I. Introduction
According to a 2018 Pew Research Center study, the United States was the only country among 102 surveyed with higher-than-average levels of wealth and religiosity. According to Pew, “Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and ascribe higher importance to faith in their lives than adults in other wealthy, Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia, and most European states.”Footnote 1 At the same time, the United States also boasted the highest level of private, civilian gun ownership in the world, with more than 120 guns per 100 residents. That was more than twice the rate of Yemen, second on the list.Footnote 2 For many Americans, those two facts exist in uncomfortable tension, if not outright contradiction. Others refuse to see a problem. If there is a problem, it has been exacerbated by increasing rates of mass shootings – including at houses of worship – in the 21st century. According to Lifeway Research, between the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 and 2022, there were 23 fatal shootings at Christian churches. The deadliest of those occurred in November 2017 at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, with 26 deaths and more wounded. That was but one of three deadly church shootings that year; that annual total was the highest until 2022, with none in 2018, 2020, and 2021.Footnote 3 Attacks on places of worship were part of a larger trend in mass shootings. In addition to Christian churches, those include incidences at synagogues, colleges and universities, elementary and high schools, places of business, a nightclub, a community center, and a country music festival.Footnote 4 While mass shootings draw the public’s attention and create opportunities for public debate over the right to bear arms, surveys suggest that evangelical Christians are more comfortable with guns and less likely to support gun control measures. That relationship has been observed and commented upon more than it has been analyzed or explained.Footnote 5
At first glance, debates over gun rights appear timeless, with advocates and opponents recycling versions of arguments that have been used since the Second Amendment became a subject for debate in the 19th century. For example, opponents point to the inherent dangers of guns and argue that the Second Amendment protects only a state’s right to a militia. For their part, supporters read an individual right into the Second Amendment, and they argue that restricting the right to bear arms would give criminals an unfair advantage over law-abiding citizens. Despite that continuity, it is important to locate those arguments in their appropriate context and understand why they resonate at certain points in time. This essay explores evangelical Christians and the public debate over gun rights in the recent past when white evangelical activism on behalf of the Republican Party and conservative politics converged with the development of a gun culture that emphasized an individual right to bear arms, even in public places. Recent works by political scientists demonstrate the increasingly overlapping boundaries of partisanship and religious identity. Michele F. Margolis has described a “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats, a development caused more by partisan identity than religious differences. Mark Joslyn has argued that gun ownership shaped a distinctive political identity.Footnote 6 The evolution of that political identity occurred over the course of the late 20th century. “Evangelicals” emerged as a conservative political force in the late 1970s and 1980s. As historian Matthew Avery Sutton recently argued, at that same time a group of historians of American religion introduced a new historiography that redefined “evangelical” in such a way that it glossed over the movement’s political and hierarchical elements, making their appearance in the late twentieth century seem more anomalous than it actually was.Footnote 7 This essay emphasizes the political nature of the movement and argues that the history of Christians’ relationship with American gun culture suggests that political partisanship and attitudes toward gun rights and gun culture have influenced white evangelical identity, revealing internal divisions and raising questions about their relationship with the secular world.
II. Understanding Evangelicals’ Place in American Society
Originally defined in theological terms, the understanding of evangelical has shifted over time, shaped both by historical context and social and political factors. Long before they came into their own as political players in the Republican Party, evangelicals were Protestants who emphasized a “born again” conversion experience, insisted the Bible was the true word of God, and talked about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. They were not just Americans, but they played an outsized role in the development of American society in the 18th and 19th centuries. As American society changed, self-described evangelicals took steps to draw boundaries around their identity. Although they would continue to insist that theology and their reading of scripture provided the foundation for their identity, in the 20th century, they worked tirelessly to create and reinforce a religious identity that reflected particular partisan, gendered, racialized, and nationalistic concerns.Footnote 8 For almost everyone involved, the gun rights debate stands in for discussion of Christians’ relationship to the world and the proper correlation between political debate and religious identity. White American Christians have not always agreed on how – or even whether – they should engage with political issues. By the late 20th century, most of them accepted there was a public role for them to play, even if they continued to disagree over the shape of that role.
For some Christians, the debate over gun rights represents larger cultural and political concerns based on anxiety about American decline and fear of loss of cultural and political position. They see themselves standing in opposition to the world around them, the victim of secularizing forces that threaten both their religious liberty and their view of what American culture should be. This belief joined with alarm over increasing violence and criminality to create a constellation of fears that gripped American evangelicals.Footnote 9 Sociologist Angela Stroud has argued that a defense of gun rights demands that gun owners draw their own types of boundaries – namely, between “good guys” and “bad guys.” The “good guys” are the ones who should enjoy the right to bear arms.Footnote 10 For Christian gun owners, sorting out the good guys from the bad requires coming to terms with human sinfulness and evil. For Christians who also tend toward a more absolutist position on gun rights, sin and evil exist in the world out there. In their minds, the conflict is cultural and political and requires both guns and political power to defeat the evil that other people represent. The individualism of their theology reduced sin to issues of personal morality that could not be allowed to stain the church, the home, or society at large. In this regard, white evangelicalism at the turn of the 21st century looked more like southern populist Christianity than the midwestern seminary and elite neo-evangelicalism that characterized the mid-20th century.Footnote 11 This worldview envisions little distinction between true Christian identity and American national interests. They advocate the right to bear arms and see no contradiction between that and Christian faith. Many of these people have encouraged parishioners to carry handguns in worship services and to participate in church safety seminars that prepare parishioners to defend against violent attacks. Because it is a dangerous world, full of dangerous people, in addition to asserting their constitutional rights, some of them emphasize an individual’s duty to defend others – to be what sociologist Jennifer Carlson calls “citizen protectors” or what some Christian ministry leaders call “sheepdogs.” From that perspective, carrying a gun becomes a moral duty undertaken to protect others (the “sheep”).Footnote 12
The embrace of guns to stop the spread of evil is not universal. There is a Christian legacy of pacifism and nonviolence, but, apart from that, even in the 21st century, liberal and conservative Protestants, as well as Catholics, disagree with the gun rights absolutist position. For them, the world may be hostile to a Christian worldview; but sin divides the human heart, and no one is above the potential to commit evil. Some of these Christians support the right to bear arms, and they agree the world is a dangerous place. That reality, however, does not preclude room for some gun regulation, and there is less of a tendency to draw artificial boundaries that represent an oppositional (“us versus them”) mentality. In this space, the issue is not primarily political. Instead, their critique turns more on the application of Christian doctrine. These people argue that absolutists place too much emphasis on their own rights, and they critique the subculture that gun-owning evangelicals inhabit and defend. These critics comprise a diverse group themselves and some are more willing than others to call for an end to Christians’ gun culture, if not restrictions on gun rights in general.
