Rev. Rachel Smith, whose blog "God Not Guns" is a project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, calls it gundamentalism.Coming from someone who portrays herself as centered on "religion," it seems like we have a bit of projection going on.
"America’s gun culture is marked by zeal closely akin to that of religious fundamentalism. The gun-rights movement is built upon a system of belief that is both absolutist and aggressive. It has its sacred text, its creed, its icon and its ideology."
Gundamentalists. I like that, Rachel. You're quite the pundamentalist!
Mind if I adopt it, even if I flaunt the term with pride rather than resent it as a pejorative?
As a so called religious figure, it's amazing how many commandments she breaks in her posts.
ReplyDeleteWe're the People of the Gun, too.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for that one, Laura Washington.
:)
III
As a non-churched Christian, I have this discussion with people often. There are a few basic questions:
ReplyDelete1. You "trust God" for your food, clothing, etc.? Do you then sit back and expect those things to show up by magic, or do you work a job, save your money and buy things wisely?
2. You trust God to keep you safe when you drive along the highway? Do you sit back with your eyes closed and expect to be safe by some magic, or do you watch where you are going and take every reasonable care to arrive safely?
3. So, in view of the above, does it not seem wise to prepare to defend yourself against evil and go the extra mile to help defend others who are not able to do so? Or is it somehow wise to sit back, do nothing and expect some magic miracle to save you from criminals instead? If it doesn't work for food and other safety, how does it suddenly work in place of self defense?
Trusting God does not involve expecting magic and miracles to replace your own efforts to live your life. The command is to love your neighbor as yourself - not "sit back and be a toadstool."
It isn't just about guns. It's about taking personal responsibility for the life God has given us, and those He has placed in our care.
It's not a faith, it's a desire for liberty. The right to defend one's life with a weapon is fundamental because crippling injury and death make it somewhat difficult to exercise other natural rights.
ReplyDeleteA modicum of faith is required to accept the disarmament culture, where disarmament coerced at the muzzle of a state-owned gun is considered peaceful and beneficial. The pro-defense and freedom-loving Citizens -- who consider the gun as both a symbol and a useful tool -- have waited for close to a century while social engineers attempted to make good on their promise. It could hardly be said that the advocates of individual liberty were extreme as they begrudgingly accepted the restrictions, on faith, that would purportedly produce a new and safer society.
The ideas of the disarmers were hardly divine in origin, however, and their failures are prominent. The fact that some of the most outspoken among The Faithful employ guards armed in ways forbidden to the rest of us suggests attrition within their ranks.
Why, then, would an important member continue to spread the gospel of forcible disarmement? What is his reward? Power. The authoritarian state needs power to reward its members. There is a problem, though: this is the United States, and that power is held by the people.
I hereby found the First Church of Gundamentalism (Reformed)!
ReplyDeleteWe are in fact a heretical break-off group of Our Lady of NRA Worship.
What say we come up with some tenets? Say a Gun 10 commandments?
I've got one:
1.) Thou shalt keep thy guns clean.
"What say we come up with some tenets? Say a Gun 10 commandments?"
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the other 9 Commandments, but I can suggest the Creed:
This is my rifle.
This is my gun.
Etc
:)
if the only people left in this country who have any real principles are the gun owners, then i'm a gun owner.
ReplyDeletePeter, we've already got the first four commandments... ;-)
ReplyDeletereligious fundamentalism stems from words written by an authority on a topic which is in general not actually observable, or a moving target when observation is attempted (usually because it's people like dawkins with gears to grind doing the observing, and evangelicals with alleigance to the state doing the moving).
ReplyDeletegood or bad or for whatever this is worth, that is how it is. i am not religious in my faith, and will not presume to go further on why people behave as they do.
libertarian fundamentalism is however drawn from observations of the actions of people in a state of nature. the institutions of man among each other derive no such higher authority in any fashion, we in fact place the law above ourselves, in our humility. we realize that there are moments where the state of nature is all there really is, and the elephant is in the room.
so when we say liberty, and self-defense, we are not talking about some dogma. nobody told us to act as if we were free.
for whatever it is worth to accept communion or rest on sunday to serve your soul, this is not how firearms serve libertarian ends.
of note is that film frequently makes it appear as if this is the case: impossibly huge magazines, the wrong grenades on a launcher, impossible sniper shots, and so on.
in reality, you don't just shake your gun at the bad guy like you would operate a bamboo radio in a cargo cult. there is no editor to add the flash, boom and burst of bloody mist in post-production.
back in the real world, you are stopping a capital crime that every moral society ever to stand on the face of the earth would agree is both morally wrong and illegal.
that there is a human aggressor involved, who becomes here a potential criminal, is irrelevant, and their life is not worth considering just yet -- the crime itself must be stopped first. so if you fuck with us bad enough, we will kill you.
it is not about good guys and bad guys. there are no good guys and bad guys. there are only people, and good and bad actions, choices, and if you've made a particularly bad choice nobody will care who you were, anyways.
perhaps i will never see what is so hard to understand about this.
Thou shalt remember that all guns are always loaded. Thou shalt not point thy gun at anything unless thee intends to destroy it. Thou shall verify thy target, and what is behind and beyond it. Thou shalt keep thy booger hooks off the bang switch until thee intends to shoot. Thou shalt clean thy guns within three days after shooting, and everyday if thee shoots everyday. Thou shalt not leave thy guns lying around for the ignorant and the incabable to find. Thou shalt not use gun locks, nor lock up thy guns when present, so that thou shalt prolong thy days. Thou shalt teach and encourage the younglings and all others to shoot and pass on the wisdom thou hast gained. Thou shalt keep sufficient ammunition on hand as the times and means allow, for each gun. Thou shalt practice shooting all the days of life, that it may be good with thee, and that thou wilt be able and expert when the time of trouble comes. Thou shalt never forget that there is Someone watching thee from above,whether thou believes in Him or not, and that He favors those who love the life that He has given.
