Christians, Gun Rights, and the American Social Compact
Kyle Rittenhouse and the deadly wages of recklessness.
I’m going to begin with my two favorite quotes from two American founders—the two quotes that I believe set up the fundamental nature of the American social compact. The first is the most famous. It’s Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
He didn’t stop there, however. The very next words are key: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The meaning is clear. Each and every human being possesses God-given rights, and a fundamental purpose of government is to protect those rights. That’s the government’s side of the social compact, and these aspirational words were operationalized in the Bill of Rights. The Declaration is the American mission statement. The Constitution made it law.
But there’s another side to the American social compact. We know the obligation of the government, but what about the obligation of the citizen? Here’s where we turn to Thomas Jefferson’s rival, John Adams. And Adams gives us the second quote that frames our constitutional republic. Writing to the Massachusetts militia, he says, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But that’s not all he said. In a less-famous section, he wrote, “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.” Our government wasn’t built to force men to be moral. Instead, it depends on man’s morality for the system to work.
Thus, the American social compact—the government recognizes and defends fundamental individual liberty, and the individual then exercises that liberty virtuously, for virtuous purposes. Or, to kinda-sorta paraphrase Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, with great liberty comes great responsibility.
That brings me to American gun rights and to Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who killed two people and wounded one during a series of encounters with protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Let me be clear: I’m not going to use this newsletter to adjudicate his case. The investigation is ongoing, and there is both evidence that he acted in self-defense during the fatal encounters, and evidence he threatened at least one innocent individual prior to the encounters by pointing his weapon at him without justification. There is still much we don’t know.
But here are some things we do know. By arming himself and wading into a riot, Rittenhouse behaved irresponsibly and recklessly. I agree completely with Tim Carney’s assessment here:
The 17-year-old charged with two homicides in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not a hero vigilante, nor was he a predatory white supremacist. He was, the evidence suggests, a foolish boy whose foolish decisions have taken two lives and ruined his own.
If you go armed with a rifle to police a violent protest, you are behaving recklessly. The bad consequences stemming from that decision are at least partly your fault.
Moreover, when Christians celebrate or even merely rationalize his actions they are also behaving irresponsibly and recklessly. Even if Rittenhouse is legally vindicated, his decision to exercise a right resulted in a grave wrong.
Why would I say that Christians are celebrating Rittenhouse? For one thing, a Christian crowdfunding site has raised more than $450,000 for his legal defense. Christian writers have called him a “good Samaritan” and argued that he’s a “decent, idealistic kid who entered that situation with the desire to do good, and, in fact, did do good.” (Emphasis added.)
Rittenhouse’s case comes on the heels of the Republican decision to showcase Mark and Patricia McCloskey at the Republican National Convention, the St. Louis couple that has been criminally charged for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching outside their home.
The McCloskeys are obviously entitled to a legal defense, and I am not opining on the legal merits of their case (again, there is much we don’t know), but as a gun-owner, I cringed at their actions. They weren’t heroic. They were reckless. Pointing a weapon at another human being is a gravely serious act. It’s inherently dangerous, and if done unlawfully it often triggers in its targets an immediate right of violent (and potentially deadly) self-defense.
At the same time, we’re seeing an increasing number of openly-armed, rifle-toting conservative vigilantes not just aggressively confronting far-left crowds in the streets, but also using their weapons to intimidate lawmakers into canceling a legislative session.
In other words, we are watching gun-owners, sometimes cheered on by Christian conservatives, breaking the social compact. They aren’t exercising their rights responsibly, they’re pushing them to the (sometimes literally) bleeding edge, pouring gasoline on a civic fire, and creating real fear in their fellow citizens.
This is exactly when a healthy conservative Christian community rises up and quite simply says, “No.” With one voice it condemns vigilantism and models civic responsibility.
Defend due process for Rittenhouse and the McCloskeys, yes, but do not celebrate, rationalize, or excuse those who go openly armed into the public square—as vigilantes or as protesters. Americans enjoy greater rights to possess or carry weapons than any time in the modern history of the United States, yet exercising those rights can be terrifying to friends and neighbors unless they’re exercised responsibly and respectfully.
Or, to put it another way, absent an imminent, immediate threat to liberty, the focus of Christian gun owners should be on their responsibilities, not their rights.
In fact, that focus extends well beyond the Second Amendment. It’s a general principle applicable to every exercise of individual or collective liberty. While it’s entirely justifiable for Christian churches to challenge discriminatory pandemic regulations that favor secular mass gatherings over religious worship (such as Nevada’s preferential treatment of casinos), it’s not justifiable for churches to engage in reckless conduct as they defend their freedom.