III. Gun Rights and the Culture War
At their 1968 annual meeting, Southern Baptists decried “the unbridled passion of mobs,” anarchy, and the increasing acceptance of violence that “exerted an adverse influence on the character of our nation, particularly our youth.” They praised President Lyndon Johnson’s call for Congress to pass the 1968 Gun Control Act, “while maintaining the constitutional right to the legitimate possession of arms.” That 1968 convention met the same week that Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and an increasing number of Americans appeared ready to join the SBC in the desire to curb violence and restore a “climate of respect for law.”Footnote 13 By this point in the twentieth century, America’s rural hunting culture had long been on the decline, giving way to an urban society where handguns assumed an increasing share of the gun market.Footnote 14 At the same time, an individual rights reading of the Second Amendment gained in popularity among gun rights advocates. That emphasis on individual rights influenced white Southern Baptist laity, for example, many of whom pushed back against denominational leaders who advocated for some form of government action to regulate handguns. Denominational publications continued to reflect ambivalence over guns and gun rights, and through the 1980s issues of sexuality and gender proved more relevant.Footnote 15 Tension between laity and their leaders reflected Southern Baptists’ ability to hold together competing factions under one institutional umbrella. By the 1990s, however, Southern Baptists responded to changes in the surrounding culture and joined the political realignment that brought evangelicals into the Republican Party.Footnote 16 That political realignment happened at approximately the same time that many states made it easier for their citizens to carry concealed firearms.Footnote 17
Since the end of World War II, a Cold War consensus among gun rights advocates drew a direct connection between gun control and a fear of communism. That anticommunism often adopted Christian rhetoric and imagery.Footnote 18 The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, however, created a new political environment for activists. With fears of communism and the Soviet Union no longer shaping political discourse, culture war rhetoric over sexuality, the arts, and education dominated political life. Guns were not yet part of that culture clash, and the debate surrounding them did not divide along partisan lines. Some evangelical leaders during that period of transition wrestled with the question of guns in public life. Using language reminiscent of culture war rhetoric, in 1989 Christianity Today, the journalistic voice of mainstream evangelicalism, offered a critique of the current “relativistic climate” that eschewed moral standards in favor of focusing on safety. Managing editor Harold B. Smith drew a connection between an NRA coloring book intended to teach gun safety to schoolchildren and the “safe sex debate” of the 1980s. In both cases, the focus on “safe” meant that “morality will remain relative, individualistic, and, consequently, societally unworkable.” Smith’s commentary appeared to be aimed primarily at schools that embraced “safe sex” talk for students, but he lamented Christians’ missed opportunity to “strike a blow for moral thinking” by addressing guns in “moral terminology.” Doing so could have encouraged children to view guns “with moral caution, learning to use them only in circumstances where their use can be reasonably justified (police or military training, perhaps).”Footnote 19
Other evangelicals worked to persuade Christians one way or another. The pro-gun rights Presbyterian Larry Pratt and the pacifist Anabaptist Ronald Sider both agreed that this was a “pro-life” issue, a phrase that they hoped would resonate with American Christians increasingly opposed to abortion in the 1980s. To be sure, however, they disagreed over what the Bible instructed and over what the label “pro-life” actually meant in this context. Given “the nature of man and what God has ordained that we do in this fallen world,” for Pratt it involved retaining the ability to defend oneself and others. In Sider’s view, it was hypocritical to oppose abortion “because human life is sacred” but then oppose even “modest handgun-control measures that would reduce the killing of innocent people.”Footnote 20
Both Pratt and Sider believed that their audience could still be persuaded, and there remained some ambivalence over the appropriate public policies related to guns. In 1999, editors of Christianity Today weighed in on the nation’s “gun problem.” In a nod to the current WWJD trend among Christians, the magazine acknowledged that asking “What would Jesus do? will get us only so far.” After all, the National Association of Evangelicals had no official position on gun control, and evangelicals numbered among their members “both pacifists and core members of the National Rifle Association.” Still, the stakes were too high to ignore the issue. The magazine called for “dialogue” – and not debate – and a “willingness to evaluate complexity.” That included learning from programs like Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia. This federal program emphasized strict and swift enforcement of existing gun laws, including mandatory prison terms. The program worked to lower gun-related crime. “Focusing on enforcement is both good policy and good theology because it reflects the high value we place on human life, our respect for the rule of law, and a realistic view of guns.” At the same time, Christians should “recognize how far we have fallen” and acknowledge the American public’s “addiction to violence” in entertainment and “idolatry of guns.” Both had “deeply tragic consequences.” The solution was to see evil, violence, and fear through God’s eyes. Viewed that way, even an evil person is “someone to be loved” and “resisted.” Guns may be the way to resist that evil, but “for Christians, thinking about guns means thinking about how to save lives.” The magazine concluded that they may not know all that Jesus would do, but “we know more than enough to speak out against the idolatry of lethal power.”Footnote 21
