Appeals for unity, prayer and peace after Trump rally shooting

US President Joe Biden has led calls for a reset in political rhetoric within the US after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday. 

Biden said it was “time to chill it down” after the shooting that left a spectator dead at the previous president’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

“There isn’t any place in America [for] this type of violence, for any violence ever, period. No exceptions,” said Biden, adding “we will not allow this violence to be normalized.”

“The political rhetoric on this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to chill it down. We all have a responsibility to try this,” he said.

“Yes, we now have deeply felt, strong disagreements. The stakes on this election are enormously high. I’ve said it over and over that the selection … we make this election goes to shape the longer term of America and the world for a long time to return. I feel that with all my soul. I do know that tens of millions of my fellow Americans imagine it as well.”

Evangelical commentator Dr Michael Brown wrote on his blog that “it truly is a time for reflection” and that every one people need to think twice about their language.

“Are we contributing to this atmosphere of hatred and violence? What form of emotions can we fire up with the words we speak and the memes we post? What are we fomenting? To what end?” he said. 

He continued, “I don’t minimize the depth of the political divide in our country today, neither is there a simple path forward toward national unity. Not by a rustic mile.

“But all of us are answerable for the words we speak, for the posts we share, for the memes we create, for the environments we shape. And all of us would do well to look within the mirror and ask ourselves some honest questions: Am I fostering godly conviction or breeding vile hatred? Am I helping to supply courage and fortitude or do my words result in hostility and disdain?”

Other evangelical leaders have appealed for prayer.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler said, “This form of attack is an attack upon our entire political system and our commitment to ordered liberty. Let’s pray for our nation.”

The assassination attempt has sparked some soul-searching in Britain as well, with former Downing Street Chief of Staff, Nick Timothy, recalling the 2021 murder of Catholic MP David Amess and more recently the intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates within the run-up to the General Election. 

“Following the shooting on the Trump rally this weekend, the Prime Minister rightly declared that ‘political violence in any form has no places in our societies’. Yet whilst he spoke, his own MPs and candidates were describing their experience of political violence and intimidation from our own general election,” he said in The Telegraph.

“What does Starmer must say about this threat, and what does he plan to do in regards to the motives and actions of those behaving in this fashion?

“Too often, the response has been to avoid facing reality, to appease those we must always confront, and sometimes even to co-opt and play as much as those that need to bully others until they get their way. We must be more honest in regards to the society and democracy we now have turn out to be.”