By Frank F Islam & Ed Crego, December 16, 2025 (Image credits: Tom de Boor, JNCGPT51)

We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. “To ask ourselves, ‘Is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us?’

I pray that that’s not the case.

Spencer Cox, Governor of Utah

We join Governor Cox in praying, as he did in his statement made after political influencer and activist Charlie Kirk was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10.

In this holiday season, we pray that this is a turning point for America — a turning point not toward an ideological or political belief but toward each other as fellow citizens concerned about the common good and the future or our democracy.

We say this prayer because 2025 has been another troubling and trying year for our great nation. The country has continued to become more divided and polarized. Sadly, the war of words is evolving into a war of political violence.

After the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, people on both the left and the right ramped up the rhetoric in support of violence. On the left, those speaking out asserting that Kirk deserved to be killed were not well known and some paid a price for their comments. As, Taylor Telford reported in the lead for her Washington Post piece published on September 13,

Within 24 hours of Charlie Kirk’s killing, an assistant dean at a Tennessee college, a communications staffer for an NFL team, a Next Door employee in Milwaukee, and the co-owner of a Cincinnati barbecue restaurant were fired after posting about it.

By contrast, the voices of those on the right included many prominent right-wing influencers and commentators like Alex Jones and Andrew Tate calling for a “civil war.” On his podcast, Steve Bannon said: “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the political war.” And, “We are at war in this country and you have to have steely resolve.”

Finally, the most important person speaking out and vilifying the Left was President Donald J. Trump.

In an interview on Fox & Friends, Trump stated;

I’ll tell you something that will get me in trouble but I couldn’t care less.

The radicals on the right are oftentimes radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem — and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.

So, the President sees the radicals on the right as good people, and the radicals on the left as bad people.

That myopic perspective will not bring us together. It will not promote peace nor unity in this country. Unfortunately, President Trump does not stand alone in his close-minded view.

As David French points out in his New York Times article, ‘There Are Monsters In Your Midst, Too,’ “partisan blindness” is a human condition. It causes us to see things done by those from our side more positively and things done by those on the other side more negatively.

French observes,

If we’re convinced that political violence comes from only one side of the divide, then the temptation toward punitive authoritarianism is overwhelming. “They” are evil and violent, and “they” must be crushed.

If, however, we accurately understand that America has an immense problem with violent extremism on both sides of the ideological aisle — even if, at any given moment, one side is worse than the other — then the answer lies in reconciliation, not domination. In fact, it’s the will to dominate that magnifies the crisis and radicalizes our opponents.

In this holiday season, we pray for reconciliation, not domination. We pray for reflection not rejection. We pray for reunification, not separation.

We pray for a turning point. The Oxford Dictionary defines a turning point “as a time at which a decisive change to a situation occurs, especially one that is beneficial.”

In order to make this a turning point, we need to learn not only from the death of Charlie Kirk, but from Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy — each of whom was shot by an assassin’s bullet.

Robert F. Kennedy told a crowd, in a speech he made in Indianapolis just hours after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on the balcony outside his motel in Memphis in 1967:

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

Martin Luther King Jr. told an audience of students and faculty at the University of Michigan in 1962, “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will die together as fools.”

In 1958, four years before he became President, John F. Kennedy told a group of Loyola College alumni in Baltimore, Maryland:

Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

Bobby Kennedy, MLK, Jr., and JFK were all killed more than six decades ago, and there had been some progress through those years on the advice for unity they’d given us. In the past two decades though, there has been more movement backward than forward to bring us together as one community with a shared set of democratic values.

That is why, as we stated at the outset of this piece, our holiday prayer in 2025 is for a turning point for America — a turning point not toward an ideological or political belief, but toward each other as fellow citizens concerned about the common good and the future or our democracy.

Next year, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary. There is no better present that we can give to our nation and to each other than coming together to begin the arduous process and work that will be required to make this turning point a reality.

Praying will not make that so. But, citizens committed to collaborating and having the patience to persevere can ensure that our turning point prayer for America is answered.

Happy holidays. Pray and persevere!