That Christianity Today editorial appeared at the end of a decade that proved to be the last time that enough political will existed to enact gun regulations at the federal level. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act passed Congress in 1993, and a ban on “assault-style” semiautomatic rifles began in 1994 (albeit with a 10-year sunset provision). Armed citizen militias and their end times apocalyptic worldviews increased in prominence. According to historian Kathleen Belew, the militia movement in the early 1990s represented a shift in perspective. In the 1980s, the motivating fear was that white women would be “violated by men of color.” In the 1990s, however, “the risk of violation came from the state,” whose warmaking ability could now be turned against American citizens.”Footnote 22 Militias were marginal, but there was some overlap between them and more mainstream – or at least less marginal – groups. One Christianity Today article published in June 1995 acknowledged that “mainstream evangelicals” preferred to see themselves as set apart “from some of the more fanatical elements within the militia.” Nevertheless, reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing “illustrates that the line between evangelical Armageddon symbolism and that of millennial views distorted by conspiracy and racist theories has been frighteningly blurred.” One example of those blurred lines was the fact that James Nichols, who was initially accused of helping his brother Terry and Timothy McVeigh carry out the attack in Oklahoma City, was a member of Deford Community Church in Michigan. Nichols’s pastor rejected the militias’ embrace of Christian symbols and rhetoric, but Nichols and other church members clearly saw no contradiction between his church attendance and militia activities.Footnote 23
IV. Violence, Fear, Sheep, and Sheepdogs
Despite some people’s concerns about the connections between evangelicalism and the militia movement, a more pressing sense of alarm focused on evangelicals’ sense of cultural embattlement. They argued that American society in the 1990s was more violent than earlier generations, with the confluence of family breakdown, drugs, and easy access to guns making urban areas, especially, more dangerous. An increasing emphasis on violence in the media served as conclusive evidence of white evangelicals’ declining influence on the world around them.Footnote 24 The end of the Cold War may have been a victory for capitalism and global free trade, but they believed that the country had moved even further away from its Christian heritage. They now feared for their own position in American society and felt the need to defend against attacks from outsiders.
In 1998, Christianity Today published a feature article written by David Grossman, a military psychologist and retired Army lieutenant colonel, who coined the term “killology” for the study of training army recruits how to kill. This article condensed some of the insights Grossman offered in his book, On Killing, the first edition of which had been published a few years earlier. A revised edition appeared in 2009. Grossman argued that killing is unnatural; “you have to be taught to kill. And just as the army is conditioning people to kill, we are indiscriminately doing the same thing to our children, but without the safeguards.” According to Grossman, violence in entertainment desensitized children to the consequences of violence in real life. Interactive video games (at a time when most people had to put a quarter in a machine at an arcade) that involved shooting, moreover, utilized the same stimulus–response conditioning that trains a soldier to shoot reflexively.Footnote 25 Grossman acknowledged that telling parents and children to “just turn it off” would do little to solve the problem of school shootings because not every parent would follow that. Instead, he advocated legislation that would outlaw violent video games for children. He allowed that gun control would reduce violence, but Americans were trapped in a “vicious cycle.” They did not trust the government to take care of them. Then when media foster fear, Americans arm themselves to deal with violence. More guns, therefore, meant more violence, and more violence increased the desire for guns. Christians, Grossman concluded, should have “moral courage to censure people who think that violence is legitimate entertainment.”Footnote 26
Grossman was not alone in his concern about media violence and not alone in his reluctance to pair that critique with calls for gun control. A few years earlier, a Christianity Today article decried “America the Brutal” and blamed the media’s celebration of violence without remorse, the easy access to guns, and a growing sense of disconnectedness.Footnote 27 Similarly, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, encouraged its members to consider the nation’s “subculture of violence.” Following stories of gun violence victims, the Baptist Sunday School Board published a workbook that church leaders could use in the youth groups. Entitled “Violence: the Desensitized Generation,” the 13-week study addressed “violence in music, in media, in language, at home, in gangs, in dating, in revenge, and to self.” A Baptist layman who was also a correction officer for the Tennessee Department of Youth Development noted an increase in the number of guns at school. “It’s causing a lot of stress. Even the good kids who would never carry guns or use drugs see all the publicity about guns and violence and they believe true danger is there.”Footnote 28
That decade ended without further regulations, and the 21st century would invite renewed discussion of proper national boundaries and the need for protection from outside evil forces. The 21st century also witnessed dramatic changes in the nation’s media landscape. Whereas publications like Christianity Today attempted to reflect and shape the attitudes of 20th-century mainstream evangelicalism, the rise of the internet undermined the influence of print media and created opportunities for more extreme voices to reach a broader audience. Observers debate the impact of that on partisanship and political activism, but that environment was also one in which denominational boundaries mattered less than political partisanship.Footnote 29 Whereas theological or doctrinal differences used to separate them, now the likes of independent Baptists and Assembly of God Pentecostals found common cause. