Guns, Evil & Disagreeing Christians

on October 4, 2017

An Economist column contrasted theologically different responses to the Las Vegas slaughter. Conservative Christians stress its “evil” with implication there’s no effective answer to intractable human sinfulness, while liberal Christians advocate political solutions (i.e., gun control). Southern Baptist seminary president Al Mohler, conservative, is contrasted with Jesuit magazine editor James Martin, liberal.

Per the column:

Another clear implication of the stress on “evil” is that there is no point trying to stop its effects through regulation. If evil is an inexorable feature of a fallen plane of existence, one that has been tainted from the very start of things by human sin, then no policy measures will ever remove it. The only response to evil is to identify it clearly, to avoid secular soft-headedness, and perhaps to mitigate its effects as and when they arise, without presuming to abolish it. In other words, gun control will not work.

It’s untrue that conservative Christians use the “evil” label as pretext for political inaction. They of course denounce terrorism as evil and expect decisive state action. They denounce abortion as evil and work for laws in defense of the unborn. It’s true conservative Christians don’t typically support gun control, but neither is opposing gun control a significant focus of organized Christian political witness. In contrast, liberal Christianity has strenuously touted gun control for 40 years or more. The United Methodist Church urged banning handguns and registration for all other guns in 1972.

The major political distinction between conservative Christian political witness and its liberal counterpart is that the former, like conservativism overall, has a more limited view of government’s vocation, while the latter of course has more expansive expectations. Defending against foreign enemies, fighting domestic crime, upholding the sanctity of all human life from the unborn to the elderly and terminally ill, are considered among the state’s core functions by conservative Christians. They are correspondingly skeptical of government’s ability to significantly reform fallen humanity. The state might deter or punish crime with its police powers but cannot eliminate it.

Liberal Christians dating to the late 19th century Social Gospel and earlier have always been more hopeful that successful politics through decisive state action can uplift and perfect society. Poverty, crime, racism, ignorance, bigotry, and fear can be confronted and perhaps even defeated by the right legislation, administration and determined public will. People will generally do right if educated, materially accommodated and encouraged toward proper regard for humanity.

The early Social Gospel commendably focused on labor reforms, but its most sweeping achievement was Prohibition, which many liquor-averse conservative Christians also backed. As recounted in my book Methodism & Politics in the Twentieth Century, Methodism led Mainline Protestantism in identifying alcohol as society’s chief evil, whose abolition would save lives, foster good health, end gambling, defeat prostitution, defund political corruption, save marriages and families, and transport the poor into prosperity, creating a godly America.

Prohibition didn’t completely fail. Liquor consumption was permanently reduced. But it didn’t establish nirvana, it criminalized millions of Americans, and no legislature was ever willing to vote sufficient funding for its effective enforcement. A liquor-free America was an unsustainable Protestant dream. The political overreach was partly rooted in Methodist perfectionism, which optimistically surmised that if God will perfect individual sanctified souls so will He sanctify and perfect whole societies.

Since Prohibition’s repeal, even the most zealous of Protestant teetotalers have effectively acknowledged that whatever the evils of booze, whose abuse kills more Americans than guns, strictures against it will have to be mostly moral persuasion, not legal. The ripples of Prohibition persevere through restrictions on liquor through age limits, closing times, zoning, and control of hard liquor sales by some state governments.

Liberal Christian political witness retains its robust confidence in the state’s power to refine society, but liberal Protestant political influence never fully recovered from Prohibition’s repeal. The Economist noted that U.S. Catholic bishops support gun control, which has been true for over 40 years, though the language is often vague, advocating “sensible regulation.” There’s no binding Catholic teaching on gun control.

The Economist concluded:

Either end of this religious-ideological spectrum can go to funny extremes. An approach that puts overwhelming emphasis on the structural or regulatory context of violence can leave itself open to mockery by seeming to deny that individuals have moral choices. But whatever you may think about the causes of badness in the world, it seems manifestly absurd to suggest that the legislator should not try, at least, to reduce the scope for evil to prevail.

But what should the legislator under Christian influence pursue? What is right that is also effective and feasible in our distinct culture? Would European-style abolition of guns be feasible in historically gun-owning America with its Second Amendment and nearly 400-year-old emphasis on individual rights? To what extent can laws bend human nature or transform centuries-old national character traits? To what extent can the state, itself as sinful as the people it governs, be entrusted with vast new sweeping powers? Would the unintended consequences, as with Prohibition, nullify and overwhelm the original intent?

