Table of Contents
America has heard the warning before: “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste.” Yet, echoes of this warning grow louder today, resonating through congressional halls, news feeds, and the uneasy silence between friends and neighbors. Once, those words spoke to the collapse of Hell itself. Now, they haunt our nation that is riven by distrust, hostility, and violence. The phrase “a house divided” is no longer a relic of Biblical or nineteenth-century history. It is a reflection of our present reality.
The concept of “a house divided” originates from the Bible and is referenced in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke when Jesus heals a demon-possessed man who is both blind and mute. After Jesus cures the man of his afflictions and casts out the demon, the critical Pharisees claim that he harnessed demonic powers to perform this act of healing. Jesus corrects them, stating that he healed the man through God’s power, and he explains that if his power was in fact derived from Satan, then evil powers would be fighting forces of evil, and Hell would be destroyed by internal conflict: “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matthew 12:25).
The example put forth in these verses emphasizes the utmost significance of unity and warns against the destructive power of absolute opposition, which extends far beyond the religious context. No community, organization, system, or country experiencing drastic internal conflict can survive without consequence, and while an institution may not collapse entirely as a result of internal conflict, there is bound to be some degree of damage inflicted on the people making up that institution, as well as on the structure and operations of the institution itself.
Our nation was born out of protest and revolution, and Americans possess a passion for politics, grounded in the protection and preservation of freedom and liberty. Our Constitution’s First Amendment, in guaranteeing our freedom of religion, of assembly, and of speech, provides a framework for the civil discourse that has defined our democracy and sets us apart from totalitarian dictatorships and absolute monarchies.
But politically motivated violence is on the rise in the U.S., and that is something Republicans and Democrats can agree on, with 85% of Americans holding this view. What we used to see only happening in countries with tyrannical governments now seems commonplace here at home. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have been attacked: the assassinations of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, as well as political activist Charlie Kirk; assassination attempts and violence against elected officials President Donald Trump, Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his family, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and Representative Steve Scalise. The Capitol riot of January 6th, the socially and politically driven violent protests by Black Lives Matter, and the anti-authoritarian insurrection of domestic terrorist groups like Antifa must be called out for what they really are, and unequivocally condemned and denounced.
As a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles, acts of religious violence undermine the foundation of American values, yet religious violence has also seen a tragic increase since 2020. Religion-based hate crimes against the Jewish community are the most common, but we have also seen the incidence of violence on churches in America more than double between 2022 and 2023, and last year, there were a total of 485 attacks on Christian churches. Between May of 2020 and 2025, there have been over 500 attacks and acts of hostility against Catholic churches, including the deadly shootings at the Annunciation Catholic School and The Covenant School.
Each horrific act tragically supports a normalization of the violence, a justification of the extremism, grounded in the flawed belief that “the ends justify the means.” We as a nation have blindly accepted false and biased reporting from our news agencies, embraced radicalism driven by social media, and ignored the weaponization of our justice system to fuel anarchist violent extremism.
This extremist movement is fundamentally un-American, and we are destined for disaster if we do not become less polarized and reclaim our fundamental American ideals and culture. The divisiveness and violence directly threaten our freedom and our democracy. As President Ronald Reagan cautioned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” The Disagree Better nonprofit started by Utah Governor Spencer Cox advocates for improvements in political discourse, recognizing that politics, while important, should not define us or our relationships. As Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman says, we must choose “country over party.” We need to learn from our mistakes and look at the issues facing our country through a lens grounded in unity and love of our democracy.
President Abraham Lincoln warned, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Irrespective of our political opinions, we need to collectively denounce violence in America, no matter where it may occur and no matter who is behind it. We need to demand unbiased reporting, transparency, and accountability from our news agencies. We need to work for the common good and prosperity of our country instead of wasting time fighting personalities or party politics. We need to shift our focus from what divides us to what it means to be an American, and we must return to our founding principles of Democracy, Freedom, Equality, Limited Government, Free Enterprise, and the belief that with hard work and sacrifice, we can build a better life for ourselves and our families. We need to condemn socialism, communism, religious intolerance, and the growing hatred of American ideology. I fear that if we cannot do this, and reclaim and continue to rebuild the America of our founding fathers, the freedom we have known will be lost forever.