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for instance, one online article from a group calling itself “Conservative Christians of Alabama” drew a direct connection between Old Testament Israel and American nationalism. “In the context of America’s current battle; as we make plans to rebuild after the devastation of September 11 and defend ourselves at the same time; we should recall Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.” Nehemiah 4 recounts that the builders that Nehemiah oversaw held work tools in one hand “and with the other held a weapon.”Footnote 30 Readers should not be fooled by gun control advocates, many of whom disguise their arguments “under a cloak of religion.” A proper reading of the Bible revealed the truth, namely, that gun control amounted to the left’s attempt to disarm Americans and impose tyranny. American Christians should resist those efforts in the same way that Old Testament Israelites resisted Philistine attempts at “sword control.” Pointing to 1 Samuel, they located an example “in the Bible that foreign oppressors wanted to deprive the people of God of their basic right to self-defense.” The purposes of this “sword control” was “to insure that the Israelites could not resist their tyranny.” In the face of such opposition, “they resisted anyway and the Lord was on their side.” Similarly, twentieth-century dictators “all disarmed their people before enslaving them,” something that American founding fathers anticipated and warned against. Jesus and George Washington were on the same page. Weapons were necessary to protect liberty.Footnote 31
Besides political liberty, guns were also necessary to protect others. In addition to On Killing, Grossman also co-wrote On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace. Critics have challenged Grossman’s research and conclusions, including his premise that humans have an innate resistance to killing.Footnote 32 Nevertheless, he and his ideas have influenced police training in the United States. Fighting crime is akin to war, and police are “warriors.” That is, they are trained to see everyone they encounter as a potential threat to their lives and every situation as potentially dangerous, even life-threatening.Footnote 33 His insights belong here because of the influence he and his ideas have had on Christians. A professing Christian himself, Grossman emphasizes the need for protectors – “sheepdogs” – in society. Initially, sheepdogs were police officers and soldiers, but Grossman expanded the label to include anyone who protects. In 2020, Grossman introduced a Christian devotional book for “warriors” engaged in both spiritual conflict and potential worldly conflict. The challenge those warriors faced “is to protect our loved ones, our students, our customers, our employees, our civilization, and our very way of life from violence in the same way that we protect them from fire.” As a “child of the one true King,” the sheepdog is also “endowed by my Creator with unalienable rights, empowered by my Constitution as a free citizen, inspired by my forefathers to fight for this land I love.” As a result, readers should “proclaim” this truth: “I am a sheepdog under the authority of the Great Shepherd!”Footnote 34 A person had to choose to be a sheepdog and accept the responsibility for caring for the sheep.
Similarly, a Christian man has a “God given” duty to provide for and protect his family, according to the Conservative Christians of Alabama, and they should not rely on the government for that provision and protection. Anticipating arguments that point to the Ten Commandments’ instruction not to kill, they argued that the commandment meant not to murder. Indeed, the book of Exodus, they claimed, allowed for the killing of an intruder. Besides, the problem was not guns; the “problem is sinners. As long as there are sinners, there will be crime.” They conceded that sinfulness is not restricted to bad guys, and everyone is a sinner and needs Jesus. However, they made no attempt to reconcile these two realities, namely the fact that all are sinners and guns are necessary to protect one’s family and property from bad guys. Presumably, the saved sinner – that is, the one who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ – becomes the “good guy,” but that is left unaddressed, assumed rather than explicitly acknowledged.Footnote 35
American gun culture and the political evangelicalism that drives Christian nationalism are both largely masculine. But women can be included among the sheepdogs. Grossman joined with Stephanie Rogish to publish at least two children’s books celebrating American “sheepdogs,” with the books’ characters portrayed as anthropomorphic animals – sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. In Why Mommy Carries a Gun, Dad Shepherd is away on a business trip, leaving Max and Mom Shepherd at home. Mrs. Shepherd responded to a nighttime knock at the door with her revolver hidden behind her back. There was no danger then, but Mom told Max, “I know there are wolves out there, and I couldn’t live with myself if a wolf came and hurt you. That is why mommy carries a gun.” The book ends with nine short biographical sketches of “Famous American Heroes Who Were Sheepdogs.” That list included Harriet Tubman, Annie Oakley, and Eleanor Roosevelt.Footnote 36
In such an environment, the debate about criminality and good guys with guns is based on some assumptions about human nature. Sheep are not the criminals, but they live in a dangerous world. Since they are morally neutral, passive, and vulnerable they need the good guys. Sheepdogs, then, are connected to fears of violence and the idea that bad guys are out to get the sheep. Those who would cause harm are criminals, those criminals are lurking, and sheepdogs need to be called out and trained. Just 5 months after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, a 47-year-old gunman walked into a concert and youth gathering at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and used a 9-mm handgun to kill seven people and wound seven others, before turning his gun on himself.Footnote 37 Wedgwood Baptist hosted one of Grossman’s “sheepdog” seminars in May 2013. Jimmy Meeks led the seminar, with Grossman among the thirteen speakers. According to Meeks, “It’s not about how to hurt the shooter but to protect the sheep.” Guns and human preparedness alone could not protect; the spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting would also be necessary. “It will take more than a good man with a gun to stop a bad man with a gun,” Meeks concluded. “We need more than guns – we’re gonna need the power of God.”Footnote 38 Spiritual health, then, would determine whether “sheepdogs” were ready to protect the “sheep” in their care. The sheepdog/sheep dynamic was largely unique to the American context, of course, since it was only in the United States where guns were simultaneously the source of the perceived threat and the solution to that threat.
