The battle to demonize the National Rifle Association became a religious crusade when the Rev. Jim Wallis, CEO of Sojourners and “progressive” spiritual advisor to President Obama, convened some clergy for a witch trial.
As a foreword, if you join the NRA, as about 250,000 folks have done in the past few weeks, you’ll be affirming your support for the Second Amendment, not the Nicene Creed.
Wallis rounded up a posse of fellow progressive clergy for a press conference in Washington, DC on Jan. 15. Their heresy detector spiked after Wayne LaPierre, CEO and Executive Vice President of the NRA, responded to irrational calls to ban so-called “assault weapons,” following the murderous rampage at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn. by a mentally disturbed gunman.
LaPierre called instead for armed guards in schools, saying:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Wallis condemned the statement, as “morally mistaken, theologically dangerous, and religiously repugnant.”
And that was after Wallis and his Sojourners pledged to a “Covenant for Civility” in 2010:
“We pledge to God and to each other that we will lead by example in a country where civil discourse seems to have broken down. We will work to model a better way in how we treat each other in our many faith communities, even across religious and political lines. We will strive to create in our congregations safe and sacred spaces for common prayer and community discussion as we come together to seek God's will for our nation and our world.”
The Rev. Jim should know there’s not a jot or a tittle in the Bible condemning the principle of LaPierrre’s statement as “morally mistaken, theologically dangerous, and religiously repugnant,” which is probably why Wallis didn’t cite Scripture. There are many passages, however, confirming its core truth?killing to protect innocent life is biblically justified. Take the Book of Esther, for example.
In his column, “The NRA’s Dangerous Theology,” two days later, Wallis repeated his rant against the NRA, quoting Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was to no avail, which is why Wallis admittedly added his own special spin to King’s words:
“‘King said ‘people often hate each other because they fear each other, they fear each other because they don’t know each other, they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate, they cannot communicate because they are separated.’ ‘I would add to his words: ‘and in that separation they seek guns.’ ‘As an evangelical Christian, I’m going to make this theological.’”
Wallis missed or ignored that Rev. King was heavily armed, and for good reason. According to Adam Winkler writing for the Huffington Post:
“William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that once, during a visit to King's parsonage, he went to sit down on an armchair in the living room and, to his surprise, almost sat on a loaded gun. Glenn Smiley, an adviser to King, described King's home as ‘an arsenal. … King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama.’”
According to Wallis, LaPierre’s great heresy is classifying people as “good” or “bad” instead of a mixture of both. Actually, it’s much worse. The Lord says, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Thankfully, we are “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Despite our ongoing sinful state, God, unlike Wallis, makes moral and legal distinctions between bad guys who shed innocent blood, and good guys who take them out, condemning the former and commending the latter.
The next time he waxes theological with his White House disciple, Wallis should ask about the Mexican teenagers who were murdered with some of the 2,000 “assault weapons” knowingly placed in the hands of a drug cartel by the Obama administration’s ill-conceived “Fast and Furious” scheme.
Then there’s Obama’s statement from 1999, as recalled by John R. Lott when both were teaching at the University of Chicago: “I don’t think people should be able to own guns.”
Wallis should apply his heresy detector to Obama’s claim to support the individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, a claim belied by his record. As an Illinois state senator, Obama voted twice against the right of Illinois residents to protect themselves against home invasions.
It’s constitutionally comatose politicians, not God, who disarm the innocent, giving bad guys the advantage.
Wallis concludes with his nine-year-old son’s opinion about guns:
“I don’t think that we should just let anybody have any kind of gun and any kind of bullets that they want. That’s pretty crazy.”
Wallis might want to get the opinion of twin nine-year-olds in Georgia whose mother saved them from an intruder by shooting him until her six-shot revolver was empty.
As Jesus said, “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his estate, his possessions are secure.”
It’s the Second Amendment and biblical version of social justice.
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