The Unholy Trinity of Evangelicals, Politics & Firearms
In Guns We Trust is an American book, also relevant to England, with an increase in gun violence. In the USA when you have over 100 million people owning guns, you get tragedies like the recent Minneapolis events.
This book also recalls the Sandy Hook shooting (the author was the local bureau chief when it happened). At a New England primary school, one man shot his mother dead, then killed 20 children and 6 staff at a primary school, before shooting himself.
What makes this book so interesting is that the author is a practicing Christian, who is appalled at how the ‘Christian evangelicals’ have ‘hijacked his faith’ to promote gun ownership and right-wing politics (one of the teachers who died at Sandy Hook was just 27 as she protected the children – she was also the daughter of immigrants).
The daughter of Gwen Mayor (the teacher who died protecting children at Dunblane) won’t let her children play violent video games – instead she teaches them about hedgehogs, her mother’s favourite creature).
Just like here (where all mass shootings have been carried out by legal gun owners), the Sandy Hook killer’s gun had been legally bought by his mother (who he shot dead). All these people needed to pass checks to carry guns, before they carried out their crimes.
One good thing to come from all this tragedy was Sandy Hook Promise, a website with free resources for schools, councils and police forces to prevent gun violence worldwide.
Guns are now everywhere. Millions of Americans hunt animals (sometimes as ‘trophy hunters’, like what happened with Cecil the lion (the dentist went onto kill a rare Mongolian sheep).
Although President Trump does not hunt himself, his sons do (there are photos of them grinning alongside dead buffalo and leopards, and even holding the tail of an elephant they had killed).
Since coming to office, Trump has relaxed the laws on trophy hunting (in England, some peers in the House of Lords are delaying the Bill due to vested interests, by talking about it for hours and hours).
What’s This Book All About?
This book is basically an unsettling investigations into the ‘unholy trinity’ which incorrectly links Jesus Christ to right-wing politics, ‘America first’ mentality and gun ownership. He asks why it is that ‘white evangelicals’ are more likely than other Americans to own weapons? Yet the main message of Jesus was peace and to ‘turn the other cheek’.
He also meets Christians worldwide who would never own a gun (think of Quakers). One Amish community that suffered a similar primary school shooting a few years back, even had the residents attend the funeral of the gunman, and help his widow and young family.
It’s almost impossible to believe this level of forgiveness. But due to their actions, the killer’s parents (he also shot himself dead) were able to forgive their own son. His mother would even visit a survivor (left unable to walk, talk or feed herself) to read her the Bible and Anne of Green Gables stories.
The author also meets activists who are ‘beating guns into garden tools’, and nuns who bought company stock, so they could force a gun manufacturer to do more to promote peace!
About the Author
William J Kole is an award-winning veteran journalist who has reported worldwide, and served as bureau chief in Vienna and New England. A former lay missionary, he also served as board president for an international Christian relief agency. He lives in Rhode Island, USA.
