Ep. 373 William J. Kole - Gun Violence Must End: Evangelical Gun Culture and the Nonviolent Way of Jesus

Journalist and author William J. Kole joins me to unpack the deep and often hidden ties between white evangelicalism, politics, fear, and America’s gun culture. Drawing from his new book In Guns We Trust, Bill shares how his own ministry collided with concealed weapons, why fear has shaped so much of the church’s response to gun violence, and how Christian nationalism and the idolizing of the Second Amendment have influenced our national crisis. We talk about the shift from historic Christian nonviolence to the embrace of firearms, the political power that keeps common-sense reforms stalled, and what other countries have done to reduce mass shootings. We also explore why “thoughts and prayers” aren’t enough and what a truly pro-life ethic demands of us today. If you long to break cycles of violence and return to the nonviolent way of Jesus, this is an essential and challenging conversation.

William J. Kole is a veteran journalist and a former foreign correspondent who has reported from North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. As Vienna bureau chief for The Associated Press, he wrote extensively on the nexus of crime, the weapons trade, arms trafficking and terrorism across Eastern Europe.

His evangelical credentials are as extensive as his journalistic ones: He’s a former lay missionary for the Assemblies of God, a worship leader at evangelical churches in Europe and around his native New England, and served as board president of Dorcas USA, an international Christian relief and development agency.

Kole was AP’s New England bureau chief when a gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle massacred 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Earlier in his career, he was a lead writer on the car crash that killed Britain’s Princess Diana, and he also covered the arrest of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the death of Pope John Paul II, and Kosovo’s independence. His many awards include one from the Society of American Business Editors & Writers for an investigation into the exploitation of undocumented immigrants by the Walmart retail chain.

Kole, who speaks French, Dutch and German, studied journalism at Boston University and was a journalism fellow at Columbia University in New York and the National Press Foundation in Washington, D.C. Now an editor for Axios, he lives in Providence, R.I., and Paris.

Bill's Book:

In Guns We Trust

Bill's Recommendation:

Jesus and John Wayne

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Transcript

William J. Kole: 0:31

And we actually have what, what boils down to gun idolatry in white evangelical circles, you know, where people are, are trusting more in their in their firearm than they are in Jesus.

Joshua Johnson: 0:54

You Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, in this episode, I sit down with journalist and author William J Cole to explore how white evangelicalism, politics and fear became intertwined with America's gun culture. His book in guns we trust reveals a story many of us have lived inside without fully seeing how a faith centered on the Prince of Peace drifted toward firearms and fear driven narratives. Bill shares how his own ministry first collided with concealed weapons, the historical shifts that moved Christians away from non violence and why fear has become such a powerful force in our churches and in our politics. We talk about Christian nationalism, the idolizing of the Second Amendment and the resistance to common sense gun reforms that most Christians actually want we also look at how other countries have successfully reduced mass shootings, why thoughts and prayers can't be the end of our response, and what a truly pro life ethic requires of us today. So if you care about breaking cycles of violence and following Jesus in a way that reflects his love, courage and peace, this conversation is worth your time, so join us. Here is my conversation with Bill Cole bill, welcome to shifting culture. Honor to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thanks Josh for having me. I'm thrilled we're going to be talking about guns today and the what you call the unholy trinity of white evangelicals, politics and firearms in your new book in guns we trust. This is a book that made me angry, as we in the white evangelical space have really been complicit in gun violence because of our embrace of gun culture, you have a story of merging evangelical faith into missionary work. You're a journalist. Have been around the world as a foreign correspondent. You've covered gun violence as well as a journalist, how has? How's these things as a journalist, your evangelical faith in your life, how they merged together to come into this moment.

Unknown: 3:14

Oh, man, I'm not sure that they've merged so much as they have collided within my soul. And I really honestly, in all transparency, I can no longer, in good faith and in good conscience identify as an evangelical. I am very much an ex angelical. I am also very much a Jesus follower and someone who finds faith, you know, even more important it to me than when I started this investigation, in some ways. But yeah, I've everything I everything that Christianity promised me when I first believed it. This feels like a betrayal of all the beauty and joy and purity of my faith, to see Christians, you know, gravitate so strongly to the gun culture and to embrace it, it's just bewildering to me.

Joshua Johnson: 4:03

One of the first stories you talk about is leading worship and people carrying weapons while you're leading worship. Just share that story for a moment to take us into how you actually rubbed up against gun culture in the church.

