A fringe Christian ideology helped stoke an out-of-control gun culture. People of faith are working to take back the conversation.
gun control
Lauren W. Reliford 6-22-2022
Image of a target at a gun range.
As a Black woman, I’ve always known that my skin color could get me killed. As I watched Capitol rioters carry the Confederate flag through the Capitol on Jan. 6, I knew the danger was more present than ever. In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, the increase in white nationalist terrorism made me realize that I needed to take drastic measures to ensure my safety.
Josiah R. Daniels 6-10-2022
Sign with the caption, "Judgement Day Is Coming." Image credit Reuters. Author Christopher Baines / Alamy.
For those who have lost loved ones due to COVID-19, racist violence, or gun violence, Jesus’ apocalyptic hope that “the world as such” comes to an end is, perhaps, relatable. Here in the United States, we are expected to numb ourselves to the death-for-profit economy that’s been established; we are expected to go on with business as usual, never once pausing to cry out in judgment, “Woe to the world.”
Carolyn Winfrey Gillette 5-25-2022
People react outside the Ssgt Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had been transported from Robb Elementary School after a shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello
God, our nation feels the loss / as our children pay the cost / for the violence we accept, / for the silence we have kept.
Cassidy Klein 4-28-2021
Garden Of The Gods, Colorado Springs, Colo., United States
With each new instance of gun violence, creation cries out with the victims. Creation also helps us center ourselves in relation to God when God feels absent.
the Web Editors 1-21-2020
Image via By The Old Major/Shutterstock
Since November, more than 100 local municipalities, counties, cities, and towns have called for their residents to become Second Amendment Sanctuary cities and oppose “unconstitutional restrictions” on guns. Falwell also told Starnes that he would not be surprised if citizens and law enforcement officers “in the good part of Virginia” decided not to enforce whatever laws are passed.
Jim Wallis 6-06-2019
Makeshift memorial outside a municipal government building where a shooting incident occurred in Virginia Beach, Va., June 1, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
The news on Friday was devastating: There had been yet another mass shooting, this time in Virginia Beach, and 12 people were killed. Many of us had the same painful reactions of grief for the families, fear that this could happen to someone I love one day, anger at the gun manufacturers whose influence through the NRA makes them complicit in both the mass shootings and the daily epidemic of gun violence.
Zachary Fagenson, Reuters 2-14-2019
The initials of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a placard are placed on the fence at Park Trails Elementary School, following a mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlin
One year after the Valentine's Day massacre inside a Florida school, students and families leading a nationwide push for gun safety will pause on Thursday for the anniversary of the deadliest U.S. high school shooting.
Many students were expected to stay home from a shortened class day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a former student with an assault gun killed 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018.
Rob Schenck 2-13-2019
Candlelight event organized by Runner's Depot to honor the 17 victims from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Coral Springs, Fla. on Feb 25th, 2018. Shutterstock / Humberto Vidal.
This week, scores of people will once again experience the grief of missing loved ones who were cut down by a deranged young man with multiple deadly weapons in the high school he shared with his victims. The Parkland, Fla. mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 17 people and injured 17, joins the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which wiped out a classroom of precious children, as two of the most horrific moments in American history. The irony that the Parkland slaughter was on Valentine’s Day only increases the suffering. While many will celebrate having and enjoying their loved ones in their lives, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors will only feel afresh a terrible vacuum.
Mollie Davis 11-09-2018
March For Our Lives in New York. March 24, 2018. Glynnis Jones/Shutterstock.
It’s 8:20 a.m. on March 20, 2018. I’m sitting in my math class, anxiously refreshing Google, waiting for anyone to confirm what my classmates and I suspect is going on downstairs. News confirmations won’t start coming out for about another 10 minutes. We heard the sirens and knew something was wrong, but still none of us wanted to believe our worst nightmare. None of us wanted to believe a school shooting would happen to our school.
Da’Shawn Mosley 6-01-2018
This mourning begins with eyes:
ours which open
and the eyes a gun closed,
the barrel a chamber in which there is found no heart,
for every latch and mechanism of the machine moves with menace
and every finger entangled and wound around its trigger
draws closed the stage curtains of peace.
This mourning begins with flesh—
our stance under a persistent sun
as a body stretches across a coroner’s table like the hide of a deer.
