Rachel Smith

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

August 26, 2007 - God Not Guns Sabbath

In partnership with Riverside Church, New York City

God Not Guns Sabbath

            At noon on Tuesday, 32 people dressed in black will stand on the sidewalk in front of our church. They will stand to commemorate the 32 people who were killed in April at Virginia Tech University and to remind us all that 32 people are killed every day by guns in America. The Raleigh-32 will be just one of many similar demonstrations taking place across the country that day. Tuesday is the anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That day in 1963, the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rang out over the thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. “I have a dream…” he said in what became a defining moment in the civil rights movement.

            Jesse Jackson has declared the anniversary of this speech as a day of national protest against gun violence because his friend Martin who was killed by a gun, was wholly committed to nonviolence as the way out of the darkness of injustice and inequality. Sometimes in our emphasis on Dr. King’s passionate push for civil rights we forget his equally passionate commitment to nonviolence.

            And now 44 years after Dr. King set forth his vision of peace and equality, the shootings at Virginia Tech, and the more recent shootings of 3 young adults in Newark are a grim reminder that attempts to stem the tide of gun violence in America have been met with ferocious resistance.

            In her book, Battle for God, Karen Armstrong says that fundamentalism in every religion encourages a sense of crisis among its believers, fostering the conviction that they are the first and last defense against the corrosion of crucial values. Armstrong says that because fundamentalism is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation, its adherents see themselves in a fight for survival against society at large. This, I believe, is exactly how the extreme gun-rights movement portrays itself.

            America’s gun culture is marked by zeal closely akin to that of religious fundamentalism. The gun-rights movement is built upon a system of belief that is both absolutist and aggressive. It seeks to expand individual gun ownership by encouraging every homeowner to have a gun and to take that gun into the workplace, to college campuses, public schools, libraries, and bars.

            According to the doctrine of the gun culture only the right to own firearms offers protection against tyranny at the hands of criminals, foreign terrorists, even our own government. Its followers believe they are in a cosmic struggle to protect America’s most cherished value: freedom. I call this movement “Gundamentalism.”

            Gundamentalism first appeared in 1977, when Harlan Carter, then head of the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm, staged a leadership coup. Nine years earlier, Congress enacted the Gun Control Act of 1968 in response to the assassinations of John Kenney, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. A divide had emerged between NRA leaders who supported the Gun Control Act and those who opposed it. The old guard of the NRA which supported the Gun Control Act, saw their organization as primarily promoting sportsmanship, safety and environmentalism. But Carter and his followers were passionately opposed to any sort of gun control. Carter’s contingent saw the 2nd Amendment as the first and last bastion of resistance against government run amok. They staged a leadership coup and their efforts turned the NRA into the leading proponent of gundamentalism in America.

            There are two particularly potent examples of the influence of gundamentalism in recent years: the proliferation of concealed carry laws, and the passage of the Castle Doctrine in a number of states.

            The first concealed carry law was passed in Florida in 1986, reversing decades of legislative and cultural resistance to arming private citizens. Since that time, the NRA has introduced bills in every state to liberalize laws governing private guns in public places. These regulations vary from state to state with some being more strict than others, but generally a person 21 years of age, who pays a nominal fee and is not a felon or adjudicated mentally ill, can receive a five-year permit to carry a concealed weapon.

            After its success in passing concealed carry laws in 48 states, the NRA identified what it called the ‘Castle Doctrine’ as its new legislative priority. In 2005 the first such bill was made law in Florida and now twenty-four other states including North Carolina either have or are considering the same bill. The Castle Doctrine makes significant changes in the rules of self-defense.  

            While self-defense laws have traditionally granted the right to protect oneself and one’s property from injury, they also have said that the level of response cannot exceed the threat. Such laws included a ‘duty to retreat’ and said that deadly force was to be used only as a last resort. Only in one’s home does a person have the right to defense with deadly force and without first trying to escape.

            The Castle Doctrine removes the duty to retreat and allows deadly force to be a first response to a perceived threat. Under the guise of protecting law-abiding gun owners from attack, this law allows them to shoot to kill if they feel threatened, rather than calling the police or leaving the scene.

            These two legislative efforts are just a small part of gundamentalism’s attempt to create a culture in which belief in the inerrancy of the Second Amendment lulls us into believing that there’s nothing we can do to prevent gun violence in America because it’s the price we pay for freedom.

            Gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding. The mantra, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” attempts to absolve us of responsibility for the uniquely American epidemic of gun violence. This mantra is chanted over and over until it drowns out the Biblical mandates of thou shall not kill; love your neighbor as yourself; forgive seventy times seven; do good to those who hate you.

            Rather than offering a vision of community in which we are bound together by our common humanity, gundamentalism encourages fear, teaching us to see each other as The Other, a potential enemy, a threat endangering our family, our home, our person. Violence feeds on fear. Such fear blinds us to the image of God embodied in every human being. Even more, it blinds us to our own connection to the Divine. Fear of the outside world reflects a fearful inner world. How can we reach toward God with both hands when one is clutching a gun? By encouraging us to live in fear, gundamentalism denies the deep peace of the Spirit which resides in each of us.

            Gundamentalism creates a culture of fear then offers a seductive promise: with a gun one can live without fear. It offers power, freedom, self-determination, security and protection all in the metal casing of a gun. And this is the big lie of gundamentalism – that we can have control over our lives. For if we learn anything on our spiritual journey, it is that we have control over nothing. Indeed, the life of the spirit requires that we give up the desire for control.

            The danger of gundamentalism is its soul-forgetfulness. By giving into the powerful allure of guns, we become disconnected from our spiritual center. Gundamentalism thrives in a society that has forgotten that each of us belongs to God. To acknowledge our own sacred belonging means that we also acknowledge it in others. When our soul belongs to God, we live not by our own authority but by Gods. We seek not to have control over our lives but to give our lives over to God. If our spirits are devoted to God, then we live in reverent awareness of the sacredness of every life, and in doing so we come to know the transformative power of compassionate living, the challenge of seeking justice, and the deep peace of walking humbly with our God.

            It is time for us to refute gundamentalism’s dangerous doctrine. Protecting the rights of gun owners is gundamentalism’s professed highest good, but in reality its policies and politics benefit an industry that manufactures millions of guns each year. With the passage of laws like concealed carry and the Castle Doctrine, gun violence is becoming institutionalized in American society. It is time for us to declare that the gun is not a symbol of freedom; it is instead an icon of fear. It is time for us to recognize that when we arm ourselves against each other we also arm ourselves against God.

            Dr. King’s closing words nearly 44 years ago were these: “This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountains of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together knowing that we will one day be free.” Dr. King’s faith gave him courage to confront the most powerful people and institutions of his day with an even more powerful witness of justice and nonviolence. May it be so with us.