Unknown: 4:19

Sure, so actually, the incident you mentioned there is kind of what set me on this quest. I was a worship leader at a mega church in Massachusetts when my bass player showed up for rehearsal with a nine millimeter Sig Sauer semi automatic handgun, and it just literally blew my socks off. I mean, I could not wrap my mind around, and then I kind of confronted him and and said, Dude, why? You know we're here, you know, singing and preparing, you know, to lead the congregation on Sunday in worship of the Prince of Peace, and you're carrying this semi automatic weapon. It was the first time it kind of like my proverbial scales fell off my eyes. I realized that this was actually commonplace. I didn't know. And I've had, you know, 35 years of experience with evangelical Christianity, and I quickly learned that many, many people were carrying weapons, including even to church on Sundays.

Joshua Johnson: 5:21

Let's get into some of the factors, like, how did this start to happen? What were the factors on the fusion of gun culture and. And white evangelicalism,

Unknown: 5:33

it's really fascinating to me, because up until, you know, the late 1960s or so, most denominations were officially pacifist. And of course, we understand as Christians that that Christianity is, I think, anyway, objectively non violent. You know, it's really not up for debate, right? I mean, we see the person of Jesus Christ compelling us to turn the other cheek. He laid down His life. He could have called it legion of angels, you know, with swords. That era's version of the AR 15, if you will, you know, and he didn't do that, you know? I mean, it's so there's that, right? But something shifted in the late 1960s when evangelicals, white evangelicals, to be more specific, kind of realized that they had political power. And up until then, you know, they were kind of doing their thing out of sight of the general culture, and sort of found a voice. You know, this all coincided with desegregation in the United States as well, which is not a, not a great and beautiful beginning for a faith movement to find its political voice. But that's what we had, you know? I mean, we had white Christians who were really not that happy about ending segregation in the United States. But rather than coalesce around around a platform that problematic. They sort of latched on to some other issues, abortion and gun rights. And all of this was started to be reframed as, you know, issues of religious freedom, and then again, superimposed over all of that was challenges to prayer in the public schools, which kind of roused many white evangelicals and the rise of powerful, vocal televangelists like Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority movement and even Billy Graham, who, you know, is a beloved figure, right to many of us, kind of led the charge into, you know, getting evangelicals to Vote and to, you know, become kingmakers in elections,

Joshua Johnson: 7:34

if you're looking at their political power, that's, that's one of them. There any other factors, as you've looked at

Unknown: 7:42

it, absolutely and I think the thread that runs through all of this is what I call the fear factor. And I devote much of the book to sort of unpacking that, this idea that they are out to get us right. And again, I've been a evangelical Christian, Christian for a long time. I never quite worked out who they were. But, you know, to the to the evangelical mindset, there is this menace in in society where, you know, there's this idea that that a hostile culture is is out to get them out to to take their Bibles away, and, more recently, out to grab their guns. And this is a very potent, although false narrative that you know, drives gun sales. Frankly, I mean, the gun industry in the United States is a $9 billion a year, largely unregulated industry also, and we can maybe talk about this a little bit later, but also an industry in which white evangelical Christians play an outsized role running a lot of these companies. There's a lot of ugly stuff going through here, a rather bewildering fusion of faith and firearms that that just doesn't seem consistent with the Christian gospel.

Joshua Johnson: 8:57

It's not just as an anecdote from my own life is I lived in the Middle East for for five years, and so I'm in the middle of of a place where there's there's war on all sides. I'm living in Jordan. So there's war in Syria, you know, right now there's war ISRAEL PALESTINE, there's, you know, we have war surrounding us. Refugees are coming in. I'm doing some refugee work, but I feel safer there than I do in the United States where I live, and it's just and as soon as I moved back into the US, I felt a spirit of fear, like it was a different spirit that was over the country. It was, this is what we swim in. It feels like just the water that we swim in, or the air that we breathe, is fear. Where do you think fear, specifically in the United States, comes in, as you say in your book, hey, these mass shootings has happened around the world. People have said, Let's stand up, stop these things. They've had actually enacted some some good gun policies that have stopped a lot of these mass shootings. Why do you think this culture of fear really propagates in the United States?

