Webinar explores gun violence and Christian ethics

LOUISVILLE — During the Office of Public Witness’ new series on gun violence and Christian ethics, which launched via a webinar on Thursday, Dr. Angela Carpenter of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, began her presentation by helping the more than 75 people in attendance think about their fears.

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Specifically, she looked at Luke’s account of Jesus being tested in the wilderness. “I learned this story as a child, and I was always a little confused by it,” Carpenter said. “As a child, I thought, why would it be a sin for Jesus to use his power to get something to eat? Worshiping Satan was not something he would want to do. And casting himself off the temple to summon the angels? It made no sense to me.”

Years later, “I have come to think of this as having profound insight for who we are as human beings,” she said. “The commonality is Jesus is tempted to refuse authentic humanity.”

Carpenter called fear “a paradigmatic sin.” Some of us “erase human vulnerability” by turning to such things as firearms as a means of personal protection. “I do not want to suggest that gun owners are particularly prone to the sin of fear,” she said. Gun ownership is instead “a manifestation of behavior patterns much broader than that.”

In the United States, 40% of adults live in a house with a gun. There are about 378 million guns in circulation, more than one for every adult and child living in this country. Two-thirds of gun owners cite “personal protection” as their reason for owning a gun. Polling from several years ago showed most people owned guns for hunting or for sport, Carpenter said.

Among Christians, 36% of white evangelicals and 35% of white mainline Protestants own a gun, compared to 25% of the general population. Thirty-seven percent of evangelicals favor stricter gun laws, while 48% of mainline Protestants, 64% of Catholics and 76% of Black Protestants favor such laws.

Carpenter then turned her attention to guns, fear and Christian nationalism. She called Christian nationalism “a response to fear,” and cited factors including changing culture, the role of men in society, the number and status of white people, crime that’s real or perceived, and the shortage of resources, including housing and jobs.

Many proponents of Christian nationalism are also strong supporters of the Second Amendment and gun ownership, Carpenter noted. “The notion is that Jesus wants Christians to have cultural, political and violent power,” according to Carpenter, and the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol is a memorable example, “with all sorts of Christian symbols.”

But gun owners and Christian nationalists “do not have a monopoly on fear,” she said. Fear dominates our culture. Social media algorithms heighten people’s fear, she said, and fear is further weaponized by those who seek more political power.

Jesus’ life “displays authentically human love, vulnerable love,” Carpenter said. During his temptation in the wilderness, “he is rejecting the back-up plans that might be available to him. He enters into the full vulnerability of being human.”

Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane — to “remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done” — is the “final rejection of a back-up option,” Carpenter said, quoting this from theologian Herbert McCabe: “When we encounter Jesus, in whatever way we encounter him, he strikes a chord in us; we resonate to him because he shows the humanity that lies more hidden in us — the humanity of which we are afraid. He is the human being that we dare not be. He takes the risks of love which we recognize as risks and so for the most part do not take.”

In addition to our activism in issues including gun violence, “we can try to show what it looks like to love in the midst of fear, to love without back-up plans,” Carpenter said. But many of us see wealth and security “as our back-up plan,” she said. “How can I defend or even join those who are vulnerable if I myself live in relative safety?”

Under a slide labeled “hope of resurrection,” Carpenter had these ideas:

• Jesus’ victory over death and all forces of evil empowers us to resist these forces as well. In fact, the risen Christ is with us as we resist these forces.
• Because this victory is ultimately God’s work, we need not despair at the seemingly insurmountable odds or seek to attain victory through violence or coercion.
• Our losses as vulnerable human beings who love like Jesus will ultimately be overcome when we share in Christ’s resurrected life.

“It’s hard for me to say, ‘you should give up your gun’ when I realize I don’t have any temptation to gun ownership,” Carpenter said, adding she has “ways I don’t love my neighbor in defense of my security.”

She’s recently been impacted by reading James H. Cone, including this quote from “God of the Oppressed”: “If death is the ultimate power and life has no future beyond this world, then the rulers of the state who control the police and the military are indeed our masters.”

During a Q&A session that followed her presentation, Carpenter answered a question about her assessment of current efforts among activists to strengthen laws that can prevent gun violence. “This is not a battle activists seem to be winning,” Carpenter said. “There have been some changes [to state laws] but it doesn’t seem important enough to enter into people’s voting considerations.”

“I think we have a lot of upstream swimming to do culturally,” she said. “That doesn’t mean our participation doesn’t matter.”