(RNS) — In a democracy, the National Guard should represent both protection and presence — a sign that government stands ready to defend its people, not dominate them. But how, when and why we deploy the guard tells a deeper story about our national priorities, and about whose lives, griefs and demands we take seriously.
In just over a decade, the National Guard has been deployed in dramatically different ways, each revealing who we believe is worth protecting in this nation, and who is seen as a threat to be subdued.
In May 2025, a devastating tornado tore through North St. Louis, an overwhelmingly Black community still bearing the scars of redlining, disinvestment and environmental neglect. The state sent 41 National Guard troops to help with cleanup. No tanks, no tear gas, just people in uniform doing the slow, quiet work of lifting debris, clearing roads and restoring dignity. It was a small gesture, but a righteous one.
Compare that with 2014, when I stood in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of Michael Brown. There, more than 2,200 National Guard troops were deployed — not to protect a grieving community, but to patrol it. The sin was not looting, but lament. Young people cried out for justice, and the state answered with armored trucks and rubber bullets. The very people whose pain should have called forth compassion were instead treated as enemies of the state.
And again, in June 2025, as families in Los Angeles protested U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that tore loved ones from their homes, nearly 4,000 National Guard troops were sent to secure federal buildings and silence protest. I do not recall the parable where Jesus called in soldiers to stop a crowd demanding mercy.
These three deployments tell a troubling story: Too often in America, we deploy troops not in response to harm, but in response to hope. Hope that the world could be more just. Hope that our laws might finally reflect our values. Hope that this nation might someday live up to its highest ideals.
And instead of meeting that hope with courage, our government meets it with control.
When communities cry out for justice, we respond with soldiers. When natural disasters devastate the most vulnerable, we respond with silence or scarcity. When Black or brown bodies protest their treatment at the hands of the state, the state doubles down on its power.
That’s not democracy — it’s a pattern of militarized suppression masquerading as order. It reveals how readily we treat dissent as danger, and how often we forget that protest, in its truest form, is patriotic.
Tyranny in America doesn’t always wear a crown or wave a flag. Sometimes, it wears camouflage and stands quietly behind a shield labeled “security.” And when troops are sent to suppress protest rather than provide relief, when the machinery of the state is deployed to silence the people it purports to serve, that, too, is tyranny — one that thrives not on chaos, but on selective order.
If we can mobilize soldiers in a matter of hours to patrol our streets, we can mobilize just as quickly to rebuild crumbling schools, to protect voting rights and to address the root causes of the rage we so often fear but rarely understand. We need the kind of leadership that doesn’t fear protest, but listens to it. The kind that understands that real peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.
As a pastor, I see the spiritual violence in this pattern and what it does to a people when their cries are met with cuffs. I see what it does to a democracy when dissent is mistaken for danger, and order becomes a substitute for justice. Militarized silence is not peace. And repression dressed in uniform is still tyranny.
There is a reason the Hebrew prophets cried out against unjust rulers, and a reason Jesus turned over tables in the temple. And there is a reason faith leaders have stood with those whose voices are ignored, whose communities are criminalized, whose suffering is legislated rather than healed.
If we can send the National Guard to clean up after a tornado, we can demonstrate the same urgency to clean up systemic injustice. We can send troops to build, protect and listen — not to break, punish and silence.
Faith and democracy demand more of us. God demands more of those in power than brute strength and fear-based governance.
So, no, we don’t need more troops. We need more truth. We need leaders who understand that righteousness is stronger than riot gear. That public safety begins with public trust. And that real peace is not the absence of protest, but the presence of justice.
Until that day, I will keep praying, preaching and standing with the people. Because tyranny, in any form, has no place in a nation that dares to call itself free.
(The Rev. Traci Blackmon is the CEO and founder of HopeBuilds, LLC, and the former associate general minister of justice and local church ministries for the United Church of Christ. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
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