White evangelicals own a gun compared to 30% of Americans overall—the highest percentage of any religious group. The survey also shows that 74% of all gun owners in the US agree that their right to own a gun is essential to their sense of freedom. Most states also allow firearms in places of worship
(AP) - After a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, some pastors across the country challenged their conservative counterparts with this question: Are you pro-life if you're pro-gun? ?
One of those leaders is Steven Marsh, senior pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California. Here a gunman, who officials say was fueled by anti-Taiwan hatred, opened fire on May 15 at a luncheon hosted by members of the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, killing one and wounding five others.
The great divide
"I've heard people tell me I'm not a Christian because I'm pro-choice," Marsh said. “I ask those people: How can you be pro-life and not support the abolition of assault rifles? You can't choose where you want to be pro-life."
March's emotional statement is a linchpin of the larger narrative of a nation divided over how — or whether — guns should be limited. The faith community is not monolithic in this matter.
People of faith, weary of years of failed gun control efforts and grief over recent mass shooting victims, are calling attention to what they say is hypocrisy — conservative Christians pushing to abolish abortion and have unimpeded access to weapons. Those who disagree claim that the real problem is sin and soft targets. It's not guns, but the "evil" of people and abortions that kill, they say.
Those entrenched partisan divisions in the U.S. over abortion and gun rights are grim after high-profile massacres in New York, California, Texas and elsewhere, as the country awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
With guns in the church
According to 2017 Pew Research Center data analyzed for Christianity Today, 41% of white evangelicals own a gun compared to 30% of Americans overall—the highest percentage of any religious group. The survey also shows that 74% of all gun owners in the US agree that their right to own a gun is essential to their sense of freedom. Most states also allow firearms in places of worship.
Author and Christian activist Shane Claiborne disputes the notion that the US has a sin problem but not a gun problem; says he has both. Claiborne recently went to Uvalde to support the victims and to Houston to pray and protest at the National Rifle Association convention held days after the massacre.
He handed out tracts saying, "We cannot be pro-life and ignore gun violence," and asking, "Shall we choose the gun or the cross?" Claiborne said he was among those asked to leave the NRA's Sunday Apology Breakfast after he interrupted the program to call for prayers for Uvalde's victims.
Claiborne wants to see the laws changed, including policies that would raise the gun ownership age, limit magazine capacity, ban assault-style weapons and mandate training. He said laws can't make people love each other, but they can make it harder to take a life.
"We want to make it harder for people to kill other people, and we're making it really easy now," Claiborne said.
General degradation?
Conservative pastors have said that mass shootings and other social harms are the result of a general degradation of moral values and disregard for human life.
Pastor Tim Lee, evangelist and former US Marine who lost both legs during the Vietnam War, was one of the featured speakers at the NRA prayer breakfast that Claiborne and others were asked to leave.
After the Uvalde shooting, Lee posted on his Facebook page: “This is so heartbreaking. I've said it so many times - When children hear adults say it's okay to kill babies (abortion), then all respect for human life is gone."
The gun debate is deeply personal for Chinata Goodjoin. Her best friend, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, was one of nine people shot and killed by Dylann Roof in June 2015 as they sat in prayer at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Goodjoin, who leads New Hope Presbyterian Church in Anaheim, Calif., said people of faith should rise up in "righteous indignation" to demand common-sense gun regulation. When massacres occur in community spaces like churches, schools and supermarkets, it tests the resilience of an entire community, she said.
"How can you teach in schools when people are traumatized by gun violence?" she asked. “When a church is no longer a safe space, do I work to increase safety or to increase people's faith? The influence is like an epidemic that touches every fiber of our being."
But others, like Russ Tenhoff, say it's simply not possible to "justify security."
"Closing" schools as a solution
"There are a lot of laws, but people who are lawless don't obey them," said Tenhoff, lead pastor of Mountainside Community Fellowship in Kingwood, West Virginia. "The murders will happen even without firearms. We will never be able to prevent gun violence."
As a firearms safety officer who trains adults and children, Tenhoff says the solution is to "toughen up the schools," which have become soft targets.
"We need to put one-way locks in schools, have metal detectors and an armed officer in every school," he said.
For a Catholic pastor who a decade ago experienced the grief that now envelops Uvalde, the lack of political will to pass gun legislation is unimaginable.
Robert Weiss, who heads St. Rose of Lima Parish, presided over the funeral of the eight victims who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. He held an evening mass at his church the day after the Texas shooting.
"I think I was a fool to think that Sandy Hook was going to change the world," he said in a video recording of the service.
Weiss also questioned the consequences of individualism in America.
"Is that what our ancestors intended for us?" he asked. "Living in a place where unborn babies are aborted, where children are killed in schools where they should be safe, where you can't even go to a grocery store , in a church or a library and feel like you're going to be okay?”.