This morning I received one of those e-mails that tend to make the rounds every week or two. This one concerns an address to Congress delivered by a man whose daughter was killed in a school shooting. I googled the first line of his speech and found that it has since been appropriated as a prayer of sorts by certain gun rights activists. (I don’t feel like reproducing the speech here. If you’re curious, follow the Google link.) Both Snopes and Urban Legends confirm that, on May 27, 1999, Darrell Scott did, in fact, testify before a House judiciary sub-committee, but they also debunk the hyperbolic claims often added to the e-mail, claims that the liberal media prevented “the nation from hearing this man’s speech.”
To be honest, I responded to this e-mail the same way I respond to all of its ilk: I read the first line, then deleted it. I didn’t give it another thought until a friend — a friend who happens to be on the same person’s forward list — sent me this fascinating analysis, which I’m posting here with his permission:
It’s the typical evangelical fallacy: it’s true that the most fundamental problem is not guns and their availability (or poverty, or whatever) but people’s fallenness and sinfulness; but the mistake is in thinking that we should only attempt to treat — that is, pray for — the fallenness and sinfulness without dealing with their symptoms. In this line of thought the problem’s not poverty but people’s immorality, so we shouldn’t have welfare because until people’s hearts are changed it won’t do any good, etc.
The parent says that metal detectors wouldn’t have stopped the shooters — but, um, why not? Does their sinfulness act as some kind of cloaking device? As far as I can tell, the only exception to this logic in the sphere of evangelical political thought, is, of course, abortion — according to the standard logic, we shouldn’t attempt to stop people from having abortions, but should rather pray that their hearts would be changed (in school, I suppose). But no one’s advocating that…
The “evangelical fallacy” — I like that.