Interview 54 Beating Guns (Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin)

Last Saturday while I was attending a Christian festival in Ohio, a 21 year-old man entered a Walmart in El Paso, TX and murdered 22 people, injuring 24 more, making it the 7th deadliest shooting in modern US history.  What’s so crazy about this, is that walking into a huge store like Walmart and shooting a semi-automatic assault rifle and hitting 46 people is only 7th!  Can you agree with me that we have a gun-violence problem in America?

Then, the next day, a 24 year-old man shot 10 people outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio, injuring 27 more. He used another semi-automatic assault rifle.  What is the Christian response to all of this?

Well, today we are going to hear from two Christians who think it’s time for Christ-followers to lead the way in enacting and living out the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks (and our guns into mattocks.)  In fact, they’re already doing just that.

I went to see Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin on their “Beating Guns” tour when they came to New Haven, CT (the same town as Yale University).  I stood there outside the church watching as a woman whose life was traumatized by gun violence beat on a glowing hunk of metal, that had once been a gun, confiscated by the police and now being transformed into an actual garden tool.  As she brought the hammer down on the softened metal, she began weeping.  As she continued hitting it harder and faster she started wailing.  I stood there watching as she took out her overwhelming pain and personal loss on that piece of metal. It was cathartic, prophetic, and transformative.

Now I realize that gun-violence is a hot-button issue in our culture today and that many of you listening to this own guns for a variety of purposes.  I don’t expect you to just change what you believe about guns after a single podcast episode, but I simply ask that you listen to these guys as they talk about this subject from a Christian perspective.

—— Links ——

• Check out RAWtools.org and follow them on twitter @RAWtools
• Get the Beating Guns book in print or in audio format through Christian audio or Audible or visit the website
• You can follow Shane Claiborne on twitter @ShaneClaiborne
• Listen to Restitutio episodes Podcast 15: A Theology of Nonviolence, Podcast 67: It’s Just War (Debate), Off Script 38: Killing in War: A Christian View of Violence, and Off Script 43: Can Christians Use Non-Lethal Violence? (Q&A).
• Intro music: Jazzy Frenchy by bensound.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.