On Sept. 5, President Trump signed an executive order returning the Department of Defense to its former name of the Department of War, despite the fact that he does not have the authority to legally change the name without congressional approval. As the historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her newsletter, the department’s secretary, Pete Hegseth, “has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a ‘warrior ethos’ at the Pentagon.” Mr. Hegseth, according to Time magazine, said that the name change is meant to signal that “we’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.” 

This warrior ethos was evident the next day, when Mr. Trump posted on social media that Chicago would “find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” He has since clarified that he merely meant to announce that he would “clean up our cities” by deploying the U.S. military on domestic soil. (On Sept. 15, he announced that he was sending the National Guard and federal agents to Memphis instead, but he did not rule out a future deployment to Chicago.) And in an interview with CNN on Sept. 7, Border Czar Tom Homan said, “We’re going to war with illegal aliens.”

The same week, the U.S. military bombed a speedboat carrying 11 people from Venezuela, killing all aboard. The administration alleges that those on board were drug smugglers, but they had not initiated violence and were not given an opportunity to surrender or turn back to Venezuela. Mr. Trump promptly posted a video of the exploding boat on social media, and Vice President JD Vance used an expletive to brush off the argument that the Trump administration had committed a war crime. 

And after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Mr. Trump was quick to blame the “radical left,” failing to acknowledge several recent incidents of political violence committed against Democrats. Conservative commentators used military language to urge retribution—and even extermination—against the political left. The Fox News host Jesse Waters, for example, claimed, “They are at war with us,” and asked: “What are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate?” Chaya Raichik, who runs the Libs of TikTok account, posted on X, “THIS IS WAR.” 

How can we resist the warrior ethos in Washington and the political violence that is spilling over into civil society? By resisting the assumptions that violence is the way to counter harm and that coercion is the best way to create the world we want to see, which are rooted in the patriarchal conception of power as dominance. It seems worth noting that nonviolent resistance movements are much more effective at thwarting authoritarian efforts, decreasing violence and securing lasting peace. 

Indeed, while I believe violent actions that have the authority of the state behind them can be more alarming than random acts of violence, we can see a link between both in St. Augustine’s City of God. There he asks, “If justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands?” To make his point, he recalls an interaction between Alexander the Great and a pirate. When the emperor asks the pirate what he is thinking as he seeks to dominate the sea, the pirate responds: “The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor.” For Augustine, the human lust for domination is the root of both independent violence and aggressive violence sanctioned by the state. Today, Catholics must stand against both. 

I reject the logic that says that criticism of the government necessarily generates violence against it. This is gaslighting, and it serves as a pretext for authoritarian regimes to step up militarism. It is crucial, however, that in speaking out against violence, we do not villainize those whose actions we oppose. When we think of ourselves as “good warriors” engaged in a moral campaign against the “evil others,” our efforts will eventually default to domination. Entrenching battle lines is a sure way to perpetuate these cycles of violence. If we want to transform them instead, we have to let go of the divisive mentality that says that power is about coercive strength, and instead adopt a framework for action rooted in interconnection and compassion.

As the Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara observes, “In our patriarchal culture, where the consequences of colonialist slavery are still present, power is a men’s issue, especially public power; because of this, God, considered as a super power, has a masculine face.” And when we conceive of God’s power as dominative and violent, our human desire to become like God takes on an oppressive character. 

But God’s power emerges in and through the care we show to one another. 

In my theology class recently, I led my students through an exercise that felt particularly relevant to this moment. Called “When I Made a Difference,” and modeled by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown, the practice invites students to reflect on a time when something good happened directly because of something they did, and then to identify key qualities or virtues that were evident in that action. As the responses came in, we wrote them on the board: empathy, compassion, resilience, kindness, persistence, self-confidence, courage, humility, ingenuity and so on.

What students came to see is that the power they exercise in the world to foster goodness is not at all rooted in coercion, violence or domination, but instead happens through creativity, vulnerability and embodied care. In this light, I find Augustine’s translation of Romans 8:28 to be particularly encouraging: “We know that God, along with those who love [God], works all things for good.” 

Every day it seems there is more violence to lament and protest. It may be difficult to grieve the deaths of (alleged) Venezuelan drug smugglers when we are still reeling from the latest school shooting and people in Gaza are being systematically starved and murdered or expelled from their homes. It can be difficult to grieve the death of a political opponent we see as perpetrating grave harms. But every act of violence damages the web of life. Because we are all connected,  held together in the body of Christ, violence is inherently self-destructive and only masquerades as strength. 

Power and violence have always been conflated, of course. The patriarchal “warrior ethos” was around long before the revived Department of War, and it is not unique to this administration. As Augustine realized, the lust for domination runs deep through every human psyche. But the beauty of our faith is that we are called to continuous conversion from the power systems of our world. We are called to bear prophetic witness to the true justice of mutual flourishing. Indeed, as Jesus shows us on the cross, compassion—holding and healing the suffering of the world—is the heart of real power.

Kathleen Bonnette works at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, where she also teaches theology. She is the author of (R)evolutionary Hope: A Spirituality of Encounter and Engagement in an Evolving World (Wipf and Stock).