Sword and Spirit, Part One

Sword and Spirit: Part One
Dwight A Moody
June 2, 2022

 

An old spiritual worthy of our attention today is sung in the voice of a person giving testimony:
“I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield,
down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside.
I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside.
Ain’t gonna study war no more.”

 

This song, and this essay, is a call for followers of Jesus to lay down weapons, large and small, and take up the work of God and the mission of Jesus using only that which the Lord gives us, namely, the Spirit of God. Or, as the Lord said to Zerubbabel, according to the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, “It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit.”

 

What God wants to accomplish in our time is a revival of the Christian community as we pray for the coming rule of God, a revival of our nation as we seek for a more perfect union full of liberty and justice for all, and a renewal of the entire human community as we confront the serious challenges that threaten the peace and wellbeing of us all. Progress toward these ends is not the way of weapons, violence, and death but the way of the Lord, the way of the Spirit, the way of God. It is a spiritual struggle and we, of all people, must put down our guns and take up the gifts of the spirit.

 

One immediate threat to beloved community is gun violence. This essay is a call for Christians, followers of Christ, to refuse the way of the gun, to surrender our guns and allow them to be melted down and made into tools, that we together might tend the garden of God on planet earth.

 

ONE: Guns

 

Ten days in May have pushed us to confront the realities of violence in our nation. On Saturday, May 14, while many people were celebrating weddings and graduations, a lone gunman drove onto the parking lot of a neighborhood grocery store in Buffalo, New York. He pulled out a weapon and started firing; before he was through, outside and inside, ten people were dead, and three others were injured. He was taken into custody.

 

Ten days later another lone gunman entered the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and started shooting. An hour later, 19 people were dead (including the killer) and several others injured. Most were third grade children, and many had been shot multiple times. It was the 27th school shooting in the United States in 2022.

 

Between these two highly visible events, another 510 deadly gun episodes were recorded (and archived by the Gun Violence Project, see gunviolencearchive.org) with killings in AL, AR, CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IO, KS, KY, LA, IL, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, and DC (or 39 states and the District of Columbia). These episodes, between the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, took the lives of 587 people.

 

While the two mass killings, in Buffalo and Uvalde, made the headlines, gang and drug violence, police shootings, accidental shootings, rage shootings, and especially suicides constitute the vast majority of gun killings. In 2020, for instance, according to the Center for Disease Control, there were 19,384 homicides and 24,292 suicides. And much of this is a result of the ready availability of guns, especially handguns. While guns have been a part of American social life for centuries, especially for those living in dangerous places, the last 40 years has seen a dramatic rise in the number of guns produced and sold in the United States. It is what we might call the arming of America.

 

In 2020, 40 million guns were purchased legally in the United States. This represents the highest number ever recorded and is just the latest in a 20-year surge of gun purchases. In 1998, approximately 10 million guns were purchased. It is estimated that there are over 400 million guns in the United States with civilians possessing 98% of these weapons. The average gun-owning American has five guns. These gun owners constitute about one third of the population; 2/3 of the people in the United States do not own a gun, although a number of these (about 11%) live in a household with a gun. Gun ownership by women has increased dramatically in recent years. Researchers find that COVID 19, the #MeToo movement, and social unrest following the murder of George Floyd have contributed to this surge in female ownership.

 

The sheer presence of these weapons is a danger. Having access to a gun raises significantly the probability that a gun will be used: for suicide, for revenge, and in an accident. For instance, Dejah Bennet of Dolton, Illinois, was sitting in her car in a grocery store parking lot with her three-year-old son. He began playing with a gun in the back seat. The gun discharged, hitting his mother in the neck. She died a short time later.

 

Many gun researchers say this: the people most likely to be injured or killed by a gun are those who live or frequent the house where a gun is kept. Very few of these people killed are intruders or strangers. It is no surprise that the United States leads all nations in guns per person and also in gun deaths per person.

 

Another way to state it is like this: one third of the American population own guns … to protect themselves from that same one third of the American population. Gun owners possess guns to protect themselves from other gun owners. Or this way: it is gun owners who are most likely to use guns to kill themselves or other people. Or this way: this one third of the population is responsible for all gun deaths in the United States, all 43,600 plus deaths.

 

So the question arises: how can the majority of Americans protect themselves and those they love from the one third of the population that own guns?

 

But there is another dynamic in the social situation with guns and violence in the United States, and it came into sharp focus on January 6, 2021. That is the day a mob of people, many of them carrying guns, stormed the capital, forcing many elected representatives and their staffs to seek cover; their lives were in danger. The intruders were protesting the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States; they were trying to overturn a free and fair election. Part of this was about Donald Trump; he lost the election but spread the word that the election had not been fair. But part of this was about something very much bigger, something that had been going on for a long time, decades, in fact. This something was the political movement pushing back against the federal government.

