The idolatry of gun worship

In the aftermath of the horrific Nashville school shooting that took the lives of three adults and three little children, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, refused to find fault with America’s obsession with guns. Instead, he posited prayer as the only solution to the crisis of mass shootings. “We must return to the only lasting source of hope and freedom — the Lord Jesus Christ,” he added. “Nothing Washington is doing will matter until we acknowledge and address the moral decay and brokenness plaguing our culture.”

Perkins isn’t wrong in connecting religion to gun violence. But rather than a deeper embrace of his organization’s mission “to advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview,” what the country needs is a broad recognition of the way some are distorting sacred scripture and religious tradition so as to fuel violence.

Addressing America’s gun violence crisis is a daunting and necessary task. An average of 43,375 people are shot to death every year, and the number is increasing rapidly. Between 2012 and 2021 the number of gun deaths increased by 39 percent, with gun violence now being the leading cause of death for children and teens.

What is both tragic and deeply disturbing is the extent to which religion — or, more accurately, the distortion of religion — is contributing to this epidemic.

Christian nationalism is the belief that the U.S. is chosen by God to be a Christian nation and was founded to be a Christian nation, and so our civic life and Christianity should be fused together. Connected to white supremacy, nativism, patriarchy and the like, this ideology envisions Jesus not as the humble Israelite who turned the other cheek and washed his disciples’ feet, but as a broad-shouldered white man with thick biceps and a sword (or if one had been available at the time, an AR-15) at his hip.

A February 2020 survey by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, authors of “The Flag and the Cross,” asked a sample of people to respond to the statements: “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation,” and “The federal government should enact stricter gun laws.” They found that two-thirds of the white Americans who strongly agreed with the first statement also disagreed with the second. Adding religion into the mix, a 2019-2021 survey by the same people found evangelical Christians to rank higher on indicators of Christian nationalism. Analysis by political scientist Ryan Burge of data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study found that two-thirds of white evangelicals own guns. This compares to one-quarter of mainline Protestants and Latter-day Saints, 17 percent of nonwhite evangelicals and atheists, 11 percent of Jews,and 9 percent of Muslims.

Aside from white militia groups and the extremists who led the Jan. 6 insurrection, some gun manufacturers appear to be among the most out-front proponents of the connection between guns and Christian nationalism. They see their businesses as both patriotic and the fulfillment of a sacred religious duty.

About a week after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two adults, Daniel Defense, the company that manufactured the particular AR-15-style weapon used by the shooter, tweeted the image of a young child holding an assault rifle with the words “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it 🙏.”

Daniel Defense is not alone. Florida gun manufacturer Spike’s Tactical sells an AR-15 style rifle named “Crusader” with Psalm 144:1 inscribed on it. And if that isn’t worrisome enough, in 2015, one of their spokespeople claimed that thanks to its “Pax Pacis, Bellum, & Deus Vult” settings [“peace, war, and God wills it” — the last a medieval crusader battle cry] the weapon could not be used by “Muslim terrorists.”

Given the danger of allowing guns to be regarded as sacred objects whose rights must be protected at all costs, we must heed the words of Howard Zinn, who said “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Let’s pray with our feet to end gun violence and overcome Christian nationalism.