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Defending the Innocent: Weapons and Worship
Dr. John Mark Reynolds
The Torrey Honors Institute
Some New York-area rabbis are planning to bring weapons to High Holy Day services this month to guard against terrorist threats. In June, a Kentucky pastor invited his congregation members to bring their firearms to church to celebrate the Second Amendment.
Do weapons belong in worship? Should clergy be armed? Do the Ten Commandments trump the Second Amendment?
Weapons do not belong in worship, but they sometimes belong on those who go to worship. Church is not generally the right place to celebrate our civil rights, though we may thank God for them, but it might be the right place to urge citizens to exercise them to protect the innocent.
For Christians, armed force is not the job of the Church as Church. Whatever the provocation, Christians learned from their own history that crusades are not the right response to it. It is inconsistent with our primary message. The Church is about Jesus and Jesus came to heal the sick of soul and body. Christian churches have always built hospitals and came to regret it when they built armies.
We learned to leave usual exercise of military power to the state. While this is the normal state of affairs, Christians are not foolish enough to believe that the state will always do its duty. As responsible and wise leaders of the community, it might be the rare job of ministers to suggest that the time has come for responsible groups of citizens to take on a burden that the state is shirking.
While the Church is pacific, its members need not be pacifists. Letting the innocent die waiting for an impotent state to act is cowardice, and courage is a virtue.
Have we reached a point where reasonable people in the Jewish community feel that the government cannot protect them in their houses of worship on their holiest day? God forgive our nation if this is so.
As an outsider, I am hesitant to judge this situation. Wicked men have made the Jewish community their special target for violence and promises by Western governments of protection have often proven empty words.
If our government really can no longer provide sufficient deterrent to such evil, then no man should rush to condemn the actions of the rabbis. The rabbis, after all, are not posing a threat to society by arming themselves defensively, but are merely doing a job they feel society is failing to do. New York is in no danger from these rabbis, but should consider that her rabbis feel in danger from the perceived failure of New York to provide adequate protection. It is a dangerous course the rabbis have chosen, but in horrid times dangerous paths may be the safest or only paths.
Christians, at least, should not hastily condemn those who act to defend fellow human beings that the state cannot defend. A Christian minister who does not urge his members to defend the weak and the powerless has missed part of the message of Scripture. We are personally called to love our enemy, but love does not demand that we allow our enemy to do mortal damage to his own soul and to the lives of others by harming the innocent.
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Paul.12
10/10/2009 10:04 AM
Interesting and on point for the most part. However, I do not understand why the author focuses on the NYC Rabbis when many Evangelical Mega-churches have an armed security staff contingent for weekly services. I attend a very large church and based on my experience, I can pick out about 5 armed "plain-clothes" close protection security staff based on ear pieces and weapons that are "printing" (means you can obviously tell that under the blazer or jacket that an individual IS carrying some kind of firearm because they fail to properly conceal their weapon). As our society spirals down in its respect for human life and evil flourishes in more bold examples, I am certain most churches in American will arm themselves heavily to prevent wide bloodshed. I would like to note that carrying a firearm without proper training can be much more of a liability than an asset. Within most congregations are people whose backgrounds will provide quality security options or offer dynamic training.
kenschanda
9/24/2009 12:41 PM
I agree with most of this article except that you have some of your history incorrect. The Civil War was not fought to end race-based slavery. It was fought to preserve the Union because the South was withdrawing from the Union. The southern states relied heavily on farming and the northern states relied heavily on industrialism. Since the Northern States had the higher population and therefore usally won the presidential votes, they felt that the Industry North would get the laws passed to benefit industry and that farming would be left on the wayside. This is why they chose to leave the Union. Abraham Lincoln was not even opposed to Slavery. He owned his own slaves. He only made the Emancipation Proclamation in order to get more soldiers to fight on the Union side. He only freed slaves that agreed to fight for the Union. It is a sad state of affairs that history is teaching that the Civil War was about slavery when it was really about the South being afraid of losing votes.
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Jesus COMMANDED us to "carry a sword".
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