In Guns We Trust
By William J. Kole, Broadleaf Books, 2025
In the United States today, many Christians offer unwavering support for gun access and use, even to the extent of treating gun ownership as a God-given right. Amid murders and mass shootings, the gospel of guns frequently takes precedence over the gospel of peace. In his book, In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms (Broadleaf Books), journalist and lay missionary William Kole provides an insightful perspective into gun idolatry, especially among evangelical Christians.
Kole tells a striking anecdote about a fellow church member who, at a practice for their worship band, showed Kole the concealed firearm he was carrying. Kole was inspired to look at how gun ownership and the politics around it has gotten woven into Christian identity, to the point that some Christian churches have active shooting ranges and use them in their outreach.
I owned multiple firearms 20 years ago, and when I trained, I took safety seriously. What struck me in Kole’s accounts is how absent any emphasis on safety is in various discourses about guns among Christians. Nor do the gun-owning Christians he describes seem inclined to look at gun use as a last-resort measure. Even as a firearm user, I was surprised that the emphasis in these Christian circles is not on minimizing harm or avoiding death. In contrast, the culture Kole depicts fosters an assertive, even aggressive approach to gun use. The Christian faith advocates for respecting life: This should not translate into casualness about the harm that firearms cause.
While Kole’s emphasis is on evangelicals, the author notes that prominent right-wing Catholics such as Matt Walsh and Jack Posobiec also share this fervor for firearms.
At the same time, I was pleased and relieved to read of both Catholic and Protestant efforts to dismantle the gospel of guns in favor of the gospel of peace. Kole writes about RAWTools, an organization founded in response to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. RAWTools dismantles firearms and transforms them into art, jewelry, and garden tools. Activist Shane Claiborne is among the supporters of this organization. Dominican Sister Judy Byron utilizes an activist investor approach with companies such as Smith & Wesson and Dick’s Sporting Goods to leverage shareholder interest against the proliferation of gun violence.
The book highlights several other examples of Christian efforts to promote the gospel of peace.
In Guns We Trust offers a provocative look at how American gun culture has gotten tangled up with American Christianity, especially in right-wing, white, Christian, evangelical spaces—though this phenomenon also includes our fellow Catholics. It looks at both ecumenical efforts to lobby for guns in U.S. politics and at the ecumenical counter-efforts toward gun limitation, toward the end of building a culture of peace. These efforts offer hope that our Christian faith can counteract the forces of violence—even when these forces are aided and abetted by professed believers.
This article also appears in the September 2026 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 91, No. 9, page 36). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Cropped from cover of In Guns We Trust, Broadleaf Books
