God, Guns, and Protecting Others

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Like many of you, I’m sure, I was distraught to hear the news of the shooting at Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan. That school is actually not far from Rochester University, where I did my undergraduate studies, and I have several friends who are alumna. My heart goes out to all those who have been impacted, as well as to families in our own area trying to keep their heads above water with our schools now shut down out of an abundance of caution while local threats are being investigated. As seems to happen every time there is a shooting, we’ve seen the same arguments for and against gun control pop on up social media, everyone rehearsing the same old lines. We send up thoughts and prayers to help our kids, when what they really need are policies and action. So, this week I thought I’d try to break some of the myths that persist in American Christianity about God, Guns, and what it really means to protect others. Our country does have a strange love affair—some might say an addiction—to guns. Americans own half of all guns in the world, even though we are only 5% of the world’s population. And at this point, it’s pretty clear that both race and religion are factors that influence gun ownership. In 2020, an article was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership.” They found that for many white evangelicals, owning a gun stems from their felt need to protect their families from a sense of threat. White evangelicals are not only more likely to own a gun, they are also less likely to support gun control. Some people have been trying to change that though. Activist Shane Claiborne published a book in 2019 called Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence. Since that time, he has gone around the country, organizing events where people turn in their guns which are then melted down and turned into farming implements. He does this drawing from the words of the prophet Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible, who imagines that in the end, when God heals all things, “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.” And it’s not only a question of violence against others. Of the nearly 40,000 gun related deaths in America each year, more than half are the result of suicide. Claiborne also points out that the idea of safety is really a myth. For every one gun used in self-defense, six more are used to commit a crime. Keeping a gun in your own home means that you or someone in your family is 12 times more likely to be injured by that gun than you are to use that gun to protect them. Claiborne sees the question as a simple one: guns are violent and we are followers of a prince of peace who urged us to turn the other cheek and engage instead in non-violent resistance against evil and injustice. So, Christians shouldn’t have guns. No I should be clear—I’m not anti-gun. I don’t go quite as far as Claiborne does. I happen to own two guns myself, both used for hunting. My dad was a member of the National Rifle Association back before that organization got as crazy and aggressive as it has in recent years. But, our love affair with guns needs to end so that we can start coming up with plans and policies to make our country safer. Gun manufacturers have been expert at weaving the myth of the essentiality of the freedom to own any and all guns out there, and they have co-opted the Christian desire to protect others in order to increase their own bottom line. There are steps, clear steps, we can take to make our world safer, to make our kids safer. And many of these steps have strong support in our country. A Fox News poll two years ago found that 90% of respondents favor universal background checks, 81% support taking guns from individuals who are at risk, and 67% favor banning assault weapons. And for the kids who died in Oxford? A law that requires gun owners to store guns in a locked container or disable them with a trigger lock when not in use or being worn on their person… that would have stopped that senseless violence. And since statistics indicate that 46% of gun owners in the US who have children don’t secure their weapons, it’s only so long before we return to this cycle of violence and grief. Jesus told us that the peacemakers would be blessed by God. We need some peacemakers in the world today, that’s for sure, some people that will work together to make our country a safer place for all people, who will reach across the lines and find solutions that can save lives. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.