Shane Clairborne, Christian activist and motivational speaker, and Michael Martin, former Mennonite pastor and founder of RAWtools.com, a company that turns donated weapons into gardening tools, wrote this book about the work they do together. Tired of gun violence in America, the two are traveling the country and speaking out to remind us we are not where we want to be as a country.
Research shows that most Americans already agree with them. Why are our children still dying in mass shootings? We are being help hostage by a profit-making industry that cares little about the lives lost to inadequate gun controls; our “religious right” is actually wrong and has only been mouthing Christianity and not living it; there is a skewed religiosity and a profit motive among preachers and teachers as well, like Jerry Falwell Jr at Liberty University. The words of these two authors reassure me that my reason has not been deceived: I have long thought there is a rot somewhere in traditional religions that is killing the source of our morality.
This long conversational history rounds the bases on reasons we should consider turning our guns into garden tools and shares the sources of the authors’ own decision to spend their energies on this effort. They teach, better than any pastor I’ve heard in many years. They quote the Bible, Jesus, and leaders of nonviolence movements in the past, pointing to the undeniable bottom line that Christians are not meant to arm themselves against those who come to hurt them. They are meant to do as Jesus did during his years on earth: defuse the situation, change the subject, turn the other cheek, and yes, die for one’s beliefs. Because the idea for which he died will never die.
Every few pages, like tombstone markers, pages describe one or another incident of gun violence, naming the victims and reminding us of the circumstances. Most of these twenty or so tombstones are as familiar to us as our own names, horrific and shocking incidences of unnecessary and impersonal violence by people mad with delusion. It is hard to understand how our politicians dare stand in front of us; dare to speak a word to us without offering to protect us by controlling guns.
Shane and Mike have done their research on the NRA, and do not hesitate to point to the ways our nation’s dialogue has been warped by the nominally nonprofit’s profit motive. The NRA boasts some five million members. If we do the math—one-third of 325 million U.S. residents are gun owners—over 90 percent of gun owners are not represented by the NRA. But their lobbying arm keeps politicians flush with cash for their campaigns. This trade-off should be outlawed, but even our courts have refused to look after the people’s interests with regard to this matter.
A chapter detailing “the absurd” of pride in gun ownership recount instances of folly: an instance where a groom posing with a rifle at his wedding accidentally shoots his photographer. Or the Hello Kitty assault rifle handled by a seven-year-old that managed to kill a three-year-old.
In a chapter named “Mythbusting” the authors address things we might be persuaded to believe without evidence, like “Stranger Danger.” Actually, we’re far more likely to be killed by people we know well. Regarding the old standby, “Guns Keep Us Safe,” the argument is so shopworn by now that statistics start to sound like “the absurd” chapter. The men discuss race and guns, veterans and guns, women and guns, and they quote Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court as saying the Second Amendment is “a relic of the 18th century.”
This is a worthwhile book, giving us the language and statistics we will need to surprise our opponents into silence, unable to find a reasonable comeback if we are using logic and not emotion. The U.S. has about 270 million guns in circulation, 42% of guns in the world, or 90 for every 100 people. Forty-four percent of Americans personally know someone who has been shot, accidentally or intentionally. Christians are challenged to explain the fact that 41% of white evangelicals own a gun, compared to 30% of the general population. The authors ridicule the defenses they’ve heard for gun ownership among religious people and point out that Jesus teaches countering aggression with creativity, not submission:
”evil can be opposed without being mirrored…oppressors can be resisted without being emulated…enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.”Finally the authors remind us that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. They explain that “fear not” is the most reiterated commandment n the Bible and that powerful people who are afraid are the most dangerous elements in the world. We really do have more to fear from fear itself. We need courage to stand in front of armed neighbors and say no to guns, but these men are handing us the tools.
Shane Clairborne is a Philadelphian when he’s at home, and is founder of The Simple Way, a social services organization in Philly. He is President of Red Letter Christians, a Christian group which mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings and tries to combine Jesus and justice.
Michael Martin teaches nonviolent confrontational skills in addition to beating weapons into ploughshares. These are the kind of Christians I like and admire and would travel to hear.
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