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Against Gun
Violence
The only policy the NCC has ever made on “Firearms Control,” sets the matter in appropriate theological relief; on September 15, 1967 the General Board said, “The NCC reaffirms its belief in the God-given ‘right to life’ as fundamental and sacred.’” Life is sacred, a gift of our generous God. To take a human life is to trample upon the sovereignty of God. It is idolatry. A grievous sin. We kill all the time for play and for real. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…” Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not kill (murder).” (Exodus 20:13) “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) The very before the text that is the theme for our conference reads, “See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.” Our sacred texts look forward to “…saints from ‘every tribe and language and people and nation… [becoming] a kingdom…reign[ing] on earth.” (Rev. 5:6-10) “…endless peace” (Isa. 9:7) is the goal toward which the child of Advent is given, “For a child is born for us…” We near that first holy season now in a river of blood; two wars, genocide and slaughter in Darfur and the Congo, and in our own nation it is as if we are at war with ourselves. Vengeance? Grudges? Repaying evil? Violence today is this and more, it is also accidental, suicidal, there is collateral damage, there are thousands of innocent bystanders. Ours is not a society that looks forward to beating weapons into plowshares; we don’t even want to aggressively do background checks or wait a few days to pick up another automatic weapon or adequately register the sale of guns. We make them easy to buy and more available to anyone of any age or circumstance for intended or accidental discharge. And here my language wanders toward misdirection, as in “theater of war.” Last week we witnessed another mass killing in our nation. This time on an army base in Texas, “…mass murder in the sanctuary of a military base on American soil” is how Bob Herbert of the NY Times described it. Thirteen people were killed and many more injured—this is a deadly irony that cries out for redress, not simply the sensationalism and the all too predictable analysis and review that accompanies each such tragedy. Those killed were soldiers in the service of their country, many of them waiting for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. They were killed by a military psychiatrist whose work was to counsel soldiers. The horrific tragedy was followed by several days of media attention along the lines of a too common pattern: articles detailing a biography of the gunman and the victims, speculative articles probing his mental state and motivational theories—in this case “sole killer” vs. terrorist plot. There were eyewitness accounts, chronologies with aerial recreations of the site, articles on stress in the military, plans for a memorial service for victims with President and Mrs. Obama in attendance, flags at half mast, editorials, and opinion pieces. In another chilling irony germane to our subject this afternoon, while the gunman was an officer in the military, the weapon was not one he could easily have gotten from among many available on the base; he purchased it legally in a Texas gun shop. It was a hand gun euphemistically named a “cop killer” designed and built to pierce protective body armor worn by police officers. It is not simply that this is tragic; the awful truth, the stark reality is that mass killing is America is commonplace, it is normal. One editorial (in the NY Times) called the shooting, the “latest appalling outrage.” The day after, a disaffected perhaps mentally ill man who had been laid off from his job went back to his former workplace and killed a co-worker and wounded several others. The grotesque is ordinary. Shame on a nation such as this. This was November. In October “A mother of three who became a voice of the gun-rights movement when she openly carried a loaded pistol to her daughter's soccer game was fatally shot along with her husband, a parole officer and former prison guard, in an apparent murder-suicide at their home.” The online headline read: Gun-toting Pa. soccer mom, husband found shot dead. Melanie Hain always carried her holstered 9mm Glock pistol, even to the grocery store, and was holding a rifle while she talked to someone outside her house” the week before she was killed. Their children were home, a boy 10, girls 6 and 2. When these mass killings happen we experience shared shock and despair, we decry violence and murder, we mourn for the families of those lost we talk about it for a few days and endure the mindless arguments and reasoning of the gun lobbyists, and defenders of the 2nd amendment to the constitution. And then we let it go. We are finally accepting of this daily, annual disposal of our brothers and sisters. We are finally desensitized to the murder of fellow citizens. We acquiesce to what is unspeakable. But to focus on murder is also to miss the thousands upon thousands of Americans who are killed accidently or who kill themselves with handguns. They die because guns are handy, convenient, and omnipresent. There are over 283 million guns in civilian hands in our country; 97 guns for every 100 people. Two hundred seventy-six people every day are killed or treated for injury in hospital emergency rooms—factor that cost into the cost of health care. Sept. 11, 2001 not quite 3,000 Americans and others were killed in those three moments of terror we watched over and over again, and which launched two wars that are neither of them over. Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed about 5,000 U.S. soldiers. Since 9/11 nearly 140,000 American have been killed by gun violence. Not the terrorism we’re “fighting” around the globe, I’m talking about the ho-hum-made-in-the-USA-homicide that is a staple in the pantry on the nightly news at 5, 6, 10, and 11. In March of this year three policemen were killed in Pittsburgh, a little later in Washington a father shot and killed his five children; Maxine 16, Samantha, 14, Jamie 11, Heather, 8 and James, 7. Thirteen people were shot and killed in the meeting of a civic association in Binghamton, NY, a man in Princeville, AL, killed his wife, his 16 year old daughter, his sister and his sister’s 11 year old son. These people too have names. What will it be next week? Where? How many? The gun advocates want to arm teachers and students on college campuses—it’s going to happen—where else? In Texas. Gunfight at the OK—student center. How can we celebrate the resurrection in such a nation? Our children are killing each other. You don’t think the living God, the resurrected Jesus, cares about this? And we tolerate handguns with the calculated and silly argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” No guns, no gunfire deaths. Our congressional representatives do nothing and that’s OK with us. Huh? I’m with Martin Luther King Jr. Violence is failure. When