Love Your Neighbor
Lessons from Minneapolis
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. - Matthew 22:37-40 (Jesus quoting Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18)
On January 28, 2026, the editors of The Nation magazine announced that they are in the process of formally nominating the city of Minneapolis and its people for the 2026 Nobel Prize for Peace. In describing their reasons for the nomination, the editors highlight the tens of thousands of ordinary people who have marched, protested, and organized to protect their neighbors from a brutal, immoral and illegal occupation by federal agents.
“The people of Minneapolis have also engaged in mutual support and care for neighbors who have been targeted because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. They have delivered groceries to residents who are afraid to leave their homes and provided financial support to neighbors who haven’t been able to go to their places of work because of the federal assault on their rights and humanity.
Through countless acts of courage and solidarity, the people of Minneapolis have challenged the culture of fear, hate, and brutality that has gripped the United States and too many other countries. Their nonviolent resistance has captured the imagination of the nation and the world. Renee Good’s widow has said, “They have guns; we have whistles.” Those whistles alert the residents of Minneapolis when they are threatened. But they have done more than that. They have awakened Americans to the threat of violence that extends from governments that unjustly and irresponsibly target their own people.
The people of Minneapolis and their elected leaders have demonstrated an extraordinary and sustained commitment to human dignity and to the protection of vulnerable communities. They have exemplified the desire for democracy and equality and the celebration of difference. The moral leadership of the people and city of Minneapolis has set an example for those struggling against fascism everywhere on the face of a troubled planet, and this, we believe, merits recognition through the award of the Nobel Peace Prize.”[1]
I, too, have marveled at the level of discipline, creativity, and courage demonstrated by the people of Minneapolis, in spite of the intense and unrelenting violent provocation on the part of federal agents. To be honest, I wasn’t certain that the people of the United States had the moral and spiritual wherewithal to sustain a nonviolent response. I’m relieved and reassured to discover that, yes, we can.
It appears that this resistance is forcing the Trump regime to recalibrate it’s racist assault on Minneapolis, and on multicultural communities nationwide. This is at best a strategic retreat, as evidenced by the recent F.B.I. raid on the board of elections in Fulton County, Georgia. The question of whether the United States will continue its centuries long experiment in multicultural democracy, or devolve into a white nationalist authoritarian state, continues to hang in the balance. Even so, it is important to celebrate victories and take inspiration from them.
What might we learn from Minneapolis? While the story is still unfolding, one clear lesson is the importance of community organizing in creating a culture of resistance and hope. It has been observed that Minneapolis was prepared, in part, by their experience of the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. That was a galvanizing and searing experience for the people of Minneapolis, who learned a lot about state sponsored terrorism and how to respond to it. But the foundation of that response was a generations-long project of multicultural, multifaith community organizing that was led largely by people of color.
Floyd’s murder ignited the Great Awokening for white people, but his death was an all-too-familiar story for black folks and other historically targeted groups in the United States. They had been and are creating an alternative community, an infrastructure of memory, mutual aid, and creative culture, that keeps the project of multicultural democracy alive. Much of this alternative culture is rooted in the black church and other religious communities.
I would add that, with respect to immigrant rights, it is immigrant communities themselves that are the engines of organizing work. This was my experience participating in faith-based community organizing in San Francisco. It was my immigrant neighbors, and especially women immigrants, who led organizing efforts to protect the integrity of the community. I suspect this is the case in Minneapolis as well, given that Somali immigrants have organized successfully to elect one of the members of their community as a United States representative in Congress.
Now, Minneapolis is at the center of a second Great Awokening, but what keeps Minneapolis Strong is a tradition of community organizing that has patiently laid the ground work to meet this moment. At the center of that community’s culture is a very old and very simple ideal: the love of neighbor. We will protect the people and values that we love. We will even give our life for them. This is why we honor the memory of Medgar Evers, Jonathan Myrick Daniels and the martyrs of Alabama, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is why we are so moved by the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. They remind us of and, hopefully, inspire in us, the power of love.
Another important lesson is that the power of love must be embraced and exercised by a critical mass of people to successfully resist evil nonviolently. Nonviolent resistance can claim both moral and strategic superiority. It is morally superior because it recognizes the dignity and interconnected nature of human life, interrupts cycles of violent revenge, and holds open the possibility of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Nonviolent resistance is strategically superior because of the asymmetrical balance of the means of violent coercion. The military power of the state is vastly superior to that of any civilian group within most nations. The idea of an armed citizen militia defending the people against the military might of the state today is a fantasy. It probably always has been, as the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms was adopted by the United States to legitimate armed patrols used to prevent enslaved people from fighting for their freedom. It was never really intended as a means to prevent tyranny.
When authoritarian regimes are successfully resisted nonviolently, it is because a critical mass of the people has turned against the regime and persuaded the military to withdraw its support of the regime. The persuasive power of nonviolence lies in its witness to truth and in its demonstration of sacrificial love.
I am a stalwart proponent of nonviolent resistance on both moral and pragmatic grounds, but I also affirm that violent resistance to evil is morally preferable to either cowardice or indifference. This is why I am not troubled by the fact that Alex Pretti was armed when he was murdered by the state. It is not the possession of a weapon that makes one violent, but its use. Such possession in no way justified his execution, since he was not threatening violence and was murdered after he was disarmed. Possessing a weapon neither made him violent, nor did it make him safe. It certainly didn’t make the U.S. government’s occupation of Minneapolis any less evil.
A final lesson to note is the importance of spiritual practice in nonviolent resistance to evil. Community organizing and a critical mass of people isn’t enough. What also is required is a collective capacity for emotional self-regulation and a capacity to discern the truth. And, importantly, it requires the sustaining force of a power greater than ourselves, the power of love.
At the very heart of the Christian tradition is a practice of moral formation (the healing, integration, and regulation of physical and emotional energies through the cultivation of the virtues) and a practice of mental training (the purification of perception and cultivation of awareness through prayer and meditation) culminating in the release of love into the world. The Church can provide a set of ethical, ritual, and contemplative practices, models to emulate, and a community of support to equip people for nonviolent resistance.
Other traditions have similar spiritual technologies for the cultivation of wisdom and compassion. This is what makes faith-based community organizing distinctive and uniquely suited to foster nonviolent resistance to evil. In response to the rise of “Christian” white nationalism – a kind of Christofascism – we need a new confessing Church that resists fascism by offering the riches of Christian tradition in the service of nonviolent witness to truth and justice.
The Christian tradition can offer a “method of love,” but only if the Church can recover its identity and purpose as a school in which we learn to love God with our whole being, and our neighbor as ourself (seeing and treating the “other” as “self”). As Dr. King stated with his usual lyricism in his Nobel Peace Prize Address, quoted by The Nation in its nomination of Minneapolis for that same prize:
“Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
[1] “The Nation Nominates Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize” (The Nation, January 28, 2026).