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Last weekend, Sunday Service at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, became a waking nightmare when a gunman barreled his truck through the front doors and started firing an assault rifle at the parishioners before setting the building on fire. Four people died, and another eight were injured in the 382nd mass shooting of the year, and the third at a place of worship.
The attack is being investigated as an “act of targeted violence.” With open-door policies and packed pews, places of worship are “soft targets,” and the urgency to protect them grows in tandem with the increasing rates of mass shootings.
In direct response to this most recent tragedy, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced a task force, built of the Texas Highway Patrol troopers, Criminal Investigations Division special agents and Texas Rangers, supported by the state’s Homeland Security Division, to “identify threats and prevent life-threatening attacks before they happen.” The state already has an online alert system for reporting suspicious activity around schools, places of worship and other community gathering points.
Texas has had more mass shootings in places of worship than any other state, and the largest mass shooting in state history happened in a church less than 10 years ago, when 27 people died after a gunman entered West Freeway Church of Christ in Sutherland Springs. It is the largest mass shooting in a place of worship in United States History to date.
“The escalation of violent attacks against people and places of faith is heinous and must end,” Abbott wrote on X. “… The fundamental principle that thou shall not kill must be strongly reaffirmed as a core tenet of our society and must be aggressively enforced by law enforcement.”
Abbott did not detail how the task forces would work. But it’s Texas, where some church attendees are known to have their pistols tucked into their Sunday best. Critics say the solution to targeted attacks on churches is not a militarized approach executed by armed guards, while some church security experts say local law enforcement presence is their top recommendation. Both agree that churches, regardless of denomination, should remain places of peace, where safety feels inherent.
“Places of worship are sacred,” Abbott said in a press release. “We will marshal all resources necessary to safeguard our places of faith. To accomplish that objective, I directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to bolster security efforts to protect places of worship.”
Guns and Christianity, Oil and Water
A militaristic approach to church violence is an incomplete take on the grander issue, says Rev. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
“Gov. Abbott’s proposal seems to be short-sided in that what is needed is a much more comprehensive approach to addressing this, and we do need to address our gun laws,” said Jones.
Jones believes the focus on the sanctity of churches as targets for violence undercuts the potency of increasing gun threats for everyone.
“It’s tragic that this is happening in churches, which should be places of peace,” she said. “But it’s tragic that it’s happening anywhere. Christians should be appalled and horrified and doing everything within their power to stop it from happening anywhere, not just churches… The lives of people in churches are no more valuable than the lives that are taken outside of churches. That should be the Christian position on it.”
Jones encourages overcoming evil with good.
“’Thou shalt not kill’ should be backed up by gun policies that reflect that desire,” said Jones. “Unfortunately, in too many far-right religious communities, we hear the opposite. We hear the claim that there’s a God-given right to guns rather than a focus on thou shalt not kill and the harm and damage that guns, unconstrained, can do in our communities, and are doing in our communities.”
Jones says the Christian approach to guns should pivot, and that the use of faith to widen the party gap is the antithesis of the teachings of God.
“We do need to be talking in our churches about what peace means and about the use of guns to kill people as being decidedly un-Christian,” she said. “What we need to stop decisively, and it’s happening right now, is turning these very tragic events into fodder for deeper and deeper partisan divides and more hatefulness. These events themselves are being used as fuel to raise the level of hostility and hatred that undergirds them all.”
At Least It’s Something
Paul Lake specializes in church security, though he prefers the word safety. Lake’s business, Sentry One Consulting Group, based in Dallas, offers safety planning strategies for churches across the country. The former police officer knows the statistics: off-site law enforcement agencies can take minutes to respond, and in an active shooting, seconds often make the difference between life and death.
“My opinion is that anything that can be done from the law enforcement standpoint to deter violence by having a uniform or marked unit presence on campuses is a benefit,” said Lake. “I teach all over the country, and that’s one of the first things I recommend to a church. If they have the budget, their best deterrent to violence is always the presence of uniform, visible law enforcement.”
Lake says his phone starts ringing after church shootings. It’s been a busy season, but he’s been doing this for 20 years, and the demand fluctuates. However, more churches are realizing they need to take some kind of action, Lake says, and even active shooter training is beneficial in today’s climate.
“The increase has been significant as church leadership finally gets it, because there’s a lot of church leadership over the years that have just adopted the policy of ‘we don’t need no stinking safety program because God’s going to take care of us,’” he said. “That’s just stinking thinking. The Lord gave us a brain to use it.”
Lake says several churches, even in Texas, prohibit open-carry gun policies; in fact, he personally attends one of them. In compliance with the law, a specific sign must be hung or a verbal notice must be delivered. Without notice, parishioners are free to carry a holstered gun into any church in the state.
“I joke around, tell people all the time, it’s required here in Texas for you to carry in church,” Lake said. “Obviously, that’s not the case… Early in my teaching career, I thought half of [the congregants] were going to have their guns out trying to protect [people], and that’s just not what really happens.”
Lake recognizes that officers may inadvertently compromise some of the “open door” policy that is customary in places of worship, but it may be at the cost of safety.
“The [open door] policy has and probably will always be because that’s biblical,” he said. “That’s part of the focus of my teaching, the balance between being an ambassador for Christ first and then a protector of the flock, in that order. The visibility of uniformed officers on the scene can be a turnoff to some people, and some leadership I would prefer not to do that, and that’s fine. But they’ve got to have some level of safety.”
