I don’t want this to be just another blog ranting about gun control, so let me state my bona fides up front: I come from a hard-hunting, gun-toting family.  Long-haired, dope-smoking, anti-government Harley riders on one side and country club-lunching, single malt-drinking duck hunters on the other, but gun owners all around.

Having grown up around guns and knowing lots of good people who not only own them but love them, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have to write an opinion piece stating my opposition to bringing guns to church.  I thought this might have been self-evidently a bad idea.

But then I read this article about a pastor in Kentucky who is encouraging people to bring guns to church tomorrow, June 27.  According to the Associated Press, Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church is “inviting people to bring their guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second Amendment.”

I’ll be honest that I’m a little zealous about gun control.  Years ago, I proudly took my baby with me to Washington, D.C. to be a part of the first Million Mom March and I have donated more of my personal lost-but-worthy cause money to gun control than to any other single issue.  I have read and heard all the arguments anyone can muster (pun intended) about the Second Amendment and slipper slopes and individual rights and responsible gun ownership and what the Founding Fathers meant by a militia.  And I believe that the government can and should put some limits on what kind of guns can be owned by individuals, including on where, when, how and by whom they can be purchased, and especially on how and where they can be carried and used.  Which honestly is not code for anything, in spite of what the NRA says.  I’m not trying to wipe all guns off the face of the earth.

Maybe you don’t agree with the gun-control agenda.  But isn’t bringing guns to church over the line even for most pro-gun folks?

The pastor’s assertion that “recent church shootings make it necessary to promote safe gun ownership” makes absolutely no sense to me.  Recent church shootings and safe gun ownership are unrelated issues unless what he really wants is for people to bring guns into church every Sunday, in an ostensible effort to make it a safe place.  Responsible gun owners who leave their guns at home when they go to worship will be no more or less able to respond to or prevent church shootings than you or I or Billy the Kid will.

One might argue that people can arm themselves to the teeth and still be good Christians.  Maybe.  But parading guns around in church in this way strikes me as an act of idolatry, a refusal to let God be God, to put our selves in His hands and to trust in His providence.

And I’m not just picking on this particular pastor in Kentucky, who might very well be a great guy. What bothers me is that this whole “bringing guns to church” thing appears to be something of a trend.  According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, churches around the country are holding “church safety” seminars that sometimes include encouraging people to show up armed on Sunday. “As more shootings at houses of worship make headlines,” it states,

churches around the country are stepping up security, training their staff on how to detect and confront violent assailants, and asking congregants with licenses to carry guns during services.

I won’t even get into the fact that the pastor this article interviews is a pretty far-out, the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh character.  Whatever your theology, church should be the place where we set aside all earthly defenses, physical and psychological, and give our whole selves over to God.  Can you really do that while packing heat?