’t care enough about the many people he will harm to withhold their support.
In any case, Joan’s quandary isn’t mainly about Trump’s bad character and depraved values. Joan’s dismay is not allayed by those who say they don’t like Trump personally but voted for his policies. This line tries to sever the real connection between the kind of person he is and the kind of policies he promotes. We see his callousness in massive firings of government officials working for the public good and his wholesale elimination of USAID funding for the most marginal and powerless people in the global South. Christians should be deeply disturbed by this radical abandonment of concern for the least of our brothers and sisters—but millions are not.
The relentless bullying he was known for in his real-estate career is of a piece with his admiration for the predatory Vladimir Putin and his contempt for the heroic Volodymyr Zelensky. Joan cannot get her mind around how so many American Christians—and especially American Catholics—can continue to stand by a political leader whose words and deeds leave no doubt about his fundamental belief that might makes right. Trump’s remaining supporters seem untroubled by this belief and its implications for the traditional American commitment to the rule of law, human rights, and liberal democracy. This heedless rejection of our ideals is what most disturbs Joan.
Joan’s main concern can be put like this: if you believe a leader is promoting profoundly destructive public policies, you will morally condemn what he or she is doing. Your objections, moreover, will be directed not only at the politician himself but also, to some degree or other, at his advisors, apologists, donors, campaign staff, and tens of millions of supporters—all those who, in minor or major ways, have made it possible for him to wreak havoc on our institutions and to hurt a great many vulnerable people both in the United States and abroad.
We can only begin to answer Joan’s question after identifying what we mean by “love of neighbor.” Unlike our ordinary use of the term, “love” here does not refer to affection, approval, or attraction. To avoid misunderstanding, Christian writers often use the New Testament Greek term agape (or, less often, its Latin translation, caritas) to signal its distinctively Christian meaning. Catholic writers from St. Thomas Aquinas to Pope Benedict XVI describe agape as a “love of benevolence” that wills the good to others. Thinking along similar lines, Martin Luther King Jr. described agape as “redemptive good will” for every person and not only those in one’s “neighborhood.”
It is all well and good to love people who bear good will to us and what we care about, but what about those who show a depraved lack of respect for certain classes of people and who oppose principles and norms we hold dear? One classic way of responding to this question draws on St. Augustine’s advice: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” For our purposes, we can take “sin” in this context to mean “materially sinful” or “objectively wrong” rather than “formally sinful” or “morally culpable.” (Political decisions by voters can obviously fall into both categories, but we don’t need to get into that discussion here.) Augustine’s maxim encourages us to think about what it means to love someone whose attitudes, views, and actions one regards as morally reprehensible. In the case of real and sustained harm, however, it can be quite a feat of moral gymnastics to hate the sins of corruption, domination, and cruelty without also hating those who manifest, justify, and profit from them. This precept, Gandhi points out in his autobiography, is “easy enough to understand [but] rarely practiced, that this is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.”
The good we will to others typically corresponds to our perception of their particular needs. We will the good of health to the sick, knowledge to students, and freedom for captives. The goods we generally will to all the others members of our political community include, among others things, honesty, fairness, and compassion.
As Pope Francis reminds us, one important expression of good will is a willingness to enter into dialogue with our political adversaries. The purpose of dialogue is to come to some degree of mutual understanding rather than to “win” a debate. But even within families, real dialogue has been made very difficult by ideologically driven social media, politically extreme cable news, and demagogic politicians. Intense polarization drives people into homogeneous spaces where everyone agrees with one another about their grievances and their version of the truth. When opponents do manage to engage in conversation, moreover, it often reveals even more fundamental disagreements that can intensify rather than reduce divisions. Dialogue is clearly not a cure-all for what ails us.
The Church should play a constructive role here but, at least in my experience, it usually does not. Catholic parishes and schools should be places where people build bridges to overcome alienation—we are, after all, integral members of the Body of Christ. Unfortunately, they do not often function as communities of moral discourse that draw their participants into greater social and political awareness. Pastors tend either to tacitly support Trump by focusing exclusively on the pro-life agenda or to avoid bringing up themes (such as “social justice” or “human rights”) that they fear are too “political” and divisive. Pastors should be able to do more than recommend that their parishioners consult the latest edition of the USCCB’s “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”
Joan’s question “How can I stop hating Trump supporters?” implicitly acknowledges that love of neighbor begins with the renunciation of bad will. The question of how one might do this can be approached as a therapeutic and psychological matter, but for Catholics it also pertains to moral and spiritual growth.