ReplyDeleteOh, III.
ReplyDeleteJames Rawles says it pretty well at survivor blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.survivalblog.com/prayer.html
"It has its sacred text, its creed, its icon and its ideology."
ReplyDeleteIt's called the constitution. Maybe you've heard of it.
Windsor Hills Baptist Church.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I suppose to the uninformed they are fundamentalist.
Some of the folks that comment on this blog are more fundamental than vast majority of Windsor Hills.
I've always liked to think of myself as one who puts the "fun" in fundamentalist.
ReplyDeleteI'll gladly be labeled a gundamentalist extremist.
As a missionary kid I grew up experiencing a lot of different churches and church-cultures.
ReplyDeleteAs a TA in College for a course on the "Anthropology of Religion" I read and saw a lot of papers evidencing a morass of confused, multicultural, and relativistic Liberal-Arts Majors - confused about the nature of Religion in their own life and in all its Global aspects. Hare Krishna, dude.
What I see predominantly among the small-r religious on the Academic and Intellectual Left where I happen to be, is a lot of interwoven Socialist Theory (thanks Harvey Cox, you butthead!) emergent as a kind of Religio-Securalism that sanctifies and pats the participant on their back while pandering to their moral vanity.
I saw it happen in my own Church, lead in great part by my small-s socialist Missionary parents.
What propelled it was the sharply declining Academic/Left-side church attendance in the 70's, and what it was was a call basically hearkening back to an idealized vision of 60's Civil Rights Activism. What it did was to call upon the academic religious "intellectualaritat," to realign and embrace their Faith upon some fairly flexible relativist secular ideals of "Social Justice," in order to revitalize their moribund congregations and become more relevant to Today's Youth.
That's why there's a bearded guy playing a guitar in some chuirches today - it's simply Bad Taste in doctrine.
So, essentially it was another Socialist Youth Movement that embraced all the necessary guilt-trips of "Social Justice," called acts of Demonstration as acts of Faith, and embraced "Liberation Theology" which became the dominate, popular paradigm among the Religious Left - who comprise a pretty big and powerful set of Denominations.
Much of it is reflected and expressed in the Obama religious consciousness of pastor Wright.
Among them is a keen sense of their Intellectual and Moral Superiority (without a shred of irony or self-doubt - their self-esteem is impeccable!) as supported by their academic condition/situation, and a lesser feeling of commitment to their poor benighted brethren in the flyover states (similar to the poor in Bangladesh), who are intellectually diminished and clinging with bitterness to guns -- because they have been left intellectually behind (a sort of "Academic Rapture" has taken place in their minds) as the Progressive Movement has soared ahead on wings of Unicorns and butterflies, with fluffy rainbow clouds. (It also explains why YOU knuckle dragging neanderthals don't believe in Global Warming, or Obama's divinity.)
This is squarely where this chick is coming from. Chomskyville.
This is a bit of a change in topic, but I although I don't know if the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville Tennessee was posted as "gun free," it wouldn't surprise me, given this and this.
ReplyDeleteTo what sean said I would add, Amen.
ReplyDelete111
45Superman,
ReplyDeleteDon't know, but there is one in Fayetteville. If they have the sign, its a safe bet that the one in Knoxville has a sign as well (since they have a "denomination"-wide policy.) I'll check on Monday.
Most unaffiliated Baptist churches have no policy on guns in the church building. But, since the LORD plainly stated that His house is a house of prayer, it would be frowned at - though not necessarily acted upon. Each unaffiliated Baptist church is different, and some may say nothing, or even welcome someone wearing a firearm.
Unlike the "Rev." Rachel Smith, and the UU's, most every Baptist preacher and missionary I know owns one or more guns and believes strongly in the absolute right to keep and bear arms — based upon the simple fact that the arm can do nothing of itself, but must be wielded by a person, and the heart of that person is where the issue lies.
Gundamentalist jihaddi.....
ReplyDeleteDurka durka durka
Life is sacred. When someone to whom life is trash comes along, those who feel life is sacred need to be ready to stop him. A gun is the best tool for this.
ReplyDeleteIt would be easy to misinterpret a church service. One might think the minister WORSHIPS the altar, the Bible, the sacraments. They are the TOOLS.
Rachel's thinking is dangerously close to that of the South Pacific Cargo Cult, which believes someday Joe Smith will return in his great wooden bird and bless them with more SPAM and crates of tea from Heaven.
I like how, by contrasting fundies & gunnies with herself and 'normal' people, she suggests she doesn't have a sacred text, a creed, on icon or an ideology. I could probably see that as being true in all but the last. What religion does she follow again?
ReplyDeleteIt would be funny if her ideology weren't the aggressor.
Concerned american ....
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHA! Priceless!
Do you think this will become another WoG meme? "gundamentalist"
lulz
Thou shalt not Covet thy neighbors' guns, nor his ammunition, nor his scopes, nor any weaponry that is thy neighbors.
ReplyDeleteMMB III
(Member Merry Band III)
I am truely sorry, mammaliberty, but when I read:
ReplyDelete2. You trust God to keep you safe when you drive along the highway?
The first thing that popped into my mind was that line from the Rolling Stones song, "Far Away Eyes".
I was driving home early Sunday morning through Bakersfield
Listening to gospel music on the colored radio station
And the preacher said "You know you always have the
Lord by your side"
And I was so pleased to be informed of this that I ran
Twenty red lights in his honor
Thank you Jesus, thank you Lord.
Peet in W.Mass.