 

In some real sense, this resistance to government, especially federal government, goes back a very long way in American history, all the way back to the beginning. Our Founders feared the sort of centralized government they had suffered under in England. They fled to the New World to get away from it, to find a place where they could live free or die: free to think, write, worship, travel, work, and protest if need be. This is why every expansion of government power, such as funding schools, collecting taxes, or creating parks was met with resistance. This was especially true during the Great Depression when the government organized the Public Works Department, putting people to work building dams, bridges, and public buildings; or when they launched Social Security to provide financial support for people as they grew old.

 

But this resistance to government, especially the federal government, reached a crescendo when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce a court order to integrate the public schools.

 

This was too much. The modern push-back to federal government “interference” with life in these United States began with efforts by the feds to force southern states to integrate their schools. Thus launched the wave of “segregation academies” (many operated by churches!); thus began the transition of southern Democrats into Republicans; thus began the legal theories of “states rights” formalized in 1982 into The Federalist Society; thus began the campaign to blame the Supreme Court for all the “ungodly” and “unconstitutional” rulings (in favor of privacy, abortion, inter-racial marriage, and gay marriage); thus began the grassroots movement that identified the federal government–all three branches–as diverting the nation away from its “Christian heritage;” and thus began the modern militia movement, arming themselves for eventual combat against federal power that had simply gone too far.

 

Besides safety from neighbor crime or highway rage, the accumulation of guns became a way for irritated citizens to express their determination not to be controlled by a federal government that had lost its connection to Christian faith and practice; or so the justification was stated. Federal action in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (1992) and Waco, Texas (1993) exemplified one side of this tension; and citizen retaliation in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1995) demonstrated the level of anger and activity that had federal power in its sights.

 

Now, talk of civil war is not uncommon. Just this week, the end of May of 2022, U. S. Representative Mo Brooks (R. Alabama) said on a national broadcast: “The Second Amendment is designed to help ensure that we, the citizenry, always have the right to take back our government should it become dictatorial.” This connection between gun ownership and rebellion against the government is an important element in the current gun culture in the United States.

 

Forty years ago, some ministers were pulled into this campaign against modern American culture and the federal government as a facilitator of these changes (integration, immigration, women’s rights, gay rights, human rights, and the end of government sanctioned public prayer in school). They began using the term “culture war” and this has become a rallying cry for those who fear where the country is headed and favor the way things used to be. It was mainly used in a political sense, motivating people to vote a certain way or protest certain things. This is perhaps the primary idea U. S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R. Colorado) had in mind when she said “I am so tired of having godless people run this country. You and I are going to take it back.” And this is probably what was meant by the slogan that fueled the successful presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump: Make America Great Again.

 

But now the term “culture war” is not solely a metaphor; it has been absorbed into the vocabulary of violent resistance to federal power.

 

The idea of a “war” is no longer unthinkable, especially after the Capital Insurrection. Many people, including gun owners, are convinced that actual war, or some variation of such, will be necessary to push back against modern American cultural norms and renew the Christian identity of our nation. Much of this politial energy is connected with what is known as Christian Nationalism, the conviction that the United States is and has been until recently a “Christian Nation” and that intense political and perhaps military action is needed to restore the Christian culture of our nation.  Some have organized the Patriot Church Movement, inspired by the mythological Black-Robed Regiment of Revolutionary War times. They are preparing their congregations “for a coming civil war, a battle of good versus evil where they fight back against what they see as the tyranny of the left.”. .

Researchers have documented the connection between Christianity, gun ownership, resistance to federal authority, and Christian Nationalism. (see “Gun Control in the Crosshairs: Christian Nationalism and Opposition to Stricter Gun Laws” by Andrew L. Whitehead, Landon Schnabel, Samuel L. Perry, in Socius, July 23, 2018)

 

Many conservatives, including gun owners, resonate to a posting like the one I read on Facebook this week: “The problem isn’t guns. It’s hearts without God and homes without discipline.” Others add: “Schools without prayer.”

 

But this widespread discontent with the current state of affairs includes liberals, conservatives, and those in between. Many of us are disappointed with our progress toward many of the values we hold dear, including hospitality to strangers, especially refugees, kindness to neighbors, care for creation, and justice and prosperity for all. Many of us think there needs to be a moral and spiritual renewal of the nation and for this we pray and work. But we take our inspiration and our direction from the Hebrew prophet Zechariah who wrote, many years before the birth of Jesus: “This is what the Lord says … It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit.”

 

This is why we put down the guns and all other implements of physical force and human strength and turn to the gifts of the Spirit to fashion a new day for the American Republic. We eschew weapons of war and talk of war in favor of mercy, courage, humility, and compassion. We see those who live in our community, including those who exercise power for the federal government and those who own a stash of guns in a basement closet, as our neighbors, citizens, humans who aspire to live in peace, justice, and kindness just like we do.

 

 

 

Part Two: Jesus and Guns, coming next week!