Pistol Packing Preacher

July 17, 1998

Today’s Sarasota Herald Tribune carried this news under the headline, “Kentucky legalizes pistols in the pulpit”: the Kentucky General Assembly amended a 1996 law which allowed state residents with permits to carry concealed weapons, but banned them from schools, government buildings and houses of worship. The change made it legal for ministers and church officials to carry weapons inside houses of worship if they have concealed weapons permits.

One of the advocates of the change was “Willie Ramsay, a preacher at the Somerset Church of Christ (who) argued that churches are robbery targets because of the offerings they collect.”

If Willie is a Shakespeare fan, perhaps he found some sanction in Henry IV (Part I, Sc. II), where Hotspur proclaims:

“Now for our consciences the arms are fair
When the intent of bearing them is just.”

There is much disagreement in Kentucky about this new law; many oppose it and will seek repeal of the amendment.

This news story sparked my speculations as it would any veteran preacher. Did I ever need to carry a gun in the pulpit? That never occurred to me, although in a novel I read years ago, CIMARRON, by Edna Ferber, I recall that the Yancey Cravat, brandished his six-shooter when a heckler was interrupting Yancey’s sermon in a tent filled with frontier people.

I have always been aware that ministers never receive unanimous endorsement for their sermons. At least I never did. My story is not that much different from most others. At times we create boredom, encounter disagreement, engender dislike, even stir hatred. But, carry a 357 Magnum or a Beretta into the pulpit!! No thanks, I think not. I wouldn’t even know the proper etiquette for wearing the gun belt and holster inside or outside the clerical robe.

Perhaps there is cause for some fear. When I read Edward Gibbon’s description of early Christian preachers in the age of Constantine, maybe so. (THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, Vol. I, Ch. XX, p. 763):

“...The preachers recommended the practice of the social duties; but they exalted the perfection of monastic virtue, which is painful to the individual and useless to mankind. Their charitable exhortations betrayed a secret wish that the clergy might be permitted to manage the wealth of the faithful for the benefit of the poor. The most sublime representations of the attributes and laws of the Deity were sullied by an idle mixture of metaphysical subtleties, puerile rites, and fictitious miracles: and they expatiated, with the most fervent zeal, on the religious merit of hating the adversaries, and obeying the ministers of the church.”

There are a few preachers, still, who match Gibbon’s scathing description, but fortunately there are not many (I hope). More accurate in today's world, perhaps, is the following quote (source unknown):

“Some pastors employ the same strategy that Herman Hickman employed when he was head football coach at Yale in his relations with alumni – keep them sullen but not mutinous.”

However, such an attitude, notwithstanding the witty Herman Hickman, leads to what in our shop is termed, “negotiated resignations.” (The old “Heave-Ho” but stated politely euphemistic.)

But, pistol packing preachers, I think not – abas, avaunt, no way.