Unknown: 10:17

It's difficult to figure out honestly, because again, when you start to dig into this fear, you come up with chimeras and, you know, and vapors. You don't really find substantive reasons to be afraid. Look, there. Are around 60 million white evangelicals in the United States. They are a potent force. They are also enjoying incredible privilege, politically, culturally, and to some extent economically as well, right? So of all the people, of all of the citizens of the United States, they are, arguably, they should be the ones who are least afraid, right? And instead, they are very afraid. And again, this is sort of mushroomed with the ascendance of Christian nationalism in this country, which just a few years ago was a fringe ideology, and now it's mainstream, right? And we see members of the President's Cabinet who are unapologetic Christian nationalists. And part of you know there's a reason, again, why white evangelicals are so drawn to qanon conspiracies and things like this, right? The idea that there's a secret cabal of leftist Marxist leaders who are conspiring against the rest of the US population, and it's a and they're all pedophiles. I mean, this stuff is, is, is crazy town. It really is, and it really makes me angry, you know, but, but, you know, it persists nonetheless, and it's hard to figure out why. I just think there has been, historically, this kind of circling of the wagons, if you will, among white evangelicals, who are, you know, determined to protect their way of life. And lastly, there is, has always been sort of this patriarchal streak throughout white evangelicalism, where, you know, men particularly, are to protect their wives and children at all costs, and the gun has just really become front and center in that

Joshua Johnson: 12:15

Christians in the United States primarily moved from pacifists into embracing of firearms. That shift. When I look at Jesus, that's why I see non violence. That's what we've we've said before. How does, how does something like that really take place? Moving from like pacifism into embracing of firearms,

Unknown: 12:39

there were incredible shifts, really, arguably, seismic shifts in faith communities around these issues in the 60s and the 70s, when we got involved in Vietnam, up till then, you know, there had been some pretty open debate within many evangelical circles about whether even the concept of just war was sound. The idea, in other words, that, yeah, there may be times, although we are predominantly embracing non violence and passivism, there may be times when force is justified, okay? And the classic example was Hitler's Germany when, you know, we, we had to, you know, stop the Holocaust and stop, stop this guy. Before then, there were entire denominations that wouldn't budge on on the idea of a just war doctrine, and so committed were they to the tenets of non violence within the bedrock of Christianity, you know, and that really started to fragment as, again, you know the old saying, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As as Christians found their voice in the public square and realized that, you know, they could elect presidents and Reagan was, you know, their first prize. You know, they and Trump. Now, of course, you know, white evangelicals are the base of Maga and Trump world. You know, I think, I think that what I see, anyway, from talking with dozens of people across evangelical Christianity around the gun question, is this idea that you know, no, this is our time you know, and our time we need to seize it with both hands. And if that means we need to be armed, then we will be armed and and this is really, really troubling to me, if we sense or feel that we really, actually need to use our weapons against a government that we perceive as hostile to us in our way of life, we are more than ready to use those weapons, you know. So I think that this is really kind of developing into a perfect storm, and anyone who cares about about democracy and and about Christianity ought to be troubled. I certainly am so.

Joshua Johnson: 15:37

Is there any nuance in the second amendment that would say, hey, maybe we should do something different with this gun culture in America. It I mean, it seems like the Second Amendment has become like scripture for most conservative evangelicals. Is there any nuance? There? Is there something to like common sense gun reform. Is that possible with something like the Second Amendment? Yeah.

Unknown: 16:04

I mean, there's look John Paul Stevens, before he, you know, stepped down from the Supreme Court, and a year before his death, actually said that he felt that the Second Amendment was one of the greatest frauds perpetrated upon. The American citizenry, and that if, if it could be done over, it should never have, you know, been part of the constitution. So, you know, there's, that's a very, very provocative, uh, statement, right? You know, we scholars have debated for for decades, uh, centuries, really, about the the well regulated militia. We look clearly, our forefathers wanted the citizenry to be armed, but we, let's put this in perspective, can't we? That, you know? I mean, they, you know, we were facing, you know, we were fighting for our independence from Britain. We were trying to make our way in a new country. And you know, we were also, you know, using muskets and powder and you know, which took a couple of minutes to reload after each shot, the Second Amendment did, never, it never, never envisioned an AR 15 military style assault rifle, you know. And you will never win that argument with me, that that you know, that those kinds of weapons belong in civilian hands. I just, I'm not buying I'm just not buying it. And, and, you know, and you know, Josh the AR 15 is actually the weapon of choice in in America today, and and among evangelical Christians who are buying them some families more than one. And it's, it's like, somebody told me, it's like the Ford f1 50 pickup of firearms, you know, it's just sort of like the gun you know that you got, you got to have. Okay, so look, part of my writing this book was to pull back the curtain on what I see as evangelical complicity and hypocrisy in our gun crisis. But the other part of writing the book was to sort of like a prophetic lament, almost to the church, to say, Look, can we please rethink this? Is this really who we want to be? Is this who Jesus wants us to be? Fear is the antithesis of faith, right? I mean, if you have, if you're a person of faith, you should not be a fearful person, you know? I mean, these two things are like oil and water, and so I feel like we've really betrayed some of our the basic aspects of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ when we cling to guns and gun culture.

