John Calvin and the AR-15: The Theology of American Gun Violence

"God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

-John Calvin, The Institutes 

America is becoming more secular - we know that for certain. We attend church less frequently, we increasingly doubt the existence of God. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, 23% of American adults currently identify as religiously unaffiliated, up from just 16% in 2007. Yet as our country moves away from the church, our American Protestant theological heritage is as powerful as always. In a country where fewer Americans are concerned with "salvation" as a spiritual necessity or a theological doctrine, Protestant, specifically Calvinist, understandings of "salvation" refuse to relinquish their death grip on our national identity. America's infatuation with Calvinist salvation binds us in a stranglehold, as it looses the trigger safety and loads the ammunition.

So what exactly does a French-speaking theologian who died in 1564, have to do with America's obsession with firearms, namely the AR-15, which would not be invented until some 400 years after Calvin? And why do the ideas of the Geneva-born John Calvin, a theologian few Americans outside of erudite religious circles would recognize, have such destructive influence in our secularizing nation?

To understand these questions, it is important to understand the basics of the doctrine of salvation. Ask a handful of Christians today and each will likely define salvation differently. Many will mention something about heaven, eternal life, or after life. Others might talk about forgiveness of sins or reconciliation. Some might view salvation as liberation from destructive worldly forces. In Calvin's day, understandings of salvation were more uniform - salvation in the Christian west simply meant one's ability to get into heaven after death.

Prior to the 16th century, the Christian west viewed salvation, or life eternal, as the merit for a life lived within the church, according to its teachings. Salvation went through the church - and though this understanding lead to horrible institutional abuses, the benefit of the Christian life - eternal life and salvation - were always received through community, via the neighbor.

Enter John Calvin. Inspired by Martin Luther's bold stance against the church hierarchy's abuses, Calvin envisioned a theological system predicated upon a new mode of salvation. Rather than receiving salvation through the community, the faithful receive salvation individually, as predestined by a rather capricious God. Such a view inevitably provokes tremendous anxiety and conflict within the individual conscience - if God chooses some individuals to be saved while damning others, than is not the salvation of my neighbor a threat to my own salvation? And since salvation is an abstract theological concept, more concretely, is not the well-being and safety of the neighbor a threat to my own well-being and safety?

So what does this have to do with the AR-15?

The theological heritage of American Protestantism is decidedly Calvinist. Many Mainline and Evangelical Protestant churches preach a message of individual salvation - and have ever since the 17th century arrival of European Protestants. To preach Calvin is to proclaim the futility of community. If my salvation is mine and mine alone, what good does it do to participate in the work of the people? What good does it do to participate in the work of the church? What good does it do to seek the salvation, in this life or the next, of my neighbor? Is not my neighbor an existential threat to salvation before a God who saves some individual soles, but certainly not all?

Calvinist salvation is akin to a shipwreck, where instead of sharing seats on large life rafts, the passengers must fight for a very limited quantity of life vests. If a man, woman, or child takes a life jacket off the shelf before me, I may well drown. I am therefore unconcerned about whether they get a life jacket or not. Everyone for themselves! If the neighbor is nearly drowned in the shipwreck, it is of no concern to me - it is their own fault, for they were not predestined by God for individual salvation. Calvin may not have intended his doctrines of salvation and predestination to become zero-sum doctrines. Such a twist may well be a purely American construct. Nevertheless, John Calvin convinces the American conscience that the community's ship is indeed sinking, that the life vests are few, and that the water is getting higher in a perpetual fight for individual survival.

Last week, America experienced yet another mass shooting, this time at a high school in Parkland, Florida. 17 Americans, most of them high school aged children, perished in the nation's 30th mass shooting of the new year. Yet despite overwhelming evidence that the United States is the world's only industrialized nation to experience gun violence on this scale, we refuse to adopt common sense legislation that would limit the sale of semi-automatic assault rifles like the AR-15 to the mentally ill, to the chronically violent, or even to suspected terrorists on the no-fly list.

America's epidemic of gun violence, and our unparalleled rate of ownership of assault rifles, is no surprise. John Calvin threw out the idea that God saves us, and we save one another, through community.

In so doing, he constructed the idea that God only saves individuals, and that such salvation exists in scarce supply. The bullets that fly through our streets are the inevitable consequence of a zero-sum approach to theology, one in which I have no obligation to the well-being or salvation of the other.

Some may place the blame for the bloodshed on the National Rifle Association, and rightly so. There is blood on their orthodox-Republican hands. But a theological view of our love affair with the AR, the AK, and the bump stock indicates that the problem is much older than a special interest lobby.

Until we turn away from Calvinist individualism, until we construct an understanding of salvation and well-being that happens exclusively in community, the "American carnage" will continue.

This theological reconstruction is not just the work of the church, which wanes in its cultural influence - but is the work of all who grow weary of reading about the shooting deaths of innocent children.

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Ryan Panzer is a theological thinker, coffee drinker, corporate trainer, and Badger football fan. He is God-damn tired of reading about mass shootings. Comments, questions, criticisms, and rants can be sent via Twitter to @ryanpanzer. 

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