Bob Schwartz

December 17, 2012

The World Makes Sense Of America, One Front Page At A Time

COL_EC
The Newseum in Washington, D.C. is America’s news museum. It is a valuable resource that fortunately offers a lot of online content. One of its focuses is the still alive and kicking medium of print newspapers, and the Newsuem offers something that highlights one unique feature of these supposed media dinosaurs. Each day the Newsweum collects the front pages of hundreds of American and global papers and makes them available digitally.

For particular eventful days, like 9/11, the Newseum archives those front pages for posterity. The archive for Saturday, December 15, 2012, the day newspapers first reported about Sandy Hook, is particularly enlightening. Most nations had at least one front page featuring the story. American gun culture is so singular, even in places undergoing short-term or protracted states of war, that the stories mix perplexity with maybe some sense of “we’ve got plenty of problems, but this ain’t one.”

Even for those who love a well-crafted Web page or mobile screen, newspaper front pages remain an expressive art form, a story before and within the story. This is at its truest and most challenging in the face of big events.

The one above is from Medillin, Colombia. Medillin is the country’s second largest city and the infamous home of the Medillin drug cartel, which for about two decades terrorized the nation. Medillin is no stranger to brutality and guns.

The headline reads: “Golpe Al Alma de Estados Unidos”. Blow to the Soul of the United States.

Here are a few more:

Austria
Austria
Has America Learned from the Pain This Time?

PanamaPanama
Massacre
BelgiumBelgium
Bloodbath in Kindergarten
BrazilBrazil
Why?

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December 17, 2012

God Does Not Like Guns

William Strutt - Peace
God does not like guns. God is also not crazy about nuclear weapons, and about all the easy to use and widely available tools of destruction in between.

This isn’t obvious. As scholars of religion and violence point out, the Old Testament is a compendium of both divine and divine-inspired and endorsed human mayhem. In the continuing battle against moral evil, which often has a religious component or context, the imperative to take up arms goes unquestioned among some, but not all. Finally, an entire eschatological theology is based on a battle that ends and transcends history as we know it, leading once and for all to the heaven on earth we have all been awaiting.

Let us pull back to the now and here, particularly last night in Newtown, Connecticut, where clergy of all faiths talked about God, if not for God.

The events in Newtown opened up a door to a new world. It was not Armageddon in an epic sense, but it was the end of the world for some, and everyone felt that. The door is a passage to the place where we leave the theology of the Second Amendment behind, where we stop listening to the priests of the National Rifle Association and their interpretations of what the founding gods meant.

This is the time to extend last night in Newtown to every congregation in America. There, leaders will explain to congregants whether God loves guns, and particularly whether God loves guns in such massive quantities and destructiveness.

The leaders can then cite Isaiah 11, and explain how “a child will lead them” is not merely some hermeneutic puzzle pointing to a messiah. Instead, it is reflected in the instruction by Jesus: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

The leaders will close by acknowledging that the faithful congregants will hear and themselves espouse practical arguments that stand in the way. Leaders will then patiently explain that all faith is ultimately impractical and heedless of impossibility. God does not like guns, but as his instruments, we are bound to do the worldly work of reducing their number and universal availability. If we claim to be faithful, that is more than just a good deed. It is a divine mission. God, it appears, will be more disappointed than ever if we fail.

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