To take one prominent example, pastor John MacArthur is entirely within his rights to challenge California’s pandemic restrictions on religious worship. But when he does so through also encouraging defiance of regulations and norms on social distancing and masking, he’s reckless. He’s endangering the health and lives of not just his congregants, but also of members of the public who encounter his congregants. In fact, MacArthur is quite proud that his congregation hasn’t distanced and doesn’t wear masks:
No one can argue that MacArthur isn’t religious, but this is certainly not moral. He’s breaking the social compact.
Regular readers of this newsletter know that I’m somewhat obsessed with a rather simple question—is there such thing as a distinctive Christian presence in American political culture apart from Christian advocacy of specific issues? Or does the entirety of, for example, the conservative Christian presence in Republican politics boil down to the defense of specific liberties and the quest to overturn Roe?
The distinctive Christian presence has to include modeling the responsible, virtuous exercise of the rights its political movements seek to secure. It has to include using its voice and power to advocate for that responsibility and to oppose recklessness. Simply put, the republic was not designed to thrive if those who are religious are not also moral.
Thankfully, countless Christian gun-owners are upholding the social compact. They focus on their responsibilities, and they do not recklessly seek out conflict. Indeed, the best evidence indicates that concealed-carry permit holders are more law-abiding than the police. Countless Christian congregants and pastors are also upholding the social compact in the midst of the pandemic. They’ve show incredible patience in abiding by even facially-unfair pandemic regulations, and they’ve gone above and beyond in their quest to protect the health of their friends and neighbors.
It’s worth asking whether this actual moral majority is the true face of American Christian politics, however, or whether their passivity has allowed different voices to dominate. It’s not enough to be individually responsible. It’s important to be corporately and publicly prudent, including by condemning the actions of those who are not. America’s Evangelicals are the most powerful faction in what is (for now) the world’s most powerful political party. If they permit irresponsible actors to become the face of American liberty, they undermine the very freedoms they seek to save.
One last thing…
A few weeks ago, I ended with a song by Brooke Ligertwood, and many readers rejoiced. Here’s another. It’s a simple worship song (as most are), but I love it, and the video really makes me miss small gatherings of worshiping Christians. I’ve seen so many lives change in such settings. May they come back soon.
What saddens me about the last 6 months is that this was such a great opportunity for US Christians to make a contribution to the wonderful history of Christian contributions to society during epidemics. And like David said, the vast majority have been contributing to this, yet a vocal minority have hijacked our response and become the face of US Christianity to wider society. I wish there were more stories about the congregations that have worked with local government and been creative in having worship services while still following government regulations. Unfortunately living peaceably with all men doesn't get you a prime time interview with Tucker Carlson so you can whine about "persecution". It's a hard question how much the quiet peaceful Christians should push back against them and I'm not sure I know yet. But it's clear we aren't doing enough right now as this loud faction further makes American Christianity look like paranoid selfish appendages of the Republican Party. If we refuse to use our religious liberty wisely in the service of our fellow citizens I fear that God's blessing for us in that area won't be here indefinitely.
I was born in 1959. I was pretty young during the 1960s and a "tween" and teenager during the 1970s. However, I remember enough of that period to offer a little perspective and an observation or two in regard to our civic compacts that seem to be failing today.
There were indeed mass protests then, mostly about Vietnam and civil rights. We had the usually young "long haired freaky people," a few openly religious demonstrators, and of course black folks (but not so many other peoples "of color") taking to the streets. The "Hardhats" sometimes came out to meet them. These were the WWII generation, many of whom worked those wonderful well paying manufacturing jobs for which the U.S. was once the envy of the world. "America. Love it or Leave it" was their rallying cry. The four-pronged "peace sign" was often referred to as the "All American Chicken Foot." Of course, there were radical groups. The Black Panthers. The Weather Underground. The Yippies, among a few others. Portions of cities experienced significant rioting, looting and burning. Some of the chaos was no doubt instigated by so-called agitators. There were also bombings near federal buildings attributed to the WU. Sometimes explosives were set with timers inside trash cans in order to detonate during times of heavier traffic. Some people were hurt or even killed by these attacks. These incidents were nearly uniformly condemned in no uncertain terms, except by the most radical actors. No political party or president would have ever even implied advocating such actions.
