Readers Write: Faith leaders’ gun petition, Walz’s energy policy

Mark Anderson, St. Louis Park

As a faith leader serving a “big tent” congregation with political diversity, I did sign this gun petition. It’s not because I judge my congregants based on their voting record. It’s not because I believe politics-as-usual is the only approach people of faith can take. It’s because I believe we can speak moral clarity into a divided moment, unattached to party ideology. It’s because the call to “beat swords into plowshares” and “learn war no more” (Isaiah 2:4) is a prophetic call to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. In my denomination, the United Church of Christ, we have adopted the language of “just peace,” in contrast to “just war,” in which we spend as much time and energy building structures and support for peacemaking as our culture does for warmaking.

I moved to the Northland two years ago from St. Paul. Here in Duluth and the Arrowhead, we house military bases, hunting grounds and much ideological diversity. No matter who they voted for, the parents of my second-grader’s classmates and her Sunday school friends are clear that school shootings are a threat to all of us. Every child, no matter their race, their school district or the political ideology of their parents, deserves safe schools free from gun violence. The notion that proclaiming this is inherently partisan or profane is dangerous. As clergy, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to preach the Gospel, engage in public life and challenge systems of power. Indeed, it’s exactly what Jesus did.

The Rev. Corinne Freedman Ellis, Duluth