Several decades ago, a national debate raged over a question that helped launch America’s ongoing culture war – who can you love?

One side was insistent that love – which would involve intimate sexual expression – should be confined to a man and a woman. A popular mantra was offered in support of this position: “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

The other side claimed that since we are all “imago Dei” (made in the image of God) and that every culture at every point in history has demonstrated that a sizable minority have sought love from the same gender, gay and lesbian relationships should be honored. Acceptance of homosexuality has grown over the past 30 years, to the degree that same-sex marriages are now the law of the land, and discrimination of gay and lesbian people has been exposed and severely restricted.

A related question has arisen in the past few months that has attracted a lot of attention and debate – who do you love first? Vice President JD Vance has referred to “ordo amoris” – Latin for rightly ordered love, a concept proposed by St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) – and has suggested that love should begin with the family and then radiate out from there. In a January interview, he indicated that “your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens.”

St. Augustine is often referred to as the foundational thinker of Roman Catholic theology. As a religion major in college, I read “Confessions,” Augustine’s memoir of his spiritual journey from what he described as a sinful and debauched youth to his conversion to Christianity. What stood out for me was Augustine’s growing understanding of the nature of love, which evolved from satisfying his many lustful appetites to a commitment to God and neighbor that was broad and deep – all based on Jesus’ admonition to love one another.

Augustine’s conversion quickened my own; his passion and eloquence precipitated a desire to commit myself to exploring this expansive notion of love, which to that point in my life was a concept that was limited to circles of family, friends and people who thought and lived like me.

Who do you love first? Augustine is clear; you love God first and everything flows from that. It may be easiest to love people in your family first (though there are countless number of people who have found that to be nearly impossible), but the challenge, indeed the command, is to see that everyone – everyone – is made in the image of God and therefore is not just worthy of our love, but we are expected to demonstrate it.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, who at one point in his ministry career was head of the Augustinian order, which was founded 800 years ago to follow the spiritual rule of St. Augustine, knows something about “ordo amoris,” and has indicated that the vice president, himself a Roman Catholic, is misguided in his understanding of the teaching, if not wrong.

While the debate may continue about the interpretation of an ancient text, the implications of Vance’s interpretation are troubling, if not dangerous. If love is meant to start with the family, it is not much of a leap to think the family is where love stops. Family becomes paramount, a noble commitment, and needs to be protected, a necessary endeavor. Love can then become limited to one’s circle, and people outside of that circle – however it is drawn – can be ignored, denied, dismissed or demeaned.

Cruelty and vengefulness are easier to generate if certain people or categories live outside of love’s boundary. And we are seeing cruelty and vengefulness these days at a volume and viciousness that I have never heard or seen before.

Jesus’ love, Augustine’s love and from what we are hearing from Pope Leo XIV about love tells that love has no boundaries. Love is a gift given to us, and we are invited, no, expected, to pass that love on. Even to those, especially to those, outside our circle. It is hard and necessary work

It is paradoxical to think that we have been in a cultural war about love – who to love and who to love first. In his transcendent poem on love, St. Paul writes that “love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:8) Love is boundless. It does not have preferences or prohibitions. It doesn’t have a beginning or an endpoint.

In this difficult period of our country’s life when love is being restricted to a favored few – and denied to others – it is important to fight to hold on to this broad, life-giving notion of love. For me, and for us, it is our most-important battle.

Mark Beckwith is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J. He lives in Jaffrey.