Full disclosure here. I was raised in a small, predominantly white town not too far from St. Louis. Most of the townfolk, mostly the men, worked in several nearby large manufacturing plants. Monsanto, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, St. Joseph Lead. Some black men worked at these places too. There was a LOT of racism, or what we then called "prejudice." There was real racial tension. I once heard my uncle tell my dad that "there's gonna be a n----r war soon, mark my words!" This was only after a few drinks steeped in the dominant culture of that locality and time. Neither he nor my dad ever acted upon their bluster. But the N-word was part of normal, everyday parlance. Most of my family and friends were bonafide bigots to one degree or another, though believe it or not, many of them would seriously deny that they were. I think they believed it. Me too. It has been a long journey forward for me, beginning in about second grade and spanning the decades since. It has taken until relatively recently for me to "get" some things about racism, and sexism for that matter.
Resuming my exposition, guns were common then as now, but in a different cultural context. My dad owned three firearms, one handgun, one rifle. and one shotgun I don't ever recall him firing his guns, even once, during my lifetime. He did teach me respect for them, however. "Never point a gun at anyone unless you intend to use it" and "Always assume a gun is loaded, even if you are sure it isn't." My uncle and cousins, as well as the neighbor across the street and many schoolmates owned veritable arsenals. These collections were composed of various rifles and shotguns for use against a variety of prey. Maybe these folks owned a single handgun. They were all avid hunters and as far as I knew, there were no assault rifles, (or assault rifle-like) weapons in their possession. These were the folks who would play hookie from school or work to be out for opening day of deer season. They would regularly regale anyone who would listen with tales of the squirrels, rabbits, deer, ducks, doves, turkeys and the occasional "varmint" they'd bagged over the weekend.
So what was different then than now? For one thing, racial prejudice was a lot more mainstream, but far less militant for most people. The Klan was around, but not flagrantly, at least outside the South. "NeoNazis" weren't even a thing for most people. We wouldn't have recognized the term, much less "alt right." Most white people, bigots though many of them were, thought that the Klan were crazies that took things way too far. Also, the aforementioned "hard hats" did on occasions counter march against the "long hairs." There were a few fistfights and rarely, bats or blackjacks came into play. Then as now, the police were imperfect. However, I am certain that the rank and file police then were far more uniform in their personal prejudices than they are now. They carried six-round 38 calibre revolvers, and a baton. The National Guard too were imperfect., the most infamous example being the shootings at Kent State. Still, there were very likely far more deeply held racial prejudices among the majority of the soldiers of 1970 than there are among the troops of 2020. Until the late 1970s, no Christian denominations, or for that matter Christian leaders, officially identified with any political party to the extent that you couldn't tell where one started and the other ended. Politics for most people did not come close in terms of personal fervor, to their religion. Another big difference then than now, is that you never saw anyone dressed in camouflage and tactical vests, carrying rifles and "standing guard" over any government building or neighborhood. (Or turning out, thus arrayed, in order to "make a point" about their willingness to "protect themselves" by any means and at any cost, from anyone). Again, it just wasn't a mainstream thing. There weren't any comfortable suburban white people standing out brandishing weapons in their front yards, for any reason. You never heard anyone going on about the second amendment providing the means to protect us from the possibility of tyranny perpetrated by our own government. But then in those days, the NRA was a hunter's club. If anyone went out on the streets and shot someone else in the same context as Rittenhouse has, no one would have been calling him a hero, at least not in public. It was accepted as an article of our democracy that the police and the military existed to protect civilians from whatever threats existed, real or perceived. It was considered unnecessary for citizens to publically bear arms in town, as a political statement (or as a not so thinly veiled threat) toward anyone. Long guns were sometimes racked openly in the back windows of pickup trucks. But otherwise, carrying a gun around in the open would have simply been considered unacceptable and more than a little bit wacky.
Also in those days, children lined up at schools instead of taking their recesses, in order to receive vaccinations against the constellation of sickening, crippling, disfiguring and sometimes deadly illnesses that had until then been endemic. Parents clamored to get their kids vaccinated. Now, there is resistance to both vaccination and to wearing simple cloth masks, as much to protect OTHERS as it is to protect oneself. The reasons to resist these civic goods, are at best based upon flimsy logic and at worst, unreasoned paranoia. This is yet another fractured civic contract, based upon paranoia and IMO, a bent interpretation of the meaning of personal civil liberty. We seem to have lost sight of our responsibilities toward fellow citizens that reside side by side with our freedoms.
I hope that this lengthy ramble upon history and citizenship has been worth laboring through, at least for someone out there.