Against the Stream

The Cult of Guns and Christian Nationalism

Thomas Lacaque writes about the intersection of gun cultism and religious nationalism in Religion Dispatches, noting that the AR-15 in particular is marketed to apocalyptic Christians with specifically biblical imagery.

This is a screenshot from a now hidden tweet from Daniel Defense, the maker of the assault rifle the Uvalde shooter used in his massacre at Robb Elementary.

It uses the photo of a small child and a Bible verse to sell weapons of war. pic.twitter.com/2CmckN4A6X

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) May 27, 2022

Lacaque goes on to note other examples of explicit marketing of mass murder weapons to evangelical Christians:

If Daniel Defense sells their guns using Bible verses, other companies have a much closer affiliation. A Florida gunmaker, Spike’s Tactical, makes an AR-15-style rifle they call the “Crusader.” The name is chosen deliberately and with care, and the company knows exactly what they’re selling. ...

The rifle—which is popular with the far right—features an engraved Templar shield logo opposite the Psalm, and has three settings on it, presumably safety, single fire and semi-auto, but named, “Pax Pacis, Bellum, & Deus Vult,” or “Peace, War, and God Wills It,” the First Crusade battle cry popular with contemporary white supremacists. And as a company spokesperson said in 2015, “This ensures that no Muslim terrorist will ever pick up this weapon and use it to bring harm against another person. That’s actually my favorite part of the rifle.” 

He goes on to note the intimate connection between far right Christian rhetoric and political violence, which has been increasingly prevalent in recent years.

None of this, sadly, is surprising. The intersection of apocalyptic Christianity and political violence is baked into the kind of dominionist theology that has become so central to evangelicalism over the past half-century. And of course, Christianity's history of violence extends to back to its embrace by the Roman Empire, when support for the violent maintenance of power supplanted the ethic of nonviolence that had been at the heart of Jesus' teaching. But the fact that this is a long-standing perversion of the gospel does not render it any less obscene. And as I have noted before -- since it seems that these mass shootings are common enough that I have written on this topic multiple times -- for gun cultists, the embrace of guns is not a second amendment issue, it is a first amendment issue. It is not that they have a constitutional right to bear arms, it is that they have a first amendment right to worship them.

The Worst People on Earth Keep Finding Each Other

The other day I quipped on how funny it is that, after Milo Yiannopoulos and his minions worked so hard to make life miserable for DePaul faculty members several years ago, he was now hawking Christian kitsch on the Home Shopping Network. But it turns out I was wrong -- at least THAT would have paid! It turns out he's now been "hired" as an unpaid intern for legendary lunatic Marjorie Taylor Green!

Greene confirmed the news to The Daily Beast in a similarly cringe and problematic statement that grossly equated sexual abuse with LGBTQ+ identity and nodded at another staple of Yiannopoulos’ trolling — that he now identifies as a born-again Christian who cured himself of his self-described sins as a gay man and who now believes in the dangerous and debunked controversial practice of conversion therapy.

Clearly on one level, these are two horrible people who deserve one another. On another level however, what did the rest of us do to deserve this? Haven't we suffered enough? Global catastrophe, war, pandemic, murder hornets!, leaping worms!, and now monkey pox?!? Come on and cut us all a break here!

At the end of the day, however, I suppose that they really can't do too much to make one another worse, given that they are both already burying the needle in terms of horribleness. But it would still be nice if the worst people on earth didn't keep finding and collaborating with one another.

Revenge of the Son of the Return of the Blog

I appear to be at that point at which I arrive every year or so when I strive to recommit myself to regularly posting on this blog. You know I'm at that point because I usually post something like this, largely as an accountability tool for myself, to remind myself that a) this blog exists and b) it's a worthwhile endeavor to post here regularly.

Of course, the whole genre of "blog" seems to be a bit passé these days, as we've moved into the vast unknown realm of Substack. But for my purposes, I think this blog is still a useful outlet for at least the "first draft" of my thoughts and ideas, as well as my response to current events. Whether anyone ever reads them, of course, is another matter.

My hope is that this will help me to develop, or re-develop, a writing discipline, so that I can finish the multiple projects that have been languishing on my to-do list for some time. Although, I suppose I should note that in the fine blogging tradition, things will go in whatever direction my reduced attention span wants to take them -- religion and politics? Definitely. Current events? Absolutely. Philosophy and ethics? Certainly! But also popular culture, music, games, movies, or whatever else crosses the transom of my mind.

So, with that all said, watch this space, and we'll see whether or not I actually fulfill my promise to myself and get back to blogging again on the regular!