On Saturday, June 14, the same day people in cities across the nation were protesting the extrajudicial detaining of undocumented people (a.k.a. the “No Kings” protest), law enforcement officials believe a man named Vance Boelter killed Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and critically wounded State Senator John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette. The brutality of the assassination was shocking, but so was its juxtaposition. Thousands of people gathered to protest, mostly nonviolently. But one man—a deeply religious Christian—resorted to lethal violence to register his discontent.
This kind of escalation into physical retribution is certainly not isolated to one political party. In my hometown of Portland, a liberal antifascist named Michael Reinoehl killed a far-right activist named Aaron Danielson during the protests over George Floyd’s killing in the summer of 2020. During the presidential election of 2024, President Trump was the target of at least two assassination attempts. Health insurance executive Brian Thompson was gunned down in broad daylight in December 2024; Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter, was profiled in The Atlantic under the headline, “This Is How Political Violence Goes Mainstream.”
So here we are, in a moment where political violence has become another tool in the ongoing skirmish over political domination, where the idea of culture war inches closer and closer to literal war. In this win-at-all-costs environment, some Christians view the phrase “Vengeance is mine” (Romans 12:19) less as a warning and more as a battle cry for bragging rights. If we’re wondering how the evangelical church has lost some of its moral authority in American culture, it might be that our songs exalt the beauty of Jesus as Lamb, but our actions often recast him as a lone wolf, taking on the system in a righteous crusade of vengeance.
The Lone Wolf Fantasy
The allure of the lone wolf is an enduring trope in American pop culture. We tend to valorize the mythology of a dedicated warrior working alone to overcome impossible odds and defeat a massive, formidable opponent, whether it’s an off-duty cop (Bruce Willis in Die Hard), an aggrieved solder (Sly Stallone in Rambo: First Blood, Part II), an alcoholic bodyguard (Denzel Washington in Man on Fire), a mysterious assassin (Keanu Reeves in John Wick), Katniss Everdeen’s rebel archer in The Hunger Games, or even Saoirse Ronan’s orphaned heroine in in Hanna. The lone wolf trope is also the dominant trend in popular video games even when the subject is far removed from American culture. We just can’t help indulging in its crowd-pleasing aesthetic.
Such is the case for Ghost of Tsushima, an open-world fighting game set in thirteenth-century feudal Japan. You play as a samurai named Jin Sakai who is forced to operate from the shadows as he attempts to form an insurgency among the Japanese peasants suffering at the hands of the occupying Mongolian empire. Based on the historical record, Tsushima demonstrates the samurai code of honor through a traditional fighting style typified by forthright sword duels known as “standoffs.” But the scale and brutality of the Mongol forces convince Jin to occasionally reject the standoff in favor of more covert, guerilla-style tactics. His penchant for striking from the shadows earns him the titular nickname, “the ghost.” As Jin finds success with his newfound freedom, it creates tension between him and his samurai elders, who find such subterfuge dishonorable. The closer Jin gets to achieving his military goals, the more he sees his traditional elders and their code of honor as naïve and impractical.
Ultimately Jin reaches an inflection point [minor spoiler ahead] where he must either submit to authority or go his own way. Here it’s obvious that this game was developed by an American studio for a Western audience. As gamers steeped in our own culture, we applaud Jin for going his own way in the same way we might applaud a fictional renegade police detective for pursuing a case “off the books.” Stories like these orient our longings for the glory and valor of lone wolves and away from the messy work of making change within the confines of the system. Taking the law into your own hands is a seductive alternative to building the requisite consensus to change it.
But the lone-wolf impulse didn’t stay on our screens—it has infiltrated faith communities, giving rise to self-styled ‘spiritual vigilantes’ who see righteous warfare as a valid expression of their faith.
Spiritual Vigilantes
In recent years, the lone wolf trope has been baptized in American religious fervor, reborn as the spiritual vigilante. Think of Gerard Butler in Machine Gun Preacher, or Jim Caviezel in Sound of Freedom. Both films were dramatic interpretations based on real stories involving rescuing children from dangerous situations in developing nations, and both were explicitly marketed to and embraced by evangelical Christian audiences. The Pizzagate conspiracy theory of 2016 was an expression of this trend, when armed strangers showed up at a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant believing that children were being held captive in the basement. The spiritual vigilante trope went mainstream during the pandemic, when many Christians believed that the government-imposed shutdowns were immoral and that rebelling against them was a demonstration of authentic spirituality. That belief was spread by worship-artist-turned-political-activist Sean Feucht. (This trope gets a thorough deep dive in the book Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristen Kobes Du Mez.)
The spiritual vigilante can seem heroic, especially when their actions blur the lines between spiritual and literal battle, despite clear cautions in passages like Ephesians 6:12 (“for we wrestle not against flesh and blood”). In some communities, these figures are celebrated much like legendary samurai. This pattern often emerges in places where people feel overlooked or powerless, where barriers like economic hardship or stalled social mobility have eroded trust in traditional institutions. When formal channels seem slow or inaccessible, taking action outside the system can feel like the most direct way to reclaim agency and stand up for deeply held convictions.
The Way of the Lamb
The Bible speaks often of vigilance, but much less about vigilantes and usually only as a cautionary tale (for example, Moses killing the Egyptian in Exodus 2, or Peter cutting off a servant’s ear in John 18). As believers, we are often instructed to remain vigilant, but usually against the temptations of sin, which often promises a shortcut to shalom but instead undercuts it. In this way, the cautionary tales around taking revenge remind us of the principles of sowing and reaping. Just as an extramarital affair cannot result in more intimacy within a marriage, political violence fueled by vengeance cannot move us closer to the way of Jesus. They are fundamentally incompatible. Those who wish to use civil disobedience as a technique to resist oppression would do well to study Dr. King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence to understand exactly how and why the way of Jesus is the vehicle for shalom.
Obviously, few of us will ever be so radicalized as to justify taking another person’s life, much less conceiving a plan and executing it. But all of us make choices every day about which narratives, ideas, or values will take primary residence in our cultural imagination. Whether it’s through the songs we sing, the movies and TV shows we consume, the video games we play, or the slogans we chant at rallies, we all have thousands of opportunities to choose the way of the Lamb over the valor of the lone wolf.
And those of us in church leadership need to take extra care to model the way of Jesus with boldness and humility. Perpetrators of political violence can and should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, but we can’t fault them for exchanging the way of the Lamb for the fantasy of the lone wolf when our churches never taught them the difference.