Joshua Johnson: 18:28

I think that quote that you you just said, is that AR fifteens are more common than Ford f1 50s that came from some evangelicals that own a gun manufacturing plant, I think, is that? Yes, correct? Yes, that was right. In that and that section that I was right, I was indeed. So let's go into that. As evangelicals are, there's a, I don't know, there's a myriad of gun manufacturers that are owned by evangelicals that have actually then put bible verses on their automatic weapons, which is kind of strange, as you were starting to do this, this work and interviewing them, what were some of the justifications that you have found for the Evangelicals actually Owning gun manufacturers and giving out selling a bunch of guns to the public.

Unknown: 19:22

So again, and you alluded to this a moment ago, Josh that for many evangelicals, the Second Amendment is like scripture. It's they see it as breathed by God. So so anything around guns and gun freedoms is actually seen as righteous and very much within God's will for us as a people and for us as individuals. So all that they frame it that way. And it's important to keep that in mind. Most of the evangelical gun companies, I reached out to many of them, and almost all of them shut me down. They didn't want to talk. I was able to go down to Indiana and speak with with one company called FOSS tech, and it's owned by some brothers and cousins who are all white evangelicals. I'll be honest. I flew down there, got in my rental car, and before I even hopped out to, you know, Buzz the buzzer at the factory, I kind of had it, had them figured out in my mind, you know, I wanted them to be memes. I wanted them to be caricatures, good old boys, you know. And they weren't. They were extremely thoughtful men, and we had an incredible conversation where they really unpacked, you know, their justification for putting these weapons in civilian hands, and a key value for them is family. And so, you know, again, they want to give people the tools they need to defend their families in a in a society that, you know, yeah, does have crime. That's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down, because crime is down, right? Crime is way down in American cities and and the President is, is just false. Has, again, a false narrative that he's using to justify sending National Guard troops into cities that you know, where murder and other violent crime is way down, but you know, they wanted to produce these weapons for people to have, you know, to protect, protect their lives. Lives and property. Should they be menaced in any way again? That's, that's a noble thing. I mean, I, you know, I don't think anyone would want, you know, their their family, to be victimized without having, you know, without doing something about it. But there's this overwhelming feeling as well that we might be called upon to use our arms, to take up arms against the government. You know, this was, this is part of the of the Second Amendment, this idea that, you know, there's a, kind of a hidden army within the United States to make sure that, you know, we don't have tyranny. All right, so let's unpack that for a second, right? I mean, so, so let's make, let's assume that everybody in the country has an AR 15, okay, the government has nukes, attack helicopters, submarines, tanks, you know, drones. I mean, the list goes on and on. Do you really think that with even with your AR 15 military style assault rifle, that you're going to defend yourself against a government with all those tools at its disposal? It breaks the logic just escapes me here, you know, and what we're left with is a is an evangelical embrace of guns as the answer to our gun crisis. In other words, we have a gun crisis. We need more guns. How are we ever going to get out of this vicious cycle if we, if we don't break that way of thinking,

Joshua Johnson: 22:36

as we see gun violence, and we see mass shootings a lot. I don't even know how many mass shootings we've already had this year in America, but it's in the hundreds. It's a lot of mass shootings. In the most horrific mass shootings, what I see is a lot of people have the argument, well, guns don't kill people. People kill people. So don't worry about the gun issue. It's not the guns. It's the people we need to work on mental health or something else. It's not the guns that's a big thing. And then another thing from a lot of the evangelical church is a thoughts and prayers are going out. There's no really action to the prayer is just thoughts and prayers to the community. What would you say to both of those things? Thoughts and prayers to the community, and guns don't kill people. People. Kill people, right?

