In the aftermath of the massacre at Emanuel AME in Charleston, S.C., Bishop Ira Combs made clear that his parishioners would be able to pray free from fear. He assured his flock that the tragic events in Charleston could not happen within his walls, while undercover armed guards scanned the crowd.
At Greater Bible Way Temple in Jackson, Mich., paranoid conservatism is a chimera: one-part armed security, one-part religious embrace, and one-part fear-inducing rhetoric.
Combs told the men and women of Greater Bible Way that “the assailant would not have been able to reload” had armed guards been present at Emanuel AME, throwing gasoline on the fire burning parishioners’ mental images of armed shooters like a witch at the stake. Combs would be flanked by armed guards on both sides of the pulpit, projecting himself heroic, a servant of God determined to keep the men and women surrendered to Him safe from flying bullets with flying bullets of his own.
Ira Combs is not the only clergyman militarizing the pulpit.
Charles Ellis is a pastor at the Greater Grace Temple, a 6,000+ member megachurch in Detroit. In response to recent attacks taking place in houses of worship, including the police shooting of a hatchet-wielding man at Detroit’s Citadel of Praise and the carjacking of Pastor Marvin Winans, Ellis assembled a group of 25 armed guards, dubbed “The Ministers of Defense.” At Greater Grace Temple, these armed guards work similarly to the armed guards at Greater Bible Way — some in or near the pulpit, others unsuspectingly blending into the congregation.
To these men and many others around the country, to worship in peace requires a measure as removed from peace as is humanly possible.
Jesus comes with a gun.
The recently-realized reality of American mass shootings is a truth that has always existed: churches are fair game for acts of domestic terrorism, no more or less a possible site than a school or a movie theater. Consecrated ground does not have some kind of supernatural power keeping domestic terrorists away and to believe otherwise is remarkably foolish. Similarly, to believe there exists unshakable safety in schools, in homes, or in the workplace are themselves asinine, and have been established as such long before eyes opened to the reality that your life can be violently taken while staring at an assembly-line crucifix hanging on a chapel wall.
In the United States, there is no decisive safety. Even two dozen armed guards patrolling churchgoers like the Secret Service will not fundamentally negate the chances at least one parishioner’s blood is spilled on a pew.
Armed guards in churches will not supplant God when it comes to safety. They only reinforce the conflict. Armed guards in churches, as a means to combat violence that can take place in a church, is the very definition of hypocrisy — how does one stop violence by enabling violence?
In Jackson, Mich., the idea of armed guards at Greater Bible Way seems to have split the crowd. “In the times we live in today, it’s necessary,” said parishioner Joshua Webb. Rose Philips, another parishioner, said the armed guards do not make her feel safer. “God is my gun,” she said.
