Should We Encourage People to Bring Their Guns to Worship? Or What Should We Do?

Faith communities are asking how to safely gather for worship in the wake of increasing shootings and bombings. Do we encourage our people to bring guns to worship? Do we hire security teams to guard us? Do we work for peace and justice in the world? Are we called to become places of “sanctuary”?

While some congregations may deny the issue exists, e.g. “That couldn’t happen here in our nice community,” others are becoming preoccupied with security plans: “We have a robust group working with law enforcement, including a fence and cameras.”

We want people--all people--Jews, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and more, to come to their holy places of worship feeling safe and secure. The challenge: Can we be safe inside by daring to go outside? The Gospel for the 2^nd Sunday of Easter showed us the disciples met behind locked doors in fear. Jesus came, stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”  This coming week we hear the disciples went out. Jesus: “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.”

Motive Yes, we need our worshipers’ eyes and ears used for precaution, but also to see the troubled one. How can we know who will enter a house of worship with a gun or bomb? So often we hear, “The motive is unclear.” I think the “motive” will always be unclear. The issues are complex. The person is complex. There are traits and signs, even profiles of a person who commits a shooting, but not just one type of person, or shall we say, stereotype. Each of us has the capacity to hurt, harm, even kill another. There are not “good people with guns” and “bad people with guns.” However, we can have caring concern for those who seem lonely, frustrated, angry, and as a community, reach out to them, not just after a tragedy, but every day. 

Mental Illness  Likewise so often we use the phrase, “A ‘crazed’ person.”  Mental illness is a broad and serious issue in our society to which we need to give much more attention. However, not every person who kills people in a house of worship is mentally ill, nor are all people who are mentally ill dangerous.  Many of us are mentally ill as are our family members and people who are strangers to us. People of faith have a calling to care about everyone with mental illness and to provide more care facilities and health workers.

It Can’t Happen Here  So what about the issue of  “I never thought it could happen here.”? Then where?  I live in a small city in the upper Midwest. After returning from almost every trip to a large city or to a coastal region, someone asks me, “Weren’t you afraid?” I respond, “No.” There are murders in my state, in my town. There is abuse in the homes on my block. We fear “those people” We are plagued with homophobia, anyone not “like me.” I also am capable of fearing and and hating people very near to me who look just like me. So, yes, HERE.

For 12 years our family lived among “others,” in terms of race and economic class. As we became acquainted, as we lived through stressful, and yes, even difficult times, we learned to care and depend upon and love each other. I often felt the most safe among those most different from myself.  Likewise, when traveling in some (even dangerous) places on other continents, I have had experiences of feeling far from home, but the most safe.

Violence and Guns  All of that is not to say danger from shooting and bombings in houses of worship is not real.  It is. I wrote twenty years ago about the rise of terrorism. One lone shooter can kill dozens. One mass shooting can multiply fear a hundredfold. So what should we do? We need welcoming places not to become armed camps. Yes, we need to take reasonable precautions and use safety measures. In this nation of ours we have become wedded to implements of violence as a way to stop violence. Arming parishioners is not the answer.  Encouraging parishioners to bring their guns with them to worship, and, even worse, to encourage them to purchase weapons so they have one to bring, will not make houses of worship more safe. All kinds of studies show how many people are killed in this country on purpose or accidentally with the proliferation of guns. Martin Luther King showed that nonviolence and nonviolent responses are most helpful in the long run in creating a “beloved community.”

A Community of Communities  But what about those most vulnerable? Muslims?  And also Jews?  (The religious right claims there is a war on Christians and encourages the sale of guns.) Rather than increasing this nation’s high rate of gun sales and ownership, we have the opportunity to increase our image in being a community of faith communities.  

Much happened after 9/11 in terms of Christian/Jewish/Muslim dialogues, real efforts to learn about our neighbors’ faith.  But in the recent escalation in the climate of hate, we have grown more dangerous to one another in our speech and in our actions.  We dare not continue on this path or we will simply fear going outside at all. We do not want to fear gathering together with those of our common faith, nor to gather as a pluralistic people. Rather we want to both worship in our sanctuaries and provide sanctuary. More on how to have safe sanctuaries and provide sanctuary in the public world in a blog coming soon.