Unknown: 23:30

So to the to the first point that guns don't kill people, okay, sure, but you know, we are awash in weapons. We've got more guns than citizens in the United States, we don't. We have so many guns. We don't even know how many guns we have. It's hard. Somewhere north of 400 million guns in this country. There's, there's a in Switzerland, in Switzerland, there's a, there's a group called the small arms survey, which does excellent and very accurate work looking at gun culture globally, the most recent survey shows that we have 120 firearms for every 100 citizens, which puts us way, way at the top of the international rankings. The next country is the Falkland Islands, which has 62 firearms for every 100 citizens. So we're like, double, you know, the next on the list, you know, look like you. I've worked and lived internationally. I actually spent the better part of 20 years as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Europe. I also worked in Africa and the Middle East on assignment. You just don't find this kind of gun violence anywhere else in the world, not even in places like Gaza. I mean, you know, really, I mean, people are not, you know, killing each other. Like, obviously, there's war, you know, and there's, you know, there, but, but, yeah, but you know, it just doesn't happen. And you know, mental health is always raised as an issue. I'm not going to deny that. Of course, some some shooters may be mentally ill. That that's that's quite possible. But again, mental illness occurs in every country of the world. You know, we don't have a, you know, we don't corner the market on on psychiatric, you know, disorders and and yet again, they don't have these kinds of of shootings. And this frequency where we actually have more mass shootings in the United States than we have days of the year. In fact, it just before covid, we had twice as many mass shootings as days of the year. You know, it was, it was up in the 600 high six hundreds. You know, a mass shooting for our purposes, by the way, for our listeners, is generally defined as a shooting in which at least four people are injured or killed, not counting the shooter. So that's sort of the benchmark, right? So look, we guns are within easy reach in this country, and that's what's driving our our uniquely American gun scourge. And then to your second question about thoughts and prayers. Look, I'm a, you know, I'm a Jesus follower, I I'm a thinking person, and I pray, right? So I send thoughts and prayers all the time, right? It's part of what we call being you. Know, it's empathy, it's, it's compassion. There's nothing wrong with thoughts and prayers. Okay, where it becomes problematic is we're when we stop and when, when we allow our thoughts and prayers to absolve us of any concrete action. And that's exactly what we've done in this country. You know, I was the AP bureau chief for New England when, when a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and and turned it into a killing field. And we all thought that that would be like this transcendent moment when everything would change, when we would finally reclaim our collective sanity and do something concrete. And there was for, you know, a few days, maybe a week, there was this sort of sense of hope and, and it just dissolved, right? We just never could get off of of, get anywhere practical on this issue, and, and so, yeah, thoughts and prayers in this context are pretty useless honestly, you know. And when you talk to people who have had their families touched by gun violence, they get pretty cynical about thoughts and prayers, because they, you know, they don't want to hear it all right. They want to see real action. So, oh, one and one other thought then, well, just to, just to complete that, the circle on that. So evangelicals, again, I've been asked, Why are you picking on evangelicals, you know, first, first of all, they're my, my former tribe. I love them, you know. And I feel, I feel entitled and qualified to sort of, you know, address what I see as their shortcomings. Because I was in that movement big time, for a long time. The biggest problem here in the complicity is that being such a persuasive and powerful political group, they actually could stop gun violence tomorrow by siding with gun violence, you know, prevention activists and you know by actually embracing their pro life stance to extend that to to gun violence, and instead, they elect like minded people to Governor's offices and state legislatures and Congress and and so that's where that that's actually the biggest problem, right is that they're they're perpetuating our crisis by Not allowing our elected representatives to carry out the common sense reforms that most of us say we want.

Joshua Johnson: 28:42

I do believe that a pro life stand should be pro all of life, and not just pro life in the womb, but pro all of life. So that needs to happen, but we have seen in other countries that mass shootings have happened then they actually do pass some common sense gun reform, and it's helpful. As you've went around the world and you've researched, what did you find other countries implement and do to actually negate some of this, these mass shootings, from happening, I'm