we start killing each other we’ve lost. King said “I’m sick and tired of violence. I’m tired of the war [in Vietnam] I’m tired of war and conflict in the world. I’m tired of shooting. I’m tired of hatred. I’m tired of selfishness. I’m tired of evil. I’m not going to use violence no matter who says it.” None of this should be viewed out of our current context. We don’t talk to enemies and expect hostilities to cease. We arm both sides in a conflict and lament violence. We ignore children of poverty as they drop out or barely graduate from failing schools with little to look forward to: minimum wage dead end jobs or drugs, gangs, and prison. We should be perfectly clear about the connection between lack of access to quality education, poverty and consignment to a life of limited opportunity and vulnerability to a culture of violence. The current strategy of the opposition—any opposition is to be opposed to everything and not for anything. And to just keep shouting, blaming, accusing, throwing dirt, pointing the finger, until there is nothing left to stand: no idea worth believing in, no legislation for the common good, no person worthy of respect or a piece of work on the public payroll. Too much of our mainstream media foments irresponsible and distorted “debate” while secretly cheering a rise in the ratings and corporate profit and the creation and celebration of their own stars. But of course we have to look at ourselves, not others. Jesus died from violence, state sponsored violence, the violence of religious leaders gone bad; the violence of a crowd that couldn’t tell the difference between a rebel and the Prince of Peace. When we say and do essentially nothing in the face of evil, when eight children a day every day of every year are killed by gun violence while our citizens waste time and energy on little that matters. When we are distracted by bigger cars and houses, fancier phones and reality TV—big losers, survivors, singing idols, celebrity dancers, bachelors, millionaires and rappers and rockers looking for love—parts one, two and three—when attention to this foolishness crowds out attentiveness to the wounds of the world— Jesus is crucified among us. Our way, the way of Jesus is sober and serious; Jesus is about love excluding the lust that’s overtaken our culture, Jesus is about light banishing the darkness into which the ugly matters of our world have been crowded—out of sight out of mind. Jesus is about wisdom over the folly that passes for truth—just repeating an untruth often enough will not make it true or right. “A lie is not a version of the truth, it’s just a lie” (I read somewhere). There are far too many lies in our society masquerading as versions of the truth. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” I confess I cannot fathom the precedence of the right of an individual to own a gun over the welfare, the lives, of thousands and thousands of our citizens, many of them children each one of them created in the very image of God, who are slaughtered every day because even our constitution gives them that right—in the highly politicized machinations of the Supreme Court. I cannot fathom our docility as a church, as a Council in the face of this ordered slaughter. I cannot fathom our blindness to the blood on our hands as Christians and as citizens of this nation. Our practices are uncivilized; they make a mockery of our sacred scriptures and our theology. Who are we if we will not make whatever sacrifice is required to save our children? Christians cannot accept as inevitable genocide, or the poverty that kills, or the willful disregard for God’s earth, or the murder of the innocents by the loose laws which govern the sale of guns in our society or so many other versions of the truth that have reduced us to thinking that the kind of fundamental change required for us today is simply “unrealistic.” One of the most effective lobbies in the country is the National Rifle Association. They don’t march, they don’t demonstrate, sit-in, get arrested. They spend money and they know people—your congressional representatives and mine and they are effective; they are known and feared by those who vote in Washington. Responsible, obedient, Christian witness today requires action on this matter of life and death. A Christian today has to know her representatives in the congress, and perhaps be known by those representatives; has to be in communication with them by letter, or phone, or email, or in person; one or all of the above. Our representatives need to know that their service on our behalf requires their tireless efforts to enact legislation that reduces death by gun violence to the levels that exist in other civilized nations of whatever size. You know how many children in Japan are killed by gun violence in an average year? None. The number of deaths by gun violence does not exceed 200 per year in any industrialized western nation. In the U.S. that number is now between 30,000 and 40,000. God bless America? We need effective Christianity. We have our Washington offices, a structure for engagement. But we don’t really deliver when it counts. I’m going to die a child of the sixties. So you know what I want. I want millions of us, and our interfaith allies, young and old, men and women overrunning the capitol and demanding change, saving our own lives. Let’s threaten our elected officials with a love that will not let them go until they vote for sane gun laws that protect citizens and end the tyranny of mass killings, and thousands of accidental deaths because guns are convenient. But of course there are other ways. Heeding God’s Call, an ecumenical and interfaith organization closed one gun shop in Philadelphia last January in conjunction with the gathering for peace. That works for me. Let’s one by one put the shops out of business that are known to subvert the laws and whose practices are in effect arming drug cartels, organized crime and the all too frequent purveyor of mass killings. Think about last week: there was the Fr. Hood tragedy and the execution of the “DC Sniper.” Is this who we want to be as a nation? We can do better. We can be better. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” John 14:27. “…they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more…” Micah 4:3 “The world began without the human race and will certainly end without it,” wrote the French philosopher, anthropologist, and writer Claude Levi-Strauss who died at 100 a few weeks ago. For the love of God in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can’t we do something about guns and the violence they cause before there is noting of us left on earth?
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Editor's note. The Rev. Michael Livingston, former President of the National
Council of Churches and executive director of the International Council of
Community Churches, made the following statement during a panel presentation
on fire arms control at the 2009 General Assembly in Minneapolis.