White American evangelicals own firearms at the highest rate in the country, while Jewish Americans own them at the lowest rate. What accounts for such a disparity? This interdisciplinary paper panel proposal utilizes historical, sociological, and digital methodologies to answer this and related questions, such as: What doctrines or communities contributed to the formation of the American Christian gun culture? As mass shootings proliferate, do Jews and Christians respond in different ways? The scholars of this panel provide a first step in exploring this scholarly lacuna, beginning with the mid-nineteenth century with an examination of the mythmaking of Samuel Colt, before examining how fundamentalists and evangelicals went from supporting limited regulation of firearms to bundling them into their religious identities. Finally, this panel examines how different congregations and synagogues react to mass shooting tragedies, contextualizing the responses according to congregants' religious identities.
Samuel Colt’s revolvers helped create what we now call American gun culture, thanks in large part to his wife Elizabeth’s work after his death in 1862. She actively shaped how Sam was remembered through stone memorials, charitable foundations, and literary works. Most notably, this included building a grand gothic church near his Hartford, Connecticut factories in 1866. While the church is certainly noteworthy for how it incorporates gun iconography into its exterior (including intertwining with crosses), inside, its Memorial Window depicts Joseph of the biblical book, Genesis, complete with a face that resembles Sam Colt. This window reflects Elizabeth’s effort to paint Sam as a Protestant American hero, baptizing the products of Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, and laying the groundwork for the “God and Guns” culture that views Christianity and gun ownership as not only as inseparable, but intrinsic to what it means to be a “true” American.
Over the course of the twentieth century, the attitudes of white evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants toward the regulation of firearms shifted dramatically. Before the 1950s, evangelicals and Fundamentalists—if they discussed firearms at all—generally supported the limited regulation of the private ownership of firearms and rarely considered the theological implications of gun ownership. By the end of the twentieth century, however, these attitudes evolved, with many conservative evangelicals viewing the ownership of firearms, the protection of the second amendment, and the resistance of the regulation of firearms as core aspects of their religious and political identities. This paper traces the evolving views of white conservative evangelicals’ views on the regulation of firearms during the twentieth century. Throughout, the paper attempts to illustrate these changes by comparing how mainline evangelical protestants, Neo-evangelicals, and more conservative Protestant groups began developing competing interpretations of guns and their place in American society.
After yet another mass shooting occurs in the United States, what do religious leaders say to the people in their congregations who come to worship? Using the tools of digital humanities and discourse analysis, I explore the diversity of pastoral discourse around gun violence by examining transcripts of worship services immediately following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022. Religious leaders took many different approaches in addressing their congregations that weekend, but they each articulated a vision of how the congregation should respond to gun violence that was linked to their religious identity. It is my hope that identifying the scripts, core narratives, and themes that emerge from this discourse has the potential to impact the devastation of gun violence in this country.