Unknown: 29:13

so I'm so glad you you brought that up because, you know, we we tend to have this sense of fatalism about the gun violence crisis in the United States. We feel like we can't do anything about it. We're just, you know, we can actually and other countries have so, notably, Australia, in 1996 had a horrible bloodbath in Port Arthur, where a gunman over over a period of, like, a couple of days, just, you know, walked around, you know, indiscriminately, shooting and killing people, and it would so scandalize the country that very quickly they were able to enact laws restricting access to, you know, most firearms, so by the general public, and with, With very few exceptions have had any kind of a repeat like that. You know, since then, and New Zealand, just a few years ago, had had these shootings at some mosques that were horrible with a great loss of life and took decisive action, kind of borrowing from the Australian playbook, you know, restricting access to automatic weapons and semi automatic weapons, and greatly tightening up, you know, on on, on, all of that. And they've had success with, you know, removing gun violence from from their their, you know, lists of societal ills. For the book, I went to the UK, to Scotland, where the little town of Dunblane had its own version of Sandy Hook in also 1996 the same year as Australia had its troubles, they lost 16 primary school students and their teacher who died trying to protect them. And again, they were so scandalized and so struck by this senseless act that within days, a grassroots movement built, and it became so persuasive and so energetic that even, you know, members of parliament jumped on and and they again, they were able to actually enact common sense legislation restrict access to these kinds of weapons. And, you know. They have not had a mass shooting in the United Kingdom since then. That was almost next year. That will be 30 years, right, since that horrible thing happened. So you can't tell me that it can't be done. You know, yes, we have a second amendment in, you know, to our Constitution, but you know, who's to say we can't, you know, work with that and pass laws that will at least get the, you know, the military style weapons off the streets. We have surveys that show consistently that a massive plurality of Americans want a ban on military style assault rifles. We're talking about, you know, north of 80% of Americans want this. Isn't that a, you know, in a democracy, isn't that an imperative? Isn't that, you know, aren't we supposed to, you know, do what the people want. So I think, you know, we can do this. We have a huge, lucrative gun industry and a powerful gun lobby, and we need to overcome those things somehow.

Joshua Johnson: 32:16

Is there anything moving the needle in America right now. Have you found, found people? And I know there's some places in your book that there are people trying to do something. One, are You, you actually go and visit some, some gun buyback places? Do you think it's making a difference? Is there anything making a difference right now? Is it helping?

Unknown: 32:37

I think it is, I think, unfortunately, it's, it's small scale, you know, we are putting somewhere around 37,000 weapons a day into the marketplace, you know. I mean, it's, and, you know, the numbers of guns we're taking off the streets are, you know, a tiny fraction of that. So it feels a little futile. But I think anything that you know that gets any guns off the streets is a great thing. Let's keep in mind too. Let me just interject here, because we're we've been talking mostly about mass shootings and mass casualty events, and we have a lot of those. But the greatest by far, the greatest number of gun deaths are suicides, and so again, I appeal to my evangelical brothers and sisters, if you care about life, if you really care about about life, you'll care about this. You know that this is something that NRA doesn't want you to know, but your home becomes less safe, not more safe, the moment you bring a gun inside. And I'll circle back to the to the good stuff that's happening in a second, but I just wanted to interject that here, because I think it's important, right? We're running around 47,000 gun deaths a year, and about 27,000 of those are suicides. So if there's a gun in your home and you're going through a bit of a crisis, the chances of you succeeding in an attempt are very, very good, unfortunately, with a firearm, right? So there's that. There's also, and this is really disturbing and astonishing to me, but the accidental deaths of children in the United States, guns account for the greatest number of accidental deaths, more than car crashes, actually. So you know, you again, you have a gun in the home, and people you know in order to feel like they have it within easy reach defy common sense and in many cases, safe storage laws and keep that gun loaded on their nightstand or in the, in the, in the little drawer of their nightstand right next to their Bible, right? You know, and that so that gun is loaded and ready, you know, for a home invasion or something like that. That's not how you're supposed to store your weapon, right? It's supposed to be locked up separately from the ammunition that's supposed to be locked up, right? And a kid, you know, a child can can, you know, find your weapon and play with it with it with tragic consequences. And it happens all the time. It's heartbreaking, right? So there's that. And then finally, you know, domestic violence, I mean, when there's a gun in the home and there's a dust up between husband and wife, or, you know, the chances of that becoming a homicide are exponentially greater if there is a gun, and we see this all the time as well. So these are all reasons why, you know, beyond mass shootings, that we need to be invested in trying to, you know, turn the tide here. But yes, there are gun amnesty programs buybacks. There's some beautiful work being done. Shane Claiborne in Philadelphia, who founded Red Letter Christians, and, you know, has also written a book about about gun violence and efforts to end the scourge. Helped found raw tools, which goes around collecting weapons that are turned in, sometimes in in cooperation with police forces who offer, you know, folks to turn turn in their weapons. No questions asked, the people who turn in their weapons get cash or a gift card or a grocery card, whatever, you know, and it's on a sliding scale, it can be a few $100 so for, for, you know, an AR 15 and maybe 200 for a rifle, you know 150 or whatever. For, you know, a handgun, and it's real, it's real cash. Right, you know? And and then they take these they do something beautiful. They they have these portable forges that they heat up to like 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and they beat these guns into garden tools, right? Almost literally beating swords into plowshares, as we see in Isaiah, which I think is, it gives me chills every time I consider that. So there's that. Then there's a few other things, if I may highlight. There are progressive Christians doing a lot of work like this. My favorite example is a group of rogue nuns who are buying stock in gun manufacturing companies, which then gives them the sort of a seat at the table. They, if they buy enough shares, they can introduce shareholder resolutions aimed at, you know, compelling the gun manufacturer to spend more time and treasure on, you know, safety measures for its firearms, or, you know, or and actually persuading them and pressuring them from the inside out to stop marketing weapons to young people, right? Because there's, there's a nexus of, you know, gun, gun violence is glorified in video games, and then sometimes the gun manufacturers, you know, advertise around that. And it's sort of, you know, it's, it's a problem. So I think there's, there's some beautiful work being done. What I'll tell you, Joshua is that i i see evangelicals as mostly invisible in that work it is. It's being done by by progressive Christians who like and I'm a progressive Christian now, right? I was an evangelical. Evangelicals have since told me that I'm no longer a Christian, because I'm not an evangelical anymore, you know, because they own right, because evangelicals own, own own the kingdom, and they decide, you know, who, who gets to to go to Paradise and who doesn't? And apparently, I don't get to go anymore, which is, which is another conversation for another time. But it's, it's, it's, it's pretty damned infuriating from where I sit, you know, as somebody who, deeply loves, you know, but anyway, how

