On an episode recorded this summer, Dan and Brad discuss why American evangelicals bow before the idol of handheld killing machines. They talk about the symbolism involved, the American exceptionalism it invokes, and what to do about it.
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I'm associate professor of religious studies at Skidmore College.
And as always, I'm here with my co-host, Dan Miller, I am Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought here at Landmark College in Vermont.
I am recording today from WLMC, Landmark College Radio.
Brad is joining us from sunny California where he's on sabbatical.
Our theme today is God and guns, evangelicals and gun culture.
And as we record this, we record these, we post them later, we are in the immediate aftermath, just the past couple days ago from when we're recording this, of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
As we were talking about this, one of the things that is sort of most demoralizing is really the word that I have for it, about This topic is that no matter when we air this, no matter when we post this, no matter when we decide to post the episode about evangelicals and gun culture, American society is such that there will just have been a mass shooting.
There are dozens of them every year.
It's a uniquely American phenomenon.
As we'll talk about today, this is one area where there is a sense of American exceptionalism in not a good way.
And so that's our theme for today.
And unfortunately, given what just happened, it's really, really fitting And I wanted to start with sort of a reflection that I have on this.
A while back when we were doing the podcast, I was invited to go and speak to a group of progressive clergy in Massachusetts, and a few of these people have some background in evangelicalism, most don't, and they just were curious about evangelicalism and politics and so forth, and they invited me to come and we were just talking about this, and one of them said, what is up with evangelicals and gun rights?
He's like, opposition to abortion?
I can get it.
I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.
Opposition to the LGBTQ community and their equality?
I don't accept it, but I can make sense of it.
But these are people who say they're biblical literalists.
They're people who say that they take the teachings of Jesus literally, and that it's the most authoritative thing in their life, and I just don't see how you get from that to this kind of radical gun culture that is very much part of white American evangelicalism.
And so Brad, I know that you have taught about this specifically, you've brought this up in your classes, you've got a lot of information on this.
So I want to just throw it to you to start our conversation.
What is up with God and guns?
Yeah, you know, I think you said it really well, Dan, that, you know, we can post this now, which is a couple days after the Dayton and El Paso shootings.
I'm on sabbatical in the Bay Area in California.
I I was actually planning to go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival and didn't go, but there was a mass shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival just a couple weeks ago.
And so it really is tragic to think that no matter when this episode goes on, we will be only a few days from a mass shooting.
I mean, it's really hard to put into words that that's the kind of society we live in.
I mean, I posted last night that You know, if you're one of my friends from another country, and you're thinking about coming to visit here, you should maybe think twice about it, because no matter where you go in public in this country, there is the threat of gun violence.
That's not, that's a description.
That's not a left-right Democrat-Republican statement.
That's a fact.
Yes, it's not.
No matter where you go.
It's not a hyperbolic statement, right?
I think there was a time when it might have been, but it feels like it's no longer a hyperbolic statement.
School, daycare, Walmart, food festival, church, it just doesn't seem to matter anymore.
So, however, let's talk about this, and white evangelicals.
According to a 2013 PRI poll, most Americans who belong to a major religious group favor stricter gun laws, okay?
So, black Protestants, 76% support stronger gun laws.
Catholics, two-thirds.
White mainline or liberal Protestants, some of the folks that you would have been hanging out with, Dan, over half, so 57 percent.
However, when you get to evangelicals, it drops way down, right?
You get down into the 30s, 30th percentile.
As with their support for Trump, white evangelicals are the religious group in the country most likely to cling to their guns.
I mean, they're the ones who are really against gun control and who really sort of claim the Second Amendment in ways that their religious counterparts don't do.
This lines up with some of the teachings and statements from very prominent evangelical leaders.
So a couple years ago, December 6, 2015, Jerry Falwell Jr.
at the Convocation for Liberty University, where he's the president, Um, was talking about the shooting in San Bernardino.
And here's what he said.
If more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.
Um, he later said, talked about how he was carrying a weapon in his back pocket right now.
And he concluded by saying, let's teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.
So you can hear in those words, a full throated endorsement for the use of firearms.
Full-throated endorsement for people carrying firearms in public and a full-throated endorsement for using those firearms on other human beings if they need to.
Okay.
Franklin Graham, someone we've talked about on this podcast quite a bit, got really upset with Cory Booker about a year ago because Cory Booker said, you know, Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey said, thoughts and prayers are useless in the wake of national tragedies like mass shootings.
And here's what Graham said.
In response, God hears prayer.
He understands prayer.
You can take all the guns in the world and collect them.
People are still going to murder.
People are still going to kill.
He went on to sort of defend the right to bear arms.
He's also somebody who's appeared at NRA meetings and prayed for NRA convocations and assemblies.
And so we see in Graham and Falwell a kind of representation of the evangelical kind of like Endorsement of firearms and guns.
One of the things that we've talked about, Dan, before I get into some other facts and issues, is this is something that is unique to American evangelicals.
So if we look at conservative Christians across the world, they don't really have this fascination with guns.
Like, both you and I hung out in England when we went to grad school there with quite a few conservative Christians in the communities we were part of, and they were pretty, like, Confused about the fact that their counterparts in the United States were so into guns.
I mean, is that your experience?
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