“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.”
The words of Jesus were said in kindness and love; he was telling his disciples to allow the kids to get close to him. The man who Christians believe to be the Redeemer and Savior understood that the freshness of spirit, the natural joy, the openness to the world that children possess are among the truest sources of faith and of our connection to the love of God. Jesus knew that.
In the United States, we allow the murder of children.
That is the only way to say it. That is the truth.
Fourteen children were shot at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis yesterday. An eight-year-old was killed. A ten-year-old was killed.
As the bullets rained down, smashing through the stained-glass windows, the children did what they—like all American children now—have been trained to do. Duck and cover. Run. Hide. Fight. The drills our little ones do often save their lives. Some of the children of Annunciation did more. Older kids shielded younger children with their own bodies; at least one boy was shot while providing cover to his friend.
What a disgrace on us. A national disgrace.
No other nation in the world allows its children to be slaughtered like we do. On a regular basis.
We in the United States live with this awful fact despite the fact that a strong majority of us believe it is too easy for people to buy guns here:
And we are compelled to live in a country that allows the murder of children even though a strong majority of us want tougher gun laws:
But of course in the US, on this issue, the majority does not rule. A blinkered interpretation of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court, and the Christian nationalist base of the Republican Party have thwarted the will of the majority, and thus allowed the children to fall like grain before the scythe of gun violence in our schools and churches.
When mortal threats arise to Americans from natural disasters, environmental threats, faulty products, drugs, cars, pets even—people demand action. And governments respond. But not when it comes to guns, never when it comes to guns, even while the children die. We allow that slaughter of the innocents.
It wasn’t always this way. Through most of American history, states and localities passed a wide variety of gun-safety laws. The Second Amendment was never as absolute as the current Supreme Court and gun lobby claim. Read Justice Stephen Breyer’s masterful dissent in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, perhaps his greatest opinion. Breyer mocks the amateur historical work of the conservatives on the court—“Courts are, after all, staffed by lawyers, not historians”—and goes on to demonstrate that gun laws are as old as the country. (Just take a look at the enormous repository of federal, state and local gun laws through American history collected by the Duke Center for Firearms Law.) The current Supreme Court is not vindicating our true history of gun ownership and regulation under the Second Amendment; it’s trashing our past.
And that is just the way the Christian nationalist base of the Trumpist Republican Party wants it. They claim to be followers of Jesus. They proclaim that we are a Christian nation, yet they allow this slaughter of our children across our land. Somehow, they have fused a cult-like attachment to guns with the teachings of the Prince of Peace. Over and over and over, while the little ones are laid in their graves, all their promise and hope snuffed out, the Christian nationalists shield themselves from seeing it—truly seeing the actual fact that we are the only country in the world that allows the murder of children—by hiding behind thoughts and prayers. They look away.
I believe in the power of prayer. So today I pray for the children and their families. I pray for God’s mercy on our country. And I pray that those among us who refuse to protect our children recall that God is just, and that, in the words of the great American Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards: “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart.”