In such an occasion, a body’s bullet holes
become mouths. They speak of the perils our muscles
hope not to know. They reveal what it’s like
to be whole and come undone
and linger like litter.
Parkland.
Pulse.
Emanuel.
Columbine.
For you, we combine this mourning
with the mournings that have become before it.
Elizabeth Beyer 5-23-2018
Students from high schools across the country appealed to lawmakers during a forum on gun violence prevention on Capitol Hill. Photo by Elizabeth Beyer
Students from high schools across the country met with Democratic members of Congress Wednesday to discuss gun control reform just days after another shooting claimed the lives of 10 and injured more than a dozen at Santa Fe High School in Texas.
Keith Coffman, Reuters 4-20-2018
People visit the Columbine memorial in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., April 19, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Thousands of students across the United States will mark the 19th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School by walking out of classes on Friday, in a show of unity intended to put pressure on politicians to enact tighter gun restrictions.
the Web Editors 3-26-2018
Image via Gage Skidmore / Flickr
"But I think everyone should be responsible and deal with the problems that we have to confront in our lives. And ignoring those problems and saying they're not going to come to me and saying some phony gun law is gonna solve it. Phony gun laws don't solve these problems."
Kathy Khang 3-23-2018
FOR ME, THE lasting image from Parkland was that of two women hugging, one still bearing the mark of the cross on her forehead. It was Ash Wednesday, the day the church prepares herself to understand and live into the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, entering Lent through prayer, repentance, and the practice of other spiritual disciplines such as fasting or abstaining. The photo captured a sense of urgency, fear, relief, grief, and deep love. I cannot get that image out of my head.
We’re now in the season of Easter, when Christians have broken their fasts—alcohol, chocolate, the internet, meat—and are done greeting one another with a call and response of “He is risen!” and “He is risen, indeed!” The woman whose picture I cannot forget—her ashes will have long been wiped away, but what of her fear and grief and possibly anger? What did she choose to give up for Lent and was that promise to abstain replaced with something else in the wake of the violence?
The 17 victims will have long been memorialized, but what will have been done for the survivors’ guilt and trauma? Will we have tried to guess at how long is long enough to wait before starting conversations about gun control, mental health, and policy changes? How will our country change, if at all? And what is God’s invitation to us? Is God asking us to a longer season of repentance? Action? Both?
Right now, I feel in my body and in my prayers the dissonance and difficulty of claiming to be Easter Sunday people living in a Good Friday world, because I am not sure anything will change. I am not sure that any legislators, national or local, will propose and pass any legislation, any changes that will protect children from someone (most likely a young white man) plowing through the school with an assault rifle.
the Web Editors 3-23-2018
1. What Is the Church’s Responsibility in a Constitutional Crisis?
Historically, the church has stepped in to offer a word on what the tenets of Christian faith look like in troubled times.
2. What Would a World Designed By Women Look Like?
For thousands of years the profession of architecture has been male-dominated — and a close look at our structures makes that clear. But now more than 40 percent of architecture school graduates are women. What does that mean for the future of design?
the Web Editors 3-13-2018
Activists install 7000 shoes on the lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
Organized by Avaaz, a U.S.-based civic organization that emphasizes global activism, intends for the "Monument for our Kids" to put pressure on Congress to take action on gun control. Images of the striking visual have been widely shared on social media, with the hashtag #NotOneMore.
Rachel Frazin 3-09-2018
Since 26 students and teachers were murdered and two injured by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., there have been 10 more fatal shootings at American elementary, middle, and high schools. In all, 57 people were killed, excluding the shooters.
Jim Wallis 2-28-2018
Placards and letters signed by worshipers at Christ Church United Methodist Church in response to shootings in nearby Parkland, Florida. They will be sent to legislators and officials in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Image via Reuters/Joe Skipper
Our children are leading us, and our youth groups can help point the way forward. It’s time to listen and follow their lead.
Joe Kay 2-28-2018
After each massacre, guns are defended with religious fervor, as though owning a weapon is akin to owning a Bible. We’re told that the problem in our society isn’t unfettered access to weapons, but a failure by godly people to arm themselves and go out and kill the ungodly people. We’re told we need more “good” people buying guns and perfecting their aim so they can shoot all the “bad” people.