V. Defending American Liberties
Grossman’s sheepdog seminar presentations effortlessly conflate being a sheepdog with preserving an American way of life. Indeed, Grossman represents what scholars refer to as Christian nationalism. This way of thinking pushes beyond merely believing that the United States enjoys a Christian heritage. Instead, according to sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Christian nationalists combine a conservative political ideology with an insistence on what they see as a “literal” reading of the Bible, “apocalyptic visions of societal decline, and divine militarism.” Their goal is political and social power, not encouraging the Christian faithful or advancing the cause of Christianity.Footnote 39 Whitehead, Perry, and Landon Schnabel have shown that people who believe the United States is a Christian nation oppose gun control at higher rates than other groups.Footnote 40 The protection of gun rights amounts to a defense of religious liberty and constitutes a significant component in spiritual warfare. In 1997, a Baltimore, Maryland, Army veteran and “self-described born again Christian” opened a gun store he called Christian Soldier. A member of an independent Baptist church, Rob Shiflett believed the ability to open his shop was a direct answer to prayer, both his own and those of the landlord he rented space from. His pastor approved the name, but other ministers in the area were offended. Shiflett defended selling guns. In the words of the reporter who interviewed him, Shiflett claimed that “modern spiritual warfare calls for contemporary weaponry.” He also interpreted the Bible to reveal that “God was always supportive of his people being strong.”Footnote 41 Some 20 years later, Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association drew a correlation between the US Supreme Court’s 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision that found organized mandatory school prayer to be unconstitutional and an increase in school shootings. The AFA blamed school shootings on increasing secularization and a decline in religious freedom. The country got what it deserved. “We can’t very well blame God for not coming to our aid if we fail to use the tools (prayer and the Second Amendment) He has graciously given us.”Footnote 42 In 2012, Gary Cass, the leader of the so-called Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, claimed that being a Christian required gun ownership.Footnote 43
Gun rights advocates who defend the Christian’s moral authority to carry guns point to several factors. They claim that the Second Amendment is related to religious freedom and First Amendment protections. In the wake of the election of Barack Obama as president, gun sales in the United States increased, as many Americans feared Democratic efforts to enact new gun control measures. Many white evangelical Christians shared that fear and embraced guns as a sign of their own patriotism and in defense of their sacred rights. In June 2009, an Assembly of God church of approximately 150 members in Louisville, Kentucky, encouraged parishioners and guests to bring their firearms to church to “celebrate our rights as Americans!” Ken Pagano, the pastor of New Bethel Church, told the New York Times, “God and guns were part of the foundation of this country.” As a result, he failed to “see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.” When confronted with claims that his position contradicted the teachings of Jesus, Pagano labeled such arguments “baloney.” For him, challenges to gun rights advocates like himself really hinged on a proper understanding of the Christian faith. Guns “are just the foil. The issue now is the Gospel.” Seen in this light, “it does become a crusade. Now the Gospel is at stake.”Footnote 44
Beginning in the late 1980s, many states loosened handgun laws and allowed for concealed carry of firearms in public. Many of those laws, however, continued to prohibit both open and concealed carrying of firearms in places of worship.Footnote 45 In 2010, a gun-rights group called GeorgiaCarry.Org, along with the pastor of a small independent Baptist church in Thomaston, Georgia, challenged that state’s ban on carrying weapons in churches. They argued unsuccessfully that the ban effectively violated both their First and Second Amendment rights. In addition to their constitutional arguments, the church-going leader of GeorgiaCarry.Org and the pastor of The Baptist Tabernacle pointed to the need for self-defense and protection of churches. Pastor Jonathan Wilkins argued, “while conducting such religious worship services, [he] would like to carry a firearm for defense of himself, his family, and his flock.”Footnote 46
Texas’s law resembled Georgia’s. James McAbee pastored Lighthouse Worship Center, a small Assembly of God church in Beaumont, Texas. In 2011, he interrupted two burglars who had broken into an area of his church that was being renovated. He confronted the teenage burglars and reluctantly drew and brandished a .380 pistol only after one of them charged at him. The incident made him a local celebrity and earned him the nickname, “Triple P”: “pistol-packing pastor.” He soon began teaching concealed handgun licensing classes, sometimes in the gymnasium of his church. McAbee had been a convicted felon, and he served 2.5 years in prison for burglary and aggravated assault and battery. The call to preach came while he was in prison. Ordination, marriage, and family life followed his release. In 2009, he was granted a pardon, “and he exercised as many of his rights as he could,” including buying a hunting rifle. Handguns and an AR-15 style rifle (bought immediately after Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012) followed. Anticipating new gun control legislation under Obama, he reasoned about the AR-15: “If the thugs are going to have one, I’m going to have one too.” McAbee assured reporters that he meant no one harm. “I believe the Bible teaches peace. But that doesn’t mean I should let them hurt me.” Elsewhere, he observed: “We believe an armed society is a peaceful society.”Footnote 47
In 2017, following the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting, the American Family Association’s email newsletter The Daily Stand argued that it was “time for God’s men to start packing heat to church.” The AFA pointed out how long it took Texas police to arrive after a car chase that ended with the shooter’s death – “five to seven minutes” – and argued that churches had “become human shooting galleries” and “church leaders and members need to arm themselves in their own defense.” The writer acknowledged that the “thought of armed church members might spook us today,” but the history of guns in America demonstrated there was plenty of precedent for church members defending their congregation. In fact, “there was a considerable period of time in American history where you’d be breaking the law if you were not armed in the house of God.”Footnote 48
A cursory review of colonial history suggests that this claim was at least partially right. There was a time when English colonies required white adult men to bring guns to church. The duty to defend against attack by Native Americans or to prevent slave rebellions demanded that white men be prepared at all times.Footnote 49 Now, however, the threat was government overreach. Losing the right to carry guns left the sheep vulnerable to attack.
