Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I was anguished by the reelection of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and that this consternation has only deepened in the first several weeks of his administration. In what follows, I want to be very careful to not turn this essay into a screed about the Trump administration or an indictment of his supporters. I do that plenty on my Substack, but Covenant serves a distinctive focus within the ecosystem of online theological engagement, and I want to honor that focus.
So instead of complaining about all things MAGA, I wish to consider how I myself ought to be transformed during this season of Lent, which invites all of us to renewed repentance and conversion, to greater conformity to Christ, leaving aside all that hinders us so that we can share more fully in his risen Easter life.
In particular, I want to consider one dimension of what Jesus is likely calling me to during this season in light of my political distress: namely to love and pray for my enemies (Trump supporters). I recognize that Covenant draws readers from across the political spectrum, so I hope that any Trump supporters reading this, who might take issue with my identifying them as “my enemies,” would recognize that this is all in the service of my fostering love for them and pursuing my own conversion.
I do not believe this is all the Lord is calling me to do. I am also devoting my scholarship to a more intentional focus on the anti-fascism of such ressourcement theologians as Henri de Lubac and his Jesuit confrères. I intend to align myself with resistance movements, to find ways of standing in solidarity with those the administration is targeting, and so forth.
But amid all this, I recognize my need to recognize the call to love my enemies.
Let’s think, more, about this notion of “enemies” and how we define and perceive “enmity.” The first mention of “enmity” in Scripture comes directly from God, who will put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman; their designs for God’s creation are in hostile opposition. Paul writes in Romans 8:7 that the “carnal mind” is at enmity with God. Yet the most decisive word of Scripture on enmity comes three chapters earlier, when Paul writes that when we were still God’s enemies, Christ gave his life for us. Enmity is real, but the good news of the gospel is Jesus’s laying down of his own life for his enemies.
Here we might also consider the various admonitions in the New Testament—most of them in the Pauline writings—to pray for those in authority. It’s likely we don’t think of these in the context of relating to our enemies. I suspect we have a tendency to read these admonitions on the assumption that we are praying for friendly, or at least neutral, if sometimes wayward rulers. In fact, though, the authority in question was the same Roman Empire that crucified Jesus, the same Roman empire that persecuted the early believers, the same that would eventually execute most of the apostles, including the same Paul who urged prayer for these rulers.
It’s perhaps a mark of my privilege that I’ve never really had to deal with “enemies” before. Sure, I underwent my share of bullying as a child. And I’ve had people with whom I don’t really get along. I’ve had friendships go awry and experienced sometimes painful partings of the way. But the palpable sense of having enemies is new.
The closest I’ve come to this experience would be on September 11, 2001 and the immediate aftermath. The terrorist attacks of that day made it clear that I lived in a world with enemies. But those enemies were still a “conveniently” distant other. They were far away, and, while I thought about them a lot, they were not part of my daily life. I had no relationships with, nor did I know any terrorists. Trumpism, though, is near to and involves people I know and recognize, faces familiar to me with whom I regularly interact. Suddenly “enemies” are not an abstraction, but concretely known persons.
“Enemies” may seem hyperbolic or histrionic, but I believe it is the correct designation, because my disagreements with Trumpism go beyond partisan preference. I’ve disagreed with every administration I can remember on at least some fronts. I’ve had friends with whom I strongly disagree about policies and politicians before. Yet, because I regard the Trump administration as posing threats to democracy, the common good, and to human flourishing that I also genuinely perceive as malicious and even evil, I have come to a place of real, meaningful enmity. I say that not to get in a dig, but to clarify the scope of what I’m talking about.
Because my assessment of Trumpism is the starting point rather than the argument, I’m not going to enumerate the reasons I hold this position or try to persuade anyone to share my views. Instead, I note that the stakes are high enough that the designation enemy applies.
And this has given me renewed insight into Jesus’ admonition in the Sermon on the Mount:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:43-48)
It’s a far more bracing counsel than I’d previously realized. It’s my fault that I’ve missed it before, but I suppose I’ve always read it as if our enemies aren’t really enemies, just friends we’ve not yet won over. Or something facile like that. Instead, though, Jesus assumes that these enemies really are enemies, not just folks with whom we have a misunderstanding.
And here’s the terrible thing: he tells me that I am to love and pray for those enemies, because he loves them and does so no less than he loves me. And because my salvation depends entirely on his love and grace, that means my salvation is bound up with theirs. Thomas Aquinas writes that, in recognizing the humanity of enemies, we accept their capacity for salvation and blessedness. A sense of shared humanity, a shared condition of sin and need for grace, is the starting place for love of enemy.
For years, I’ve been committed to the vision of church unity sketched by Ephraim Radner in A Brutal Unity: a union of enemies. I sought to develop it at length in my recent book on church division, Ruptured Bodies. It’s vital to affirm because it takes us off the dead-end path of trying to agree our way to unity. When we do this, we’ll find that the goalposts are constantly being moved. Unity is founded not in our agreement, but in the way that Jesus Christ has embraced us all, even in our alienation from and hostility toward God. Yet, despite this theoretical commitment to the idea of loving our enemies, it’s only been since Trump’s reelection that I’ve found myself faced with the reality of having enemies.
For someone in my situation, two temptations present themselves. One would be to pretend that these are not my enemies, that our disagreements aren’t so serious after all. The other would be to determine that because they are my enemies, I should no longer have anything to do with them, that my job is now to oppose them, hoping for and eventually celebrating their comeuppance.
Jesus’ call to discipleship forecloses both of those paths for me. I cannot be faithful if I soft-pedal the truth, and I certainly cannot be faithful if abandon the vulnerable people who are under attack by the current administration, or regard attacking them as a matter on which people of good will can agree to disagree. No, these are my enemies. But I also cannot be faithful if I simply write these enemies off or engage in schadenfreude. I must love them, pray for them, and will their good.
And so, this Lent, among other things, I am committing myself to pray for my enemies. There is surely more than just “thoughts and prayers” involved in love, including enemy love, but the precise shape of the actions such love would take continues to elude me. I may not yet know how to love my enemies, and I am not confident that I’ll have the will to act on such love were its shape clear to me. Prayer, though, I can do. And perhaps through prayerful discernment that shape and the requisite willingness will be granted to me. I expect this to be the most difficult Lenten practice I’ve ever undertaken (and I once went the full 40 days without coffee, not even relaxing the fast for Sundays).
But I also hope and expect that it will prove more transformative than any practice I’ve ever undertaken. Because there is nothing more Christlike than loving one’s enemies. This is how he saved us—how he saved me. This is where the whole journey of Lent is leading: to the cross where the Son of God loved us and gave himself for us, even when we were still sinners, still enemies, and to the triumph of Easter, when new life triumphantly breaks through, inviting us all, friend and enemy alike, to come to the feast where all shall finally be reconciled.
Christ’s saving act holds out the hope that enemies can be reconciled, even as it prevents us from seeing this reconciliation as a glib, facile thing. I hope and pray that God’s grace works in me—and all of us—this Lent, breaking down our resistance and conforming us to him. If ever we are to be reconciled, it will be by walking this path, this way of the cross, which Christ has shown to be the way of life and peace.
Eugene R. Schlesinger, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He is the author of several books, including Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery of the Cross (Notre Dame, 2023). Schlesinger served as Editor of Covenant, 2019-2024.