Renouncing bad will toward any group of people requires a clearer grasp and deeper appropriation of the Christian virtue of solidarity. The term “solidarity” refers to a commitment to identify with the people of a community and to adopt their cause as one’s own. Christians share a profound connection in virtue of our common baptism and participation in the Body of Christ. We all share a commitment to discipleship and long for the coming of the reign of God. And in the meantime we all pray that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Three more dimensions of solidarity have to do with how we are connected to one another both as human beings and as people of faith committed to the Christian life. These are our solidarity as creatures, our solidarity as sinners, and our solidarity as graced.
First, as Christians we believe every person—even those whose attitudes and actions we find reprehensible—is absolutely loved by God, created in God’s image, potentially redeemed in Christ, and invited by the Holy Spirit into a life of love. The command to love every person as neighbor is a call to imitate a divine love that shines on both the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Catholic social teaching captures the heart of this vision when it reminds us that every person has intrinsic dignity. This ontological feature of our humanity is given to all of us—as much to those who attack the dignity of others as to those who defend it.
Second, as human beings we share a solidarity in sin. Christians don’t like to talk much about sin anymore, but healthy Christian realism reminds us that, regardless of our political affiliation, we are all beset with our own abiding flaws. These include sins of moral weakness and pride, but they also include willful intellectual blindness and self-deception, narrow-mindedness and lack of curiosity, hypocrisy and self-righteousness, and judgmentalism. Admitting we are not immune from these faults can help us feel some empathy for others caught up in the same or similar faults.
Jesus tells his disciples to remove the beam from their own eye before taking the speck out of their friend’s eye (Matthew 7:5). This text is frequently interpreted by therapeutic-minded Catholics as rejecting all moral judgments, but that is clearly not what Jesus had in mind. This particular passage contrasts a disciple who is so focused on his friend’s minor defect (the speck) that he doesn’t notice his own much bigger flaw (the beam). In real life, of course, sometimes the balance goes the other way.
Matthew does not depict a disciple asking: “But what if the neighbor has an even bigger beam in her eye that I do?” In this narrative, and elsewhere, Jesus is mainly trying to challenge our tendency to minimize our own faults while exaggerating those of our peers. He does not, however, instruct his disciples to correct their own flaws instead of addressing those of their brothers and sisters. Achieving personal perfection is not a prerequisite to engaging in appropriate fraternal correction, as long as this correction is offered with love and respect. We should not confuse expressing fair and appropriate judgments with self-righteous judgmentalism.
The normal Christian response to a recognition of our sinfulness is to repent. Joan’s question—“How can I stop hating Trump supporters?”—constitutes an implicit recognition of her own need to repent as well as her desire to grow beyond moral anger and disdain. Whether we realize it or not, this sentiment applies to most politically engaged Christians these days. While recognizing the legitimacy of her moral indignation, Joan does not want her sense of alienation to turn into bitterness and cynicism. She is, on some level, morally at odds with herself—offended by people she believes to be guilty of grave wrongdoing while also feeling uneasy about her highly negative attitude toward them.
We move toward greater integrity by wrestling with our internal self-contradictions and resolving them in favor of patient love. Recognizing that we are imperfect, complicated, and culpable human beings caught up in social sin should make it a little easier for us to love people who are also complicated, imperfect, and culpable. W. H. Auden captures the implication of this solidarity in sin when he writes, “You should love your crooked neighbor / With your crooked heart.”
Third, we share a solidarity in grace. For Christians, sin is neither the first nor the last word to be said about humanity. We need to place our solidarity in sin within the wider framework of our solidarity in grace. This solidarity is not the communion of saints: even though we do not all respond with wholehearted acceptance to divine love, grace is a constant presence in our lives in the mode of invitation, as Karl Rahner puts it. The ultimate and most powerful form of human unity in this life is the communion of caritas made possible by our participation in the life of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All of us—whatever our political allegiances and moral convictions—are equally loved by God and in need of the healing and forgiving power of divine grace.
Solidarity in grace grows to the extent that we accept and cooperate with the unconditional flow of God’s grace. To do that well and fully brings one to the realization that God loves Trump supporters—and indeed even Trump himself—as much as God loves the rest of us. As Timothy Radcliffe, OP, pointed out in one of his synodal retreat talks, “The good news is that God loves you. The bad news is that he loves everyone else as well.” This love, fully embraced, generates in us a spirit of humility, patience, and hope. It allows us to will the good and to strive to understand, respect, and learn from those with whom we disagree, even when the disagreement is profound.
Neither awareness of our own limitations and shortcomings nor an appreciation of our opponents’ human dignity, nor cooperation with the grace that builds deep solidarity will do away with Joan’s deep and principled objections to Trump and his supporters. They do not require her to abandon these objections, but they do put them in a larger context, the context of grace and God’s unconditional love. Devout faith in Christ can intensify rather than diminish our opposition to morally reprehensible policies and politicians. But we can at least hope that by growing in human and Christian solidarity with one another, we can resist the temptation to hate our fellow citizens. For to hate them is to condemn ourselves.