VI. The Bible and the Second Amendment
For many gun owners, an appeal to the Bible vindicated their actions. Beyond justifying their behavior, the debate over Christian gun culture also demonstrates what some scholars have noted about the complicated nature of American usages of scripture in public life. Biblical references, often used with little regard to their context, can be marshalled to justify support or opposition to most public policies. Evangelical publication Charisma News reprinted an article that explicitly connected being a Christian with protecting the Second Amendment. In fact, the title of the piece – “What the Bible Says About the Second Amendment” – implied a direct connection between the Bible and the Constitution’s right to bear arms. That article located both a right to life and the right to protect that life throughout the Bible. The book of Exodus (22:2) gave permission to kill a thief who breaks into one’s home; that, according to the article, formed the basis of the castle doctrine in United States law. Moreover, guns and the right to self-defense were clear throughout American history. “According to the Bible, men are required to protect themselves, their families, their homes, their possessions, and if they choose not to, they are negligent.”Footnote 50 Many gun rights supporters point to Luke 22:36, where Jesus told his disciples to sell their “cloak and buy” a sword.Footnote 51 For the American Family Association, that biblical admonition not only counted as “New Testament foundation for the Second Amendment.” It also provided evidence that Jesus’ opponents were coming for him and for the 21st century American church. “With all the unhinged rhetoric from the left ceaselessly demonizing followers of the Cross, we’re at a time where we cannot take the risk of attending church without a means of protecting ourselves, our families, and our fellow church members.” What was needed was “a Glock for the flock.”Footnote 52
In an article published by Probe Ministries, Steve Cable offered readers an examination of the Second Amendment “from a biblical perspective.” For Cable, a “Christian worldview” provided insight into debates over gun control. After a brief (and at times inaccurate) history of the origins of the Second Amendment, Cable pointed out that the framers of the Constitution knew there was criminality and the potential to misuse firearms. Nevertheless, “They felt that protecting individual liberty was more important than trying to create a perfectly safe environment.” At the same time, not everyone should have access to guns. The “difficult question” centered on how to protect rights and guarantee safety. The first issue involved deciding which type of arms should be available. That was “not defined by what is needed for hunting or protection from thieves.” Rather, based on the assumptions of the Founding Fathers, “it needs to be weapons such that if a sufficient number of people possess them, the government is unable through the force of an army to impose any unconstitutional burdens on the people.” For the Supreme Court, that included rifles and handguns. The second issue focused on whose rights should be restricted. In other words, “how does one determine who is sane enough to have the right to bear arms?” The article pointed to 1 Timothy 2:1–2, where Paul instructed to pray for those in authority “that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life with all godliness and dignity.” Likewise, according to Cable, since the Constitution “indicates that we are to take up arms as necessary to protect a government supporting godliness and dignity,” to enjoy the right to bear arms, a person needed to have a “sane concept of a quiet and peaceful life.” In short, the right to bear arms “is not counter to biblical teaching.” In fact, taking away the right to bear arms would be impractical, and it would create a situation in which future governments would go unchallenged if they ignored the Constitution and assumed too much power. “Perhaps a more sensible way to control gun violence,” he suggested, would be to encourage law-abiding citizens to carry weapons, particularly in public areas.” Guns, then, would serve as a “deterrent against the insane, the criminal, and a future government gone amok.”Footnote 53
VII. White Supremacy, Colorblindness, and Self-Defense
Following the 2015 murder of nine people by a white supremacist at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, James McAbee found himself again in the news, again as the gun-toting sheepdog. He vowed that if a would-be attacker targeted one of McAbee’s “sheep,” “the shepherd of the house will stop that.” There might be one victim, “but I bet you they won’t get two.” The lesson was straightforward: “it’s very important that every church, pastor and all, have a gun.” Pastor McAbee had his gun in the pulpit, there was another in his office, and parishioners also carried concealed weapons in the service.Footnote 54 For African Americans, the violent attack in Charleston represented more than just a violation of a sacred space; it represented one more example of a history of violent expression of white supremacy. President Barack Obama, who eulogized the church’s murdered pastor Clementa Pinckney, understood the attack as “an act that drew on a long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches, not random, but as a means of control, a way to terrorize and oppress.”Footnote 55 For McAbee and other white Christians worried about their gun rights, the 2015 Charleston church shooting took place in a colorblind vacuum and reinforced their own conclusions about the need for guns to defend their churches.