Joshua Johnson: 39:21

do we actually follow Jesus in a way that he talks about in Scripture, the ways and the teachings of Jesus?

Unknown: 39:32

I think there is, I think it's a challenge. I forgive me for being so brash here, but I see incredible arrogance among my evangelical brothers and sisters, some spiritual arrogance which is hard to penetrate. At the same time, evangelicals are not a monolith, any more than any other group, and I was heartened by conversations I had in researching and reporting the book with evangelicals who some are questioning this, you know, fealty to firearms. And I think that some are persuadable, you know, not, not. And first of all, not every evangelical owns a weapon. And even some who do are, you know, persuadable in terms of, gee, do I really need this thing, you know? And I think this is where I you know, in terms of solutions, in terms of hope, work. How can we break this cycle? You know, I kind of lay some of these things out in the book. I don't think that we can solve our gun crisis without intentional conversation with evangelicals. Because, again, of you know, such a central role that they play here. And I think it's tempting to demonize evangelicals on this issue and to isolate them and even to almost ignore them or brush them off, but that's a mistake, because, you know, we have to, we have to dialog with people. I think, I think one, there are two areas we already kind of touched on on one earlier in this conversation, and that is maybe appealing to evangelicals sense of being pro life, of being, of being, you know, of upholding the sanctity of life and and getting them to rethink gun culture, because it, you know, it robs people of life, you know. And that's a persuasive argument that can get some traction. And the other one is, you know, evangelicals are, tend to be scriptural purists. And, you know, take take their Bibles very seriously. And, you know, I think there's an interesting conversation that can be had with folks around juxtaposing the Second Amendment and the second commandment, you know, the second commandment is that we don't have idols, you know. And we actually have what, what boils down to gun idolatry in white evangelical circles, you know, where people are, are trusting more in their in their firearm than they are in Jesus and and that's so the you know, that's problematic. But I think, you know, again, that could, I don't think that evangelicals have always framed it or looked at it that way, and that, you know, I found in some conversations that that gets their attention, you know, like, oh, well, I don't want to, I don't want to do that, but it's, it's hard. It's hard because everyone is just so dug in here, you know. And I guess that's probably. The sort of our cultural moment, our political moment, not just on guns, but on everything.

Joshua Johnson: 42:23

I mean, it feels like everybody's dug in their position, and they are like, I'm just not going to be swayed the other way. We're not going to talk anymore. And when we talk, it's just It delves into just a shouting match and arguing and, you know, so we're not actually listening to each other anymore. So we actually need to hear each other have a conversation like a real conversation, and not just talk at each other. I hope that happens. What is your hope for this book in guns we trust? What do you want? As if you talk to your readers, you talk to the United States in particular. What do you hope for this?

