Arming the church

America’s in the heat of a gun fight. There is no chance that Congress will pass new gun control legislation this year, so President Obama is ready to announce tighter gun restrictions by executive order. Meanwhile, Texas just became the 45th state to allow some form of “open carry,” the legal permission to carry a firearm openly on one’s person in public.

American evangelicals tend to be pro-gun, and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr demonstrated that support at a recent convocation by encouraging students to get concealed carry permits in case someone attempts a campus mass shooting. “Let’s teach [‘those Muslims’] a lesson if they ever show up here.” As though a campus shooter would have to be Muslim.

The exhortation to arm prompted John Piper, the widely published former pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, to question the congruence of Falwell’s spirit with the spirit of Christ. He argues that the Christian testimony is “a radically transformed heart that lives with its treasure in another world, longs to show Jesus to be more satisfying than life, trusts in the help of God in every situation, and desires the salvation of our enemies.” For Piper, the boast of back pocket security denies that testimony.

Should Christians allow themselves to possess guns at all except for hunting? There has been an alarming increase in mass shootings, even in churches. In 1999, a troubled and chronically unemployed man walked into Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and began shooting at a large midweek youth meeting, killing seven. In 2007, a volunteer security guard took down a heavily armed man bent on mass murder at a Colorado Springs megachurch. On the other hand, last year a Texas pastor talked a man out of a shooting who later was changed by the show of love. Dylann Roof, by contrast, was not so changed. He killed nine people in Charleston, S.C., anyway, but their deaths did lead to an international witness of forgiveness.

Given the times, should someone in every congregation be ready at arms in case a shooter targets the flock? Should Christians bring their guns to church at all? Should Christians be willing to accept death if necessary as a turn-the-other-cheek testimony to our hope in eternal life? While I can make that decision for myself, I cannot make it for others. It cannot be a condition of church membership or attendance at worship that you be ready to submit to violent death in persecution. Besides, an armed threat during worship may not be religious persecution at all. It may be driven by mental illness or racially motivated.

Ordinarily, we trust the police to protect us. But the police cannot be everywhere at all times. And so people have a natural right and a Sixth Commandment obligation to defend themselves if need be, even with deadly force by gun, bat, or whatever means are available. Charity calls us to defend the innocent.

Ideally, mass shootings should be so rare that it never crosses anyone’s mind to carry a gun, as was the case not long ago. The “arm-yourself-America” movement is a response to a deeper problem. If America is becoming ungovernable because Americans are becoming randomly murderous, then we need to reexamine the sources of good character and what is shaping and misshaping it in our day.