The Rev. Michael McBride was a Black church pastor with an Assemblies of God background and leader of Oakland, California’s anti-gun violence Live Free campaign. He responded to Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and others who called for more guns in church. McBride concluded, “the religion of Robert Jeffress is not the religion of Jesus.” In fact, for McBride, Jeffress’s stance amounted to blasphemy. Any position that did not advocate “for a more peaceful existence that limits the proliferations of instruments of death” revealed a faith leader’s “deep moral hole in their soul, and they should be ignored.”Footnote 56 Jeffress’s predecessors at First Baptist Dallas, particularly W.A. Criswell, who led the church for fifty years, promoted the Southern Baptist Convention’s mid-twentieth century passive resistance to racial justice. By the time Jeffress assumed First Baptist’s pastorate, a “colorblind” perspective was not uncommon for white evangelicals, who preferred talk of individual responsibility over an emphasis on structural or systemic racism. Matters of race, they argued, were political and appropriately set apart from church matters. Individual heart change was the only solution to racism. While some white Christians may have meant well, this approach protected white supremacy.Footnote 57 Insisting on colorblindness, therefore, disguised the fact that discussion about the restrictions or expansion of gun rights has been connected to discussions of race and ignored the fact that the Charleston shooting was explicitly connected to race and white supremacy. It also meant that they were not prepared to accept the theological critique of a Black Christian like McBride.Footnote 58
Shootings at places of worship, particularly synagogues, forced some evangelicals to consider the uncomfortable connection between white supremacy and their theology. For example, on April 27, 2019, the last day of Passover, a 19-year-old white man from suburban San Diego, California, shot and killed one person and injured three more, including the rabbi, at the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. Just over a month earlier, he had tried to burn down a mosque in nearby Escondido. No one was injured in that attack. John T. Earnest differed from other mass shooters in that he was an active member of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation in Escondido, where his father served as an elder. At least part of his manifesto contained what many considered sound Christian theology. Alongside anti-Semitic, white supremacist rhetoric, Earnest articulated the standard Reformed theological understanding of salvation by grace alone. “I did not choose to be a Christian. The Father chose me. The Son saved me. And the Spirit keeps me,” Earnest wrote. At the same time, he acknowledged, “just because someone calls themselves a Christian does not make them one. Plenty of people wrongfully identify with being Christian.”Footnote 59
The conflation of Christian doctrine, white supremacy, and extreme violence got the attention of some evangelicals, including Earnest’s own pastor, Mika Edmondson. Edmondson urged Christians to reflect on the fact that the 19-year-old “was radicalized into white nationalism from within the very midst of our church.” At the time, Edmondson was one of the few African American pastors in the OPC, and he interpreted the manifesto’s reference to “cultural Marxism” as an attack on his own efforts to call for racial justice. He noted that “other Calvinist people” use that phrase to challenge “a person’s orthodoxy, because orthodoxy, within our circles, is a huge institutional currency.” The real point, he claimed, was that someone espousing racial justice was not driven by “orthodox biblical faith.” Earnest’s manifesto absolved his family of responsibility for his actions, and his home congregation “expressed shock and horror” about the young man’s actions and sought to support the “grieving synagogue nearby.” Compared to the emphasis on anti-Semitism and white supremacy, guns and gun rights played but an incidental role in the manifesto. Earnest encouraged the use of flamethrowers and guns, whatever “you think would be best in your situation.” Nevertheless, the Smith and Wesson M&P 15 semiautomatic rifle he used represented the type of firearm – an AR-15-style “assault rifle” – that gun control advocates routinely target following mass shootings.Footnote 60
VIII. Dissenters and the Integrity of the Church
Some Christians attempt to view gun violence through a lens that does not distinguish Christian doctrine from social problems. Writing in the 1990s, Black Southern Baptist pastor Gary Frost drew a distinction between political conservatism and biblical conservatism. While there was some overlap between the two, political conservatism “has a socioeconomic base” and biblical conservatism “is rooted in divine righteousness as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.” For Frost, evangelicals too often failed to distinguish between the two. That failure tempted them to “surrender ourselves to political agendas that do not share our Holy mission, which is to demonstrate the compassion of Christ to a society living in darkness and fear.” Frost described himself as an “urban pastor who is weary of performing the funerals of young people” killed by firearms.Footnote 61 Twenty years later, the newly formed African-American Church Gun Control Coalition referred to gun violence as “both a sin and a public health crisis.” The Black pastors included in that group continued to personalize the firearm deaths of young people and criticize white Christians for neglecting gun violence except when it affected their suburban neighborhoods. According to Rev. Carroll Baltimore of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, “African-American clergy leaders hear daily the cries of the parents, family and friends of those whose precious lives have been snuffed out by guns and other types of violence.”Footnote 62
A middle ground between the gun rights absolutists and gun control advocates tracks with a larger movement within 21st century evangelicalism that has sought to cultivate an appreciation for doctrine and renewed devotion to the Bible that would correct the affective Pentecostalism and seeker-friendly characteristics of late-20th century evangelicalism.Footnote 63 This often has led them to seek more nuance on public policy issues than their more charismatic and Pentecostal brethren. Even if they are not a part of the “young, restless, and reformed crowd,” there are more mainstream evangelical voices who try to walk a middle ground and avoid the extreme Second Amendment and self-defense arguments. Their concerns center on the integrity of the Christian church, rather than a defense of Christianity’s declining influence on American society. For instance, in 2017, Jen Hatmaker and Karen Swallow Prior connected the conflict in the nation’s gun debate with the internal tensions that evangelicalism wrestled with, namely the tension between individualism, on the one hand, and the “necessary commitment to the common good required to see through meaningful gun reform.” That commitment would require evangelicals to see through National Rifle Association rhetoric and embrace the willingness to “submit for examination” their constitutional right, if that right “was related to 33,000 deaths a year.”Footnote 64
Those who seek to avoid the extremes recognize the difficulty inherent in that. Michael Tan, an elder in a Virginia congregation affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, admitted in a 2019 interview that there was a “gap” between being a Christian and being a gun owner. It took “a lot of work” to bridge that gap, and he put in that work after considering what he understood the Bible says about self-defense. Ultimately, he determined that the Bible allows Christians to carry weapons and practice self-defense, but it in no way requires that. In fact, guns and other weapons are “tools” to be used only in certain circumstances, and self-defense should never be of “primary importance.” For the Christian, he concludes, “the primary activities are fellowship with God, fellowship with His people, singing in worship, and living in peace.”Footnote 65 Dissenters among evangelicals and other Christians have not been the dominant voices, but they likely would have agreed with Michael Tan’s conclusions above about proper Christian priorities.