Unknown: 43:03

Well, again, first, I really felt like I needed to pull back the curtain on what's really going on here, because the evangelical complicity in our gun crisis is profound, and I don't think a lot of people realize it. You know, I've never, I've never suggested for a moment that evangelicals are shooting up the country. That's not what this is about, you know. And I think again, the great majority of gun owners, evangelical or otherwise, are responsible people. But it feels to me like, if you are a person of faith, that you're going to, you know, want to be invested in making, you know, society a better place. Christians were at the forefront of some, you know, some of our greatest social ills. I'm thinking particularly of child labor, where Christians, you know, largely took the lead on that issue. And, you know, and, and that was a horrible thing for decades, for centuries. And so I think, you know, I was talking with somebody the other day, and I maybe this was a little snarky of me, but I I suggested that, you know, if you're going to be a person of faith, maybe you ought to take the spiritual equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath above all, do no harm, right? So I think this is my so for the general public, I want to pull back the curtain show them evangelicals are really all up in this mess, you know, and they're blocking progress for the rest of us, and so arguably, they're making the country less safe for the rest of us by propagating this gun culture, just by virtue of their numbers and their and their the way they look at the second amendment and and the way they look At guns, but also to just sort of hold out an olive branch to my former faith tribe and and say, can we just talk about this? Because whatever we're doing now, it's just not working, and maybe together, we can find a way forward that that actually values life and honors God.

Joshua Johnson: 44:57

I hope so. I really do couple quick questions I have for you here at the end Bill one, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Unknown: 45:06

Well, honestly, I, you know, I was, I came to faith when I was hitchhiking home from college and an evangelical picked me up, a progressive Christian, a new friend and ally on this gun issue, actually told me the other day. She said, Gosh, I wish I was the one who had picked you up when you were hitchhiking, so that you could have actually entered, entered a, you know, a branch of Christianity that actually saw working for the common good and trying to be real salt and light in the world as good things and, you know, yeah, so I guess I would, in some ways, I wish that I didn't spend as much time and treasure in evangelical Christianity, because I, you know, as I said at the top, I kind of feel betrayed right now. I'm deconstructing my faith and reconstructing it. I'm committed to reconstructing it. I really am. But I this has kind of rocked my world, personally and spiritually. So I guess, I guess I would, I would have to tell my 21 year old self, hang in there, buddy. You know, I mean it, it's been a bumpy ride. But you know, as long as we still have breath and purpose, we ain't done yet.

Joshua Johnson: 46:17

That's right, anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend,

Unknown: 46:22

well, I mean, if anybody wants to go deeper on this issue, I highly recommend Kristen Kobe Dumais, best selling book Jesus and John Wayne, which really, really traces in excruciating and actually maddening detail. How this, you know, how Jesus came to be viewed as kind of a Rambo slash Marlboro Man, you know, figure, I highly, I highly recommend her, her book, you know, it's, yeah, that really, really, sort of, you know, lays bare how we got away from the person of Jesus that you know, I think a lot of us thought we knew and hardly recognize anymore, in in white Christian nationalist circles

Joshua Johnson: 47:07

and guns we trust, is out anywhere books are sold. Is there anywhere in particular that you'd like to point people to to get the book or to connect with you? Yeah.

Unknown: 47:16

I mean, look that you can get. Anywhere. I always point people to their local independent bookstores, because I think these are treasures in our society. And of course, you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Target, Walmart, all the usual suspects. I'm always a little reluctant to make Jeff Bezos a richer man, so I again, I point folks to their independent bookstores, and there are a lot of public libraries who are putting the book on their shelves, which is very encouraging. I got a chance to speak at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Philadelphia this past summer, and there was great enthusiasm for this title. So I hope you read it, and if you do, please drop a review in Goodreads or on Amazon, because that sort of juices the algorithm to put it in front of more people, and more than anything, more than wanting to sell books, I really want people to own a piece of this fight and And and invest in just trying to turn the corner on this maddening, endless cycle.

Joshua Johnson: 48:23

Well, Bill, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for this book in guns we trust. Thank you for making me angry to move towards something that, hey, I need to actually continue to do something to call out this, these cycles of violence that we have been in, and and say that I I truly believe that the way of love and Jesus and peace is really the only way to break cycles of violence. This is what I've come to like. This is it? It's the actually embodying the ways of Jesus, which is nonviolent, the way of love. And if we could do that, we may actually move the needle and actually see less gun deaths, less deaths in the United States, that we can get rid of all of these, a lot of these guns that we have, and we could actually implement some common sense gun reform in this country, so that we can actually see life in this country, and I don't have to be moved towards fear, to pray for my son and school to be protected every time he goes into school, but I could actually just pray in love and care for the school instead of out of fear. So thank you, Bill. It was a great conversation.

Unknown: 49:34

Great conversation. You know, we don't have to keep living like this, and we don't have to keep dying like this. So thank you for you know, giving me a chance to talk about these issues and God, bless you. You.