GA and Beyond: Gun Violence

by Bryan Miller

The PCUSA General Assembly took a momentous step in Minneapolis by adopting by acclamation an report entitled ‘Gun Violence and Gospel Values: Mobilizing in Response to God’s Call.’ The report, drafted and promoted by the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) calls for the entire PCUSA, from bottom to top, from congregants in the pews, to clergy, Presbyteries, Synods, church staff and national leadership, to take an activist role in reducing and preventing the scourge of gun violence that mars our country and devastates families, neighborhoods and entire communities.

The report rests upon numerous statements made over past decades by PCUSA General Assemblies, but it goes a long and powerful step beyond. It calls for the PCUSA and Presbyterians to join together with other faiths and their adherents to create and build a national social movement for change – change to save thousands of lives yearly – change to end America’s horrific culture of guns and violence – change to effectively seek God’s peaceable kingdom. It calls for the American faith community to live its faith on its feet, locally, publicly and directly, by focusing action on the illegal gun trade and the gun retailers who supply the guns used to threaten, wound, maim and kill. And, the report calls on our church and fellow Presbyterians to lead a righteously indignant faith community to spark the movement for change.

In particular, the report calls for faithful to seek the adoption of business practices on the part of gun retailers intended to diminish the flow of guns from legal sale at gun shops and shows to illegal street sale, by participating in local grassroots and faith-based campaigns like Heeding God’s Call, a program originating and still active in Philadelphia that has brought hundreds of faithful and dozens of churches, synagogues and mosques to publicly pressure gun retailers to adopt a helpful Code of Conduct. Heeding has succeeded in gaining the shuttering of one of America’s most notorious gun shops, notable for selling a disproportionate volume of guns that ended up in crime and violence.

PPF will partner with Heeding to spread its campaign of local action to Presbyterians and their churches across the country, thereby living to the tenets of ‘Gun Violence and Gospel Values,’ and saving the lives of God’s children.