Their concerns were not necessarily with gun rights or guns themselves. Indeed, many of them claim to have been reared hunting, and some still own long guns. Their views reflect a larger concern for Christian culture and behavior and the relationship between Christians and secular society, and they reject the politicized nature of guns and Christianity. They favored theological positions that looked outward toward addressing social problems, they allowed for more ambiguity and nuance in interpreting the Bible, and they viewed human sinfulness in a way that made them doubt that a “good guy with a gun” was possible. The life of Jesus (the Good Shepherd) serves as a model. In the words of Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin, for Christians, “the final authority for life is not the Constitution. It is the Bible, and it is Jesus.” Others emphasize the fact that Christians are called to “die to self” and “turn the other cheek.”Footnote 66 For these critics, controlling access to firearms becomes a “pro-life issue” from a broader, more holistic standpoint.
Although most white evangelicals would not see them this way, Claiborne and Martin represent Christians who claim theological affinity with evangelicals but disagree on the proper boundaries around that identity. That group includes people like Rob Schenck, who was an anti-abortion activist and leader in the early Christian Right until he changed his mind about many aspects of his old political life, including guns. Schenck claimed not to be “completely anti-gun.” In fact, guns were necessary “to maintain an orderly society,” but that was to be mourned. “What concerns me is a form of radical, gun-centered populism” that neglected “a serious, biblically oriented discussion of the moral and ethical implications of a Christian using deadly force.” To be prepared to take another person’s life, Schenck argues, “requires that we dehumanize certain people in our minds and hearts.” They must become “disposable.” In that regard, the gun rights argument inverts the pro-life/pro-choice political debate, with gun rights advocates resisting others’ moral judgments and defending their “choice” to defend themselves and their family. For their part, abortion-rights activists treat a “fetus” as a “‘threat’ that has been ‘neutralized,’” instead of a life that has been taken. Schenck claimed that Christian gun owners practiced idolatry. “Trading our trust in divine protection for a fantastical pearl-handled revolver and silver bullet is to exchange the heavenly for the earthly.”Footnote 67 He also noted their fear, and he called on them to be less afraid. He quoted I Timothy 2:17, “God has not given a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind,” and argued that the embrace of guns has made it more difficult for others to see Christian love.Footnote 68 Lucy McBath was a faithful Black Pentecostal, whose son was shot by a concealed carry license holder who claimed he acted in self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground law.” McBath appeared alongside Schenck in Abigail Disney’s documentary Armor of Light. McBath agreed with Schenck: “We have replaced God with our guns.”Footnote 69
A practicing attorney before his transition to journalism and political commentating, David French critiqued Armor of Light and disputed Schenck’s “pro-life” argument about guns. Schenck’s argument was sentimental and “emotive,” not theological, “and it’s aimed at the wrong problem.” French agreed with Schenck that there are “paramount moral and ethical dimensions” to using a gun for self-defense, but for him gun owners understood those dimensions and weighed their “biblical responsibility to defend others from deadly aggression.” Using a gun for self-defense and defense of others, then, represented a decidedly pro-life position.Footnote 70 In other writings, French defended “law-abiding” gun owners as largely responsible and willing to accept regulations that would keep guns out of the hands of “the dangerous.” They “save and protect lives.”Footnote 71 By 2022, French’s position had evolved, and the “transition from defense to defiance” among gun owners disturbed him. He called out the facile “mixture of scripture and weapons” and claimed that American gun culture now threatened to “destabilize our democracy.”Footnote 72
IX. Conclusion
Few prominent evangelicals represent the tensions that divided the American church in the 21st century like Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission until being forced out over his vocal opposition to Donald Trump and his criticism of the SBC’s handling of its sex abuse crisis. While he continued to oppose gun control measures, Moore argued that the current debate over guns centered on “what’s prudent, and what’s not, in solving the common goal of ending criminally violent behavior.” For that reason, Moore argued, “orange-vested National Rifle Association members and Birkenstock-wearing vegan gun-control advocates” could co-exist “as the Body of Christ.” Gun control persisted as a “culture war” issue, and “both sides of the debate are longing for the kind of civic community that is slipping away in a globalizing, urbanizing America.” The government could not do much to help. Instead, churches must take the initiative and seek to “build real communities built on real love and real truth.” The goal should be “an alternative order in which the citizens of heaven know one another, trust one another, and are able to call on one another when one hears a strange sound at the window.”Footnote 73
Moore continued to insist on a historical and theological definition of evangelical at a time when that label carried increasing political baggage.Footnote 74 That may or may not be helpful, and his vision for the role churches can play in this debate likely does not resonate with everyone. It sidestepped the question of ongoing political engagement, it refused to draw narrow boundaries around Christian and national interests, and it lacked a full-throated defense of Christian gun culture. While not always on the same page as Schenck, he would have likely agreed that the spirit of fear is to be resisted and a more inclusive vision of American society and the American church nurtured in its place. Given the ways that partisanship has come to shape religious identity, the conflict over gun rights makes any debate between an inclusive or exclusive vision of evangelicalism and American culture difficult to engage in.
Acknowledgments
Research for this article was supported by Saint Anselm College’s Robert E. Jean Chair in History and Government and the Jeanne D. Smith Research Incentive Fund at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of William Small and Emily Burns as well as valuable feedback from participants in the workshop, “The Ethics, Law, and Social Science of Firearms and Self-Defense,” sponsored by the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College, and two anonymous reviewers for this journal.
