\u00a0 <\/span>It
\nreveals almost pornographic-religious obsession with guns and violence that
\nshould be deeply disturbing for any faith community.<\/span><\/p>\nThe “Taking the Hill” campaign was launched last month
\nat the seminary.\u00a0 <\/span>According the
\nSeptember 17 edition of The Baptist
\nPress, <\/i>President Paige Patterson\u00a0
\n<\/span>kicked off the project:<\/span><\/p>\nFORT WORTH, Texas (BP)–Dressed in
\ncamouflage and stationed as the gunner in a Chenowth Desert Fast Attack
\nVehicle, Paige Patterson stormed onto the chapel stage.??After firing a round
\nof blanks from a .50-caliber Browning machine gun, Southwestern Baptist
\nTheological Seminary’s president took his place behind the pulpit and initiated
\noperation “Taking the Hill.”<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n….Patterson lifted his Bible,
\npointing out that God has armed believers with His Word, along with prayer and
\nproclamation. Then, reading 2 Corinthians 5, he urged believers to testify to
\nthe Gospel of Christ, reminding them of Paul’s motivation: the “terror of
\nthe Lord,” the righteous judge of all men and women, and the “love of
\nChrist,” who died to save all who believe.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n….Lifting his left hand, Patterson
\nsaw that it was covered with blood — the blood of a woman who died without
\nhearing the Gospel although she lived less than a mile from the seminary. His
\nright hand was covered with the blood of a man who took his own life because
\nPatterson did not witness to him at God’s prompting.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI know that it is a free country, and that we have both
\nreligious freedom and certain rights to own guns.\u00a0 <\/span>But when these two rights interweave–as they are doing–it is dangerous to both church and state.\u00a0 <\/span>Any church that advances such a crusading and violent vision
\nis far from its founder’s vision, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is
\nthe Kingdom of God.”\u00a0 <\/span>And the state
\nthat fails to understand that people with guns who believe that God has armed
\nthem are dangerous isn’t serving the good of a peaceable society.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAlthough weapons and religion may have been natural
\npartners in the Middle Ages or on the American frontier, isn’t it time to
\nrecognize that we live in the twenty-first century?\u00a0 <\/span>Guns and grace don’t go together.\u00a0 <\/span>Shouldn’t true religion–genuinely transformative faith–call God’s
\npeople away from violence and toward passionate peacemaking?<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a video from Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas entitled “Taking the Hill.”\u00a0 I thought it might be a political video encouraging conservative Christians to go to Washington to lobby against health care or some such thing.\u00a0 Actually, it was much worse.\u00a0 “Taking the Hill” is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\n
Machine Gun Theology - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/10\/machine-gun-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Machine Gun Theology - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a video from Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas entitled “Taking the Hill.”\u00a0 I thought it might be a political video encouraging conservative Christians to go to Washington to lobby against health care or some such thing.\u00a0 Actually, it was much worse.\u00a0 “Taking the Hill” is…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/10\/machine-gun-theology.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-01T12:36:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Machine Gun Theology - 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}