Noah Kim photo
Guns forged into garden tools on the Green Sunday.
Two thousands years after Jesus turned water into wine, two of his loyal followers erected a forge outside a New Haven church Sunday to turn a rifle into a rake — then offered a Christian take on the power of the gun versus the power of the cross.
The two followers, anti-violence activists Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin, stopped by the United Church on the Green to deliver a sermon. As a part of a publicity tour to promote their book Beating Guns, the pair spoke about their decision to fight gun violence by repurposing guns into garden tools — to “cleanse these instruments of destruction in the fire of the forge,” in the words of Claiborne. They also invited members of hte public to do some of that cleansing outside the church.
Inspired by the biblical prophets’ call to “beat swords into plowshares,” the men have turned handguns into hammers, AR-15s into garden rakes, and AK-47s into shovels. New Haven is among the communities that have participated in the project. (Read about that here.)
Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin.
The activists come from different backgrounds: Claiborne is an evangelical author and anti-violence activist. Martin is a Mennonite pastor turned blacksmith. Both of them believe in the necessity of a “Christian response” to the American gun violence crisis. The tour was planned to coincide with the pre-Easter season of Lent, when many Christians reflect on the sanctity of life.
During Sunday night’s event, both Claiborne and Martin emphasized the religious groundings of their project. Martin drew links between the fire of the forge and the burning bush as well as the hardening of metal and the “hardening of Pharaoh’s heart” in the Book of Exodus.
Claiborne spent much of his speech contemplating the fact that Evangelical Christians have a higher rate of gun ownership than any other demographic in the country. He spoke with humor, conviction, and a quasi-biblical cadence, arguing eloquently that guns contradict the Christian ideas of mercy and compassion.
Shane Claiborne.
“The gun and the cross give us two very different versions of power,” he said. “One says ‘I’m prepared to die.’ The other says ‘I’m prepared to kill.’”
He and the audience took particular umbrage from the number-one bestselling “bible” case in America, which doubles as a handgun-concealer.
“When we use the word ‘idolatry’ to describe our country’s gun obsession, we don’t think we go too far,” he said, holding one of the cases aloft as people booed and hissed.
Garden tools made from guns.
After they finished speaking, Claiborne and Martin asked the audience to accompany them to a forge that they had assembled outside, where Martin’s father, Fred Martin, was busy heating up a rifle barrel.
First Claiborne read aloud a prayer that he had written to commemorate the event.
“Dear God, we thank you for giving us a perfect world, and we ask forgiveness to the mess we’ve made of it,” he said. “We ask that you soften our hearts like the forge softens metal.”
Fred Martin.
Outside, the activists invited those who had been personally affected by gun violence to help them hammer the rifle barrel into a different shape.
Henrietta Beckman, president of the anti-violence organization Mothers United Against Violence, dedicated the act to her son, Randy, who died from a gunshot wound 17 years ago.
Back inside the church, Claiborne and Martin concluded the event by presenting the recently-forged garden tools to agricultural programs in Greater New Haven and to individuals whose family members had been affected by gun violence, including Beckman.
Retired Bishop Jim Curry (pictured), who has worked with both Claiborne and Martin in the past, offered the concluding remarks.
“It’s not over, but it has begun,” he said. “Thank God for that.”