Christians and the 2nd Amendment

Natural allies aren’t always bosom buddies.   But they can be a powerful force to defend our rights and liberties against hostile government initiatives. Freedom requires such coalitions.

Those of us concerned about religious freedom and constitutional liberties have ample reason to put the Second Amendment among the foremost rights we lobby to protect. Even if we might personally have no interest in target practice or hunting, we need to see that central to our tradition and everything else we value stands two crucial assertions: The right of the individual to defend himself from violence; and the right of the community to resist state violence.

The truth goes deeper than that. The image of human dignity that emerged from Judeo-Christian and classical philosophy directly implies the right of self-defense and resistance to tyranny.  In fact, the same human dignity that tells us not to tolerate slavery or racial segregation tells us that we must not let the state disarm citizens wholesale or leave the defense of their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness to the agents of a state with a monopoly on violence.

On one policy question after another, mainline Protestant churches have embraced the state as the source and summit of human action. The abandonment of traditional, individual rights is evident in the churches’ approach to self-defense, so it is no wonder that 2nd Amendment advocates face a challenge in making their case to many Christians.

The most basic human right in a fallen, violent world is the right to self-defense against violence. Beyond natural law, most Americans subscribe to particular creeds of religious faith and individual rights, derived from the Christian tradition in which this country was founded and nowhere do any of these traditions of faith support the position that citizens should be disarmed, left defenseless individually or collectively against crime, disorder, and government violence.

The case for vitiating the 2nd Amendment, and stripping most of the citizenry of the means of self-defense against both crime and tyrannical government, does not rest on good natural law arguments, the consensus view of the Old and New Testaments, the mainstream of any major Christian tradition, or any theory of the rights of citizens that most would find acceptable today.

Religious groups that argue for gun confiscation are using their own texts and traditions tendentiously and selectively, showing that their real allegiance is to the state over the individual. This Omni competent state replaces the Church, and perhaps even Christ, as the locus of loyalty and trust, just as a this-worldly utopia replaces the Kingdom of Heaven in “Social Gospel” writing and activism.

Faithful traditional Christians should reject this collectivist idol for solid theological reasons, just as American citizens should resist it for constitutional ones.

I recommend that you read the source of this article in full at the link provided below.

Source:  God, Guns and the Government: A Paper to Send Your Pastor by Jason Jones and John Zmirak, the Stream; Joe Biden Announces Push to Eliminate Handguns, not just “Assault Rifles, Louder with Crowder

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