Category Archives: Gun control

Race and guns: a call to the occasion “For Such a Time As This” with the Rev. Sharon Risher

Posted on November 16, 2019 by

I was honoured to offer this opening prayer and call at lunch with God Before Guns and the Rev. Sharon Risher at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights, today. What do guns have to do with any of this? That … Continue reading →

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What are we worth?

Posted on October 6, 2019 by

No matter what we do, it is no more than Christ has ordered us to do, no more than our baptismal promises to resist evil, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the life and dignity of every human being; to become slaves to the love of God and of God’s family in creation.
But, “worthless”? Continue reading →

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100 orange stoles

Posted on September 27, 2019 by

In 2016, in the run-up to the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I began making orange stoles to bring the #WearOrange movement, with its focus on life and hope, back to church. It wasn’t exactly nor entirely my … Continue reading →

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#DoSomething

Posted on September 18, 2019 by

Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading →

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Everything comes with a side of guns

Posted on August 21, 2019 by

I did not have the time to wonder deeply why a construction company, expert in damp recovery and replastering, thought that an active shooter drill would be right up their alley (nor why we would call them first in the unfortunate event). I did not have the wherewithal in that Thursday moment to explain my theological aversion to drilling fear into our worship, or the stubborn resistance to the inevitably of guns everywhere that stems from the sanctuary of my foolish faith. Continue reading →

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A Vigil for the victims of gun violence

Posted on August 8, 2019 by

We were heart-stricken but honoured to host at Epiphany a Vigil for the most recent victims of mass murder and gun violence, in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton, organized by God Before Guns. Continue reading →

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America, it is past time to repent

Posted on August 4, 2019 by

The deadly combination of targeted hatred coupled with widespread individual armouries – an obscene proliferation of weapons of death tucked into our daily life – continues to wreak havoc among us. This is the product and the consequence of sin. Continue reading →

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Gilroy, guns, and White anger

Posted on August 2, 2019 by

Red Letter Christians published a piece I wrote reflecting on the uncivil war simmering in the soul of America, one that breaks out all too often in acts of violence like last weekend’s tragedy in Gilroy, California. Continue reading →

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On Pentecost, #WearOrange

Posted on June 8, 2019 by

Few languages are universal. That we have made the gun one of them is blasphemy against the Spirit who brooded over creation; ever the image of life. Would that we would bury the language of death under love, even if the mockery … Continue reading →

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who art in heaven

Posted on May 31, 2019 by

There is nothing wrong with our prayers, nor even with our orange stoles, unless they make no difference to the gaping wound that continues to haemorrhage life from this nation, that siphons off hope and replaces it with weaponry. Continue reading →

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