The Las Vegas killer, like many/most killers and other criminals, came from a broken family and absent father, himself criminal. Should government actively advocate intact families, and if so, how? Or would such policies undermine what they sought to defend and therefore are better entrusted to civil society, especially the church and religious, character-shaping institutions?

Those private institutions are not mentioned by The Economist, which implores thlegislator to try to “reduce the scope for evil to prevail.” But even high-minded laws, especially if contrary to human nature and national habit, can be more destructive than the evil they sought to arrest. Christianity traditionally asserts that government is ordained to restrain evil, but it cannot of itself defeat it, which is a project belonging to God alone. This realization rejects political apathy but with realism and modesty.

  1. Comment by Aubrey Burrow on October 4, 2017 at 8:25 am

    ANTIFA mentality to spread this evil, say no, NO —

  2. Comment by Patrick98 on October 4, 2017 at 9:30 am

    If Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s had guns, history would be different. Simple as that. The second amendment is a check on tyranny.

  3. Comment by BJohn on October 4, 2017 at 9:51 am

    Seriously, do you really think that if the government wanted to take you into custody, you could actually stop them with a few guns? I mean do really think that way?

  4. Comment by Patrick98 on October 5, 2017 at 10:46 am

    Why do you think that the nation of Isreal developed the Samson Option? Why do you think they keep repeating “never again”?

    Do you really believe the second amendment is about hunting ducks and deer?

  5. Comment by Patrick98 on October 5, 2017 at 10:52 am

    Do you really believe that if the Jews in Europe in the 1930s had guns that things would have ended up exactly as they did? The holocaust may have not been completely prevented, but things would have played out differently.

  6. Comment by Brad Barringer on October 21, 2017 at 4:43 pm

    If the Jews would have had guns they probably would not have had to use them. Bullies like Hitler aren’t looking for a fair fight. Goliath wasn’t looking for a fair fight either but David ,having a weapon ,defeated the evil.

  7. Comment by W. B. Moorer on October 4, 2017 at 12:50 pm

    The title of this blog, “Juicy Ecumenism” is really inaccurate. It’s actually “Petty Anti-Ecumenism”.

  8. Comment by Sam Determann on October 5, 2017 at 8:09 pm

    Jesus said to his apostles, “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)

  9. Comment by HastenJason on October 20, 2017 at 6:27 pm

    I’m an evangelical and favor reasonable gun control.

  10. Comment by Karl von Buddenbrock on October 21, 2017 at 12:45 am

    Thanks, Mark, for incisive thinking, as always. Could I add, however, that American obsession with their amendments and human rights is the real cause. It robs your society of a healthy pragmatism. When a man can buy an automatic rifle without being checked and regulated, it’s PATENTLY RIDICULOUS. So why not attenuate your gun laws? People can buy guns, but only the military and security forces can use weapons of that magnitude. The obsession with human rights (as opposed to human responsibility before God) has consumed American minds and has hamstrung real progress. It’s the cause of much of the consternation around the illegal immigrant conundrum, as well as the “wall” debate, not to mention the strangulation of religious freedom.

    To hear your president laud “Merry Christmas” again warmed the cockles of my heart., by the way. Wonderful stuff.

  11. Comment by Donald on October 21, 2017 at 2:31 am

    Many of the recent mass shooters, including the Las Vegas monster, passed your vaunted “background checks.” In fact, Diane Feinstein admitted as much, that the checks failed to stop him.
    The Theological Declaration of Barmen outlines the complimentary but clearly distinct roles of the church and the government. When they intrude on each other, either one attempting to assume the role of the other, human suffering increases and the effectiveness of each is diminished. Liberal/Progressives (whether theological or political) always miss the primary tautology of a criminal in these discussions: by definition, criminals break laws. You become a criminal by breaking laws, it isn’t like race or sex which are a priori conditions; it is a condition one enters by the action of human will.

  12. Comment by TimBob on October 21, 2017 at 10:42 pm

    Karl von Buddenbrock:

    One cannot [legally] buy an automatic rifle in the United States WITHOUT being checked and regulated. Besides the standard background check, there is extra paperwork that must be filed and a $200 tax stamp/fee that must be paid to the BATFE (ATF) — BEFORE one can take possession of the automatic rifle.

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