Packing in the Pews: "They're carrying a weapon, but do they know what they're doing with it?"
From armed security teams to parishioners (legally!) carrying during worship, local religious leaders grapple with the new realities of church safety.
For generations, the majority of temples, mosques and churches in the United States gave little thought to implementing security measures. After all, houses of worship are all about being welcoming: buildings with open doors and open arms where the presence of weapons would seem, well, counterintuitive. A handgun slipping out of someone’s purse during the call to worship or an armed guard posted alongside a cheerful greeter seemed like an extreme notion for most religious leaders.
But in the aftermath of a heartbreakingly long list of shootings at places of worship—from Sutherland Springs, Texas to Charleston, South Carolina—churches across Central and Eastern Kentucky are beginning to take more decisive action on all facets of safety, from security teams and exterior cameras, to locking doors during worship and hiring off-duty police officers to patrol during services.
“At my church, we have a security team made up of members [of the congregation] that rotates every three weeks, and we have them stationed in strategic areas throughout the building and at any door that is unlocked during services—which aren’t many,” says Jason Lowe, Executive Pastor of First Baptist Church in Pikeville and Associational Mission Strategist for the Pike Association of Southern Baptists, a network of 24 churches across Southeastern Kentucky. “They also have the capability to notify the police through a silent alarm, if needed.”
Lowe’s interest in how the region’s (predominantly small and rural) Southern Baptist congregations are currently securing their premises led to his 2018 study, “Church Security: How Churches are Hoping for the Best but Preparing for the Worst.” The report shows that—of the 88 respondents from Letcher, Floyd and Pike Counties—only 14 percent of smaller churches (defined as under 100 members) have an active “safety and security team” while 60 percent of larger churches (defined as over 100 members) do. 71 percent of the churches, whether large or small, do not have a written policy regarding firearms on church property, and no senior pastors of smaller churches indicated they have a line item for security measures in their budget.
“We had a church safety and security conference here locally a couple of years ago, and it was the largest conference we've ever had on a particular topic. We had, probably, 250 or 300 people. And I do think that it sounded the alarm for the smaller churches,” says Lowe. “I think that many of them are moving in the direction of safety and security teams—getting some type of policy in place. I don't think they're there yet, at least in my observation, but I do think they're moving in the right direction.”
(from the 2018 survey of Eastern Kentucky Southern Baptist churches, Church Security: How Churches are Hoping for the Best but Preparing for the Worst)
Some Central Kentucky churches, though, are already very publicly well-armed on Sunday mornings. At Southland Christian Church’s sprawling mega-campus in Nicholasville—a “home base” of sorts for the over 12,000 people who attend services each week across their five locations—uniformed officers from the Nicholasville Police Department with guns-on-hip mill around as congregants flood into the massive building’s stadium seating and a praise band plays at concert-level volume. Over several visits, it became clear to me that no one seemed to bat an eye at the police presence. (Southland declined to comment for this story via Executive Pastor Chris Hahn.)
And while the acceptance of increased security measures at places of worship is becoming a bleak reality, whether congregants should carry their own firearms remains controversial. The loosening of regulations around gun restrictions in places of worship has been on the rise for a decade, despite the majority of Christian churchgoers supporting stricter firearm policies. A January 2013 survey by the Public Religious Research Institute found that 57 percent of white mainline Protestants, 67 percent of Catholics and 76 percent of African-American Protestants supported tightening gun laws, with only evangelical Protestants largely not in favor (38 percent support).
“I am not a proponent at all of churches recommending or encouraging their members to carry, especially not as part of a security team. Because once you endorse, encourage, or in any way normalize that, the liability issues are really difficult,” says Dr. Brian Baldwin, Dean of Keeran School of Bible and Ministry at Kentucky Christian University in Grayson. “I think that if you're in a state where that's legal, telling people that they are free to do whatever their conscience tells them to within the law is one thing. But I don't recommend that there be any kind of a formal or official endorsing of that.”
“We know it's done, but we don't have a policy per se on it yet. It seems to be that way with a lot of congregations,” say Maurice Hartz, synagogue board member at B’Nai Shalom in Huntington, West Virginia, just across the state line from Ashland. “We know people are carrying, and I guess the big thing is that we hope they know what to do if there were an emergency: they're carrying a weapon, but do they know what they're doing with it? Because we don't want them to become a statistic just because they have a weapon with them.”
Compounding matters even further are state laws surrounding firearms in places of worship, which are often contradictory and not widely understood. The year-to-year shifts in policy and legality around these issues are difficult to track for those who closely watch the legislature—much alone someone who isn’t a government minutiae buff.
(from the 2018 study of Eastern Kentucky Southern Baptist churches, Church Security: How Churches are Hoping for the Best but Preparing for the Worst)
For example, in Kentucky, there is no ban on carrying a concealed weapon (barring certain cases, like if the church itself restricts it) into a place of worship. There is, however, a ban on carrying a concealed weapon into a non-home-based, state-licensed daycare facility or preschool, many of which operate out of the same building as churches. What’s to be done in that case? Is a parishioner in violation of the law if they carry a concealed firearm into a church that houses a licensed daycare? Perhaps, yes.
In Indiana, attention drawn to this very issue led State Senator Jack Sandlin to co-sponsor a bill during the 2019 legislative session that clarified language around a similar state law in order to avoid any misunderstandings for churchgoers.
“We started looking at the issue of lay-members being armed in a church where they might have a licensed daycare or a school. Because [at the time] under Indiana statute, it was illegal for them [to carry],” Sandlin says. “I had a meeting with a number of pastors from different churches in my district and talked about it. And I had some pastors who came up to me and said they had no idea that it was illegal, and that they had encouraged or actually set up members with security training in order to protect the congregation.”
A new—more transparent—law which allows for the concealed carry of firearms in churches with daycares or schools attached took effect for in Indiana later that year. “There’s no mandate in the [law], simply a permission. That was really the motivation behind it: those who wanted to have an opportunity to protect their church and congregation, they could do that.”
Kentucky has yet to address the issue.
Churches will assuredly continue to grapple with the tug between opposing forces—new laws and old traditions, peace and “protection”—as they work to find ways to make their welcoming doors more secure. What role, if any, firearms play in that is a matter of both public safety and spiritual consideration, but ignoring the dangers that violence poses to houses of worship is no longer an option, says Hartz. “You can't help but be aware of it. If you're not aware that something's going on, you're not keeping up with current events.”
Text Photo Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images