Biblical scholar contemplates whether Christians should own guns
PC(USA) webinar delves into topic from a New Testament perspective
LOUISVILLE — The final installment of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) webinar series “Gun Violence and Christian Ethics” examined the appropriateness of gun ownership through a New Testament lens.
“My thesis is simple,” said the University of Notre Dame’s Dr. David Lincicum. “The gun is a temptation to arrogate life-destroying power to the wielder and should be resisted by those” who have an allegiance to “a crucified Messiah.”
Lincicum, an associate professor of Christianity and Judaism in antiquity, was the featured guest of the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, which began the series featuring leading Christian ethicists in the spring.
Early on in the July 24 installment, Lincicum explained that using the New Testament for theological and moral guidance, he would be trying to “mount an argument to dissuade Christians from owning guns.”
His lengthy argument focused on owning guns for self-defense or to defend others but excluded owning a gun for hunting, sport shooting or collecting. He also excluded carrying guns for jobs, such as the police and military, that come with public duty.
Along the way, he acknowledged that humans are living in an increasingly violent world filled with political manifestos, mass shootings and petty squabbles settled with bullets.
He also acknowledged that scads of Christians already own guns, so much so that arguing against it might seem stupid.
“According to a 2023 report by the Pew Research Center, the U.S. has the highest number of guns per capita, followed at some distance by Serbia,” he said. “Something like 32% of the population owned guns, with 42% of adults living in a gun-owning household, so these numbers already suggest that there are tens of millions of Christian gun owners in the U.S.”
He added, “This suspicion is confirmed when studies of religious affiliation of gun owners are taken into consideration. Protestants comprise the highest percentage of gun owners, with white evangelicals, perhaps predictably, leading the way, more than Catholic, Jewish or non-religious populations.”
So, again, why is gun ownership by Christian people problematic?
For one thing, “the Christian should be a signum amoris, a sign of love, marked by contrast, rather than an armed repetition of the armed world,” Lincicum argued. “The gun is a temptation to become a kind of powerful self, with the capacity to kill instantaneously. This is an arrogation of power that the New Testament witness does not support, even in self-defense.”
Some of his other points included:
- “The New Testament envisions humans as subject to self-deception and violent tendencies and does not think of fear or self-defense as legitimate motive for violence or lethal force.”
- “The master narrative of the Christian faith involves Jesus facing those who wish to take his life and renouncing the violent strategies of resistance that might have saved him. This is the narrative that wants to structure Christian practice in the world, rather than the counter narrative that enshrines a violent hero who overthrows the evildoer” with good marksmanship (The "good guy with a gun" story).
- Matthew 5:39 says do not resist an evildoer.
- Jesus doesn’t indicate that fear is an acceptable motive for violence.
- Compare walking according to love with the right of private choice. “We might imagine Paul addressing American Christians in light of the tragic statistics of human devastation to which gun usage in this country has led. He might say: For if for the sake of owning a gun your brother or sister is grieved, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not for the sake of mere gun ownership destroy the one for whom Christ died.”
- Paul urged doing good to one’s enemies.
“The example of Jesus and the teaching of Paul urge us toward Christian difference, toward an embodied protest that might call the followers of Jesus to be like him, an innocent sufferer, a lamb to the slaughter,” Lincicum said. “They call us to be a bodily witness to a violent world” and to the “power of nonviolent love.”
Go here to watch a recording of Lincicum making those points and more. Learn more about the PC(USA)’s Decade of End Gun Violence here.
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