In Guns We Trust
In Guns We Trust. William J. Kole. Broadleaf Books (ISBN: 9798889835639) 2025.
Summary: Why white evangelicals are among the most resistant to even reasonable restrictions on firearms and its impact.
William J, Kole was an unabashed evangelical, even a member of his New England church’s worship team. It was during a practice that the bass player showed him his gun. His world shifted. Kole also worked as AP News bureau chief in New England. This was on the heels of the horrific Sandy Hook massacre. He soon learned that a number of members carried. That is when he left the church and evangelicalism.
But, as a journalist, he remained curious about why white evangelicals so vociferously defended gun ownership, including concealed carry and resisted even the most reasonable gun safety laws such as universal background checks and safe storage laws, measures a majority of Americans, including many gun owners, supported. And all this despite the fact that there are more guns than people in the U.S. the highest number of gun deaths per 100,000, other than El Salvador, and that bringing a gun into a home immediately makes it a more dangerous place statistically. Most of all, he wanted to know how do they justify guns as followers of Jesus?
What is striking in this book is that Kole devotes significant space in the book listening to evangelical gun owners, church leaders and even gun manufacturers. Similar to Tim Alberta in The Power and the Glory, he spends a lot of time on site with them in churches, factories, NRA conventions and gun shows. He looks at the culture of fear within evangelicalism and how that has fed into Second Amendment readings, particularly either government tyranny or other forms of persecution. After shootings at houses of worship, this has heightened, with churches having security details and many members carrying.
One of those he listens to is Pastor Paul Guin. He pastors a rural Alabama congregation where most, including him, carry. In addition, they have a gun range behind the church, organized as the Rocky Mount Hunt and Gun Club. Earlier, Kole set out some of his own biblical convictions as to why guns are not an option (other than for hunting or sport) for Christians. Here, he allows the Pastor, who has thought deeply about this to make the biblical case for guns.
He also meets with the family who runs FosTecH, a gun manufacturer in Seymour, Indiana, also the home town of John Mellencamp. They portray a commitment to Christ, their employees and the craft of gun making. They are serious, measured, thoughtful. The executives accept the status quo of the prevalence of guns. And they make lethal ones, including the AR-15. And at least one executive asks about alternative research.
Kole also examines that global scene and the direct relationship between gun control and gun prevalence and violence. He details the dramatic drops in deaths resulting from gun measures in other countries, including Australia and New Zealand. He also describes the challenges faced by the flow of guns, often through illegal channels, from the U.S.
Returning stateside, in his last two chapters he describes efforts by Christians to suggest that a different way is possible. We meet Scotty Utz, with RAWTools, that takes guns turned in and turns them into garden implements–a kind of practical “swords into plowshares” effort. We learn of churches and networks who have pursued a different course–places where Kole feels safe because no one carries. And we listen to how they frame this up as a faithful response to Christ–a decision to live without fear because of their faith.
I’m not sure Kole’s book will change minds. But he models the humility that refuses to caricature evangelicals who carry. He listens to them. While we know what Kole thinks, he takes the risk of allowing the reader to decide. And he persists in believing and hoping for a different future and points to things like-minded readers can do.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.
Thanks Bob, I wouldn’t have known about this book if you hadn’t reviewed it. Saddening as it is, it shows how enculturated we and our brothers and sisters are and why they so overwhelmingly supported Trump! “Come Lord Jesus” Soon!
Not so sure that assertion is accurate. In the middle of the pack of the 50 US States for gun ownership per capita is Utah at #22, yet Utah has the highest percentage of church attendance in the country. Montana and Wyoming have the most guns per person, above 65%, but are only average in religious participation. Further, countries like Japan and England, well known for gun control restrictions on civilian ownership, have increased use of knives in violent attacks, or vehicle rammings. Switzerland, with guns in almost every home – and military assault rifles at that – has very low gun violence. And NO mass shootings. Perhaps the real culprit is something in the unique psyche of American culture: being established as a frontier country with settlers defending themselves against wildlife, indigenous population, and each other. Or hunting to live. That character remains today in large parts of the country outside the more “civilized” progressive and liberal metropolises, where handgun ownership is illegal anyway (Chicago, New York).
After a shooting at a Texas church, we hired an ex Secret Service member to give us some security training. OK; maybe. But some of my people began carrying to church. It was foolish, in my mind. I talked to one of them, an ex missionary who had served in Haiti, Kenya, Canada, and been a pastor in the US. I told him, should we ever be attacked (statistically unlikely) having people in the congregation waving guns around would likely result in more people killed, not less. Nothing ever changed his mind. Some of this was, in my mind, political as much as anything else. I retired and left the area, so don’t know how things are now. I’m not against gun ownership, though I will never own a pistol myself. I am for some common sense gun laws.