Sam Saylor

4-12-2013

Religious leaders, including Sojourners President & CEO Jim Wallis, spoke at the vigil. Photo courtesy PICO Network/Sojourners.

Clergy from California to Connecticut created a makeshift graveyard symbolizing victims of gun violence on the National Mall on Thursday as they exhorted Congress to pass legislation to limit access to firearms.

Standing in front of 3,300 grave markers — representing the number of people who have died in gun violence since December’s massacre in Newtown, Conn. — more than 25 ministers, rabbis and other religious leaders decried as “idolatrous” a society that values guns more than human life.

“We don’t have a Second Amendment issue,” said the Rev. Matt Crebbin of Newtown Congregational Church. “We have a Second Commandment crisis.