God and Guns Part 2: White Evangelicals and Gun Culture

Guns and God continues this week we take a closer look at the way gun culture has been cultivated and intertwined with evangelical faith over the last 75 years. While many point to the NRA as the primary driver of attitudes about gun ownership in America, best-selling author, and historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez points to another force reshaping American evangelicalism: Christian pop culture. Then Christian ethicist Michael Austin describes how studying gun ownership from a theological and moral frame drew him closer to pacifism.

A Generation Embraces Raising Knights
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a historian and the best-selling author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation talks about the role of Christian pop culture in reshaping evangelical attitudes about gun rights, gender, and demographic changes sweeping across the country.

Weaponizing Fear: Us versus Them
In a continuation of our conversation with Du Mez, the historian discusses the role of religious political influencers from the religious right and how the “us versus them” mentality has contributed to polarization dividing America.

On God and Guns in American Christianity
Michael Austin, Christian ethicist and author of Gods, Guns and America shares reflections and insights from contemplating whether a Christian can find a theology that supports gun ownership? And why it’s so difficult to discuss so-called “common sense” gun laws in white evangelical spaces.


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