By Bill Leonard
“We absorb so much violence and insecurity everyday that we are like time bombs ready to explode. We need to find a cure for our illness.”
That quotation, taken from the book Living Buddha, Living Christ and written by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, descended on me this week while reading Zac Bailes’ “response paper” on the text as required for my HIS 501 class at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University. Bailes, a student in the class (and a frequent contributor to ABP) used those words to introduce his review of the book, assigned as an example of interfaith dialogue in a global context.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastic experience began during the Vietnam war(s) between the North and South, with the French and the Americans, and intensified by the witness of innumerable Buddhist monks who immolated themselves to protest those wars. Thich Nhat Hanh came of age in a country where violence and insecurity were indeed everyday occurrences.
Apparently, Trayvon Martin did too, in Florida in 2012. Indeed, the Trayvon Martin case is yet another reminder, as Zac writes in his response paper, that “violence and insecurity are still very much alive” in these United States.
Perhaps the first step toward a “cure” is admitting that we have an “illness” where firearms are concerned. How many young people will leave this world too soon as a result of that illness before we fully acknowledge its presence and the need for a clearer response?
I write this exactly one year after filing another ABP op-ed written in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting spree that killed six persons, including a 9-year-old girl, and injured 13 individuals, among them U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
Giffords, the prime target of the young gunman, was wounded so severely that she is now unable to run for another term in Congress. Millions watched her tearful farewell at this year’s Presidential State of the Union Address as colleagues from both sides of the aisle expressed their love and respect for her courage and endurance in the face of difficult, firearm-created odds. Think they will vote to change any gun-related legislation in ways that might be more protective? Doubtful.
A year ago, after the shooting of Giffords, I wrote the following: “Today, wherever religious individuals may stand on questions of ‘gun control,’ ‘gun rights’ or related legislation, the fact remains that the United States is a firearm-oriented culture where, according to the Centers for Disease Control, some 30,000 persons die annually as a direct result of firearm-related incidents. And for every person killed, two are wounded. Thus religious communities can no longer act as if firearm attacks are a cultural anomaly. Rather, they must pursue new strategies that respond to the presence of gun-related violence throughout American society.”
One year later the situation remains unchanged, newly evident in a nationally galvanizing event tainted by firearms and by race, twin issues that relentlessly haunt the American psyche. While many people inside and outside the church differ over the role of guns in American society, it seems clear that the possession of firearms is endemic to our national life, ever expanding through concealed weapon and “stand your ground” laws to parks and recreational areas, college campuses, bars, restaurants, homes and yes, even churches. Firearm possession and proliferation defines us as a people.
So for the second consecutive year we are compelled to ask: Do American churches have a “theology of firearms?”
If not, they’d better get one, and include strategies for dealing with families crushed by firearm violence. Seminaries and pastoral-care programs must give increased attention to the training of ministers and ministries prepared to deal with situations where gun violence is normative or no longer an anomaly.
Many churches maintain disaster-relief teams ready to act immediately after natural catastrophes. Perhaps they also need church-based, firearm-incident relief teams, prepared to respond to catastrophes of human creation in families, schools and neighborhoods when the “time bomb” of gun violence unexpectedly but inevitably explodes around us.
One small ecumenical step might be for all congregations, whatever their theological tradition, to declare themselves “firearm-free zones,” recovering something of the great tradition of the church as sanctuary, a safe place both physically and spiritually for saint and sinner alike. What a witness that might make!
Perhaps we should begin by asking how much everyday “violence and insecurity” we and our churches are willing to “absorb” before we create more intentional responses to our firearm-proliferated nation? A Buddhist forced me to ask that question in the wake of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s death. Can Jesus help me answer it? I’ll have to get back to you on that one.