Charlie Kirk’s assassination marks a turning point in the culture wars. For many conservatives, Kirk was not just a movement leader but an icon. His tragic death has been interpreted by some as a form of martyrdom: a man who modeled charity in debate and generosity toward opponents, yet was met with violence in return. The temptation among his admirers is clear: he fought with grace, and look what it got him; now it’s time to take the gloves off.
Thankfully, most have resisted this impulse. In contrast to the destructive reactions that have followed other high-profile killings, the predominant response has been prayer. Vigils have sprung up across the country, and more than a few have begun to investigate the faith that Kirk professed. Yet alongside this hopeful response runs a darker current: calls for vengeance from some prominent right-wing voices, and the gnawing sense within many hearts that perhaps retribution is the only fitting answer.
This temptation is not new. Christians in every age have struggled to resist the pull of vengeance when confronted with violence. And one of the church’s greatest theologians—Augustine of Hippo—warned against it with unrelenting consistency. (Robert J. Dodaro, “Between the Two Cities: Political Action in Augustine of Hippo,” in Augustine and Politics, edited by John Doody, Kevin L. Hughes, and Kim Paffenroth is especially good on this.)
In his sermons and letters, Augustine urged civil authorities to restrain violence without indulging in vengeance, to pursue justice tempered by compassion, to exercise their power with gentleness—pursuing reconciliation above retribution. His correspondence during the Donatist controversy makes this especially clear. Writing to a proconsul of Africa—who was also a fellow catholic Christian—Augustine pleads for restraint, urging him not to execute the schismatics, even when they had committed acts of violence against the church:
We do not seek vengeance upon our enemies on this earth …. We love our enemies and pray for them. Hence, we desire that, by making use of judges and laws that cause fear, they be corrected, not killed, so that they do not fall into the punishments of eternal condemnation. … Repress their sins, therefore, in such a way that those who repent having sinned may still exist.
Augustine makes a similar appeal to his friend Marcellinus, an imperial commissioner who was deputized to deal with the Donatists. Even as he recounts the Donatists’ brutal actions—how they “spilled Christian blood,” and “killed a minister of the Church and robbed him of a portion of his life” —Augustine urges Marcellinus to respond not with vengeance, but with mercy: “Use goodness to contend with the evil.” Although Augustine permits certain physical penalties, he instructs Marcellinus not to use torture as a means of interrogation and repeatedly calls for moderation in punishment. This restrained posture toward the church’s enemies—what he refers to as “Catholic gentleness”—would, in Augustine’s words, allow “the goodness of the Church [to] be seen in its exemplary brilliance.”
Augustine’s ultimate hope was that the compassion of the church—combined with and informing the justice of the state—would lead her enemies to repentance and renewal. His plea for mercy toward the church’s enemies was driven not merely out of concern for prudence, but as a matter of Christian witness.
Augustine’s commitment to mercy extended not only to Christian schismatics like the Donatists but also to pagans who violently opposed the church. This is especially clear in his correspondence with the pagan civil official Nectarius following the crisis at Calama in 408—a town just south of Augustine’s diocese. (For a discussion of this affair, see Peter Ivan Kaufman, “Patience and/or Politics: Augustine and the Crisis at Calama," 408-409,” Vigiliae Christianae 57.1 (2003): 22-35.) After pagan rioters in Calama burned a church, plundered Christian property, assaulted Christians, killed at least one, and forced the bishop into hiding, Augustine still opposed the use of torture and summary executions. Even in the face of such anti-Christian violence, he insisted that mercy—not vengeful retaliation—should prevail, lest the church’s witness be stained by bloodthirst.
None of this meant Augustine denied the state’s role in restraining evil. Preaching on Romans 13, he was blunt: “Whoever does not apply discipline is cruel. … It can be kind to beat and cruel to spare.” Temporal punishment, rightly applied, could serve a redemptive purpose. Shielding sinners from correction, he warned, was the deeper cruelty, for it left them exposed to eternal condemnation. Thus, Christian judges and magistrates were to act like loving fathers: disciplining when necessary, but never with malice and vindictiveness. Justice remains an objective—but it must always be tempered by mercy.
Augustine is not naïve; he admits we have enemies in this life. We owe them a “perfect hatred,” in the words of the Psalmist. (See Augustine’s engagement with this biblical text in Expositions of the Psalms 138.28. See also The Confessions, V.12.22; The City of God, XIV.6; Homilies on the Gospel of John 87.4.) But Augustine explains what this entails: the one who loves God “owes a perfect hatred to those who are evil—that is, he will neither hate the person because of the fault nor love the fault because of the person, but will rather hate the fault and love the person.” Christians are to love their enemies as potential brothers, envisioning them not only as they are in their opposition to God but as they might become by God’s grace. Just as a craftsman looks at a rough piece of wood and sees the finished work, Augustine exhorts believers to look at their enemies with redemptive imagination.
This, Augustine says, is how God loves sinners. “So too regard your enemy,” he urges. To love him is to pray that God would forgive and transform him. We do not love his present opposition, but what we want him to be: one who loves God with us and his neighbors—including us.
This love also casts out fear. Citizens of the heavenly city need not fear their enemies, for temporal threats cannot take away what they truly desire. Because our true good is secure in God, we need not fear our enemies. Their rage can harm the body, but it cannot take away what matters most. Therefore, Augustine says, when enemies rage against us, our response should not be fear, but pity—for “the more they hate us, the more it shows how far they are cut off from the one whom we love.”
According to Augustine, the wicked should not get off and wickedness must be restrained; but love does not return evil for evil. Joining in the violent hatred of our enemies only results in making us evil like them.
All of this has sharp relevance now. Augustine’s warnings feel urgent as the rhetoric surrounding Kirk’s death grows heated.
Kirk’s admirers are right to grieve his death, and they are right to long for justice. But justice must never collapse into vengeance. The Christian answer to political violence is not escalation but witness—the witness of a people who wage war against evil without mirroring it.
For pastors and ordinary Christians, this means cultivating habits of prayer, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance in our personal lives. To lash out in ungodly anger—whether in private conversation or online—corrodes our souls and distorts our witness. The way we speak about our enemies should make clear that we follow the One who prayed for those who crucified him.
For politically engaged Christians, this means resisting the seductive rhetoric of payback. Our neighbors may rage that Kirk’s blood demands blood in return; we must insist that his blood, like that of every man, cries out for justice, but not vengeance at the hands of private persons or partisan mobs. Government remains God’s servant in justice, but Augustine reminds us that Christian statesmen must govern as Christians: wielding the sword without cruelty and vindictiveness.
The truest test of Kirk’s legacy will come now. If those who invoke his name take up bloodthirsty retaliation, they will betray him. But if they choose Augustine’s “Catholic gentleness”—firm in justice, radiant in mercy—they may yet show a culture drunk on violence that there is another way: the way of Christ.
