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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: It was Monday morning at 8:20 that the shooting began at
the Washington, DC Navy Yard. 13 died people that day, including the former Navy Reservist
who’s charged with the massacre, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis.
As the nation once again struggles to cope with a mass shooting – something that’s
becoming more and more common – a portrait is emerging of a deeply-troubled young man
with easy access to firearms – a common thread in this kind of violence.
Is this really something that is simply beyond us, as a society, to comprehend? Is it beyond
us, as a society, to do anything about?
Well, in looking for a way to address this tragedy on this week’s show, I really could
not think of any other voice that could offer the perspective that I think is needed as
that of Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, who is the Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ
in Chicago – a community that’s been particularly hard-hit by gun violence. I've read Rev. Moss'
comments about this violence. He speaks with wisdom and with compassion. He also has deep
personal experience with the tragic toll that mental illness can take. So I am very, very
grateful to be able to welcome to State of Belief Radio Rev. Moss.
Thank you for being with us today.
[REV. DR. OTIS MOSS III, GUEST]: Thank you so very much. It's an absolute delight to
be on the show with you.
[WG]: What the what was your first reaction when you heard about the latest mass shooting?
[OM]: I was heartbroken to hear, once again, that we have people in our community not only
who are struggling with mental illness, but have access to guns - not only your average
type of pistols, but assault weapons; military weapons. And it was just tragic hearing that.
[WG]: How have you been talking about this - not just on the air and in what you write,
but with your family at home and your church family in the sanctuary?
[OM]: Well, one, we've been talking about the need to break the cycle of hame in and
around mental illness. Number two, we've been talking about how we can be advocates for
sensible gun control. We have a community, a nation, that believes in protecting guns
and not protecting children, and we need to shift that paradigm. Most people who are part
of the NRA believe in universal background checks, but the lobbyists within the NRA are
very clear that we want to continue to ensure that guns are flowing into the hands of our
children because there's a profit motive. And I think that we need to shift from being
about profits and being about prophets; prophetic people who are concerned about the lives of
our children.
[WG]: You know, Otis, I have had some people tell me - related to my work in the pulpit
- that there's no place in the pulpit for talk about gun control. That's not a part
of of the Bible. In fact, you may have have seen the ludicrous claim from the Family Research
Council that Jesus had affirmed carrying guns - that is so ludicrous that probably doesn't
need to be addressed, but they tell me that it's not a subject we ought to be dealing
with in church.
I know you don't believe that; I don't believe that. But what do you say to a person like
that?
[OM]: I say it's absolutely ridiculous. Number one, there are two major claims that Jesus
makes within the Bible, when he is inquired of by religious scholars: what's the most
important Scripture? He says, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and
soul. But the second one is to love your neighbor as yourself. And the whole issue around gun
control and violence raises the question of community and the beloved community.
How do we view our neighbors? Do we view our neighbors and our community as a place where
people are stalking and looking to kill us? Or do we view it as a place where we must
engage each other to ensure that we build a stronger community? And for those who speak
about issues around "conceal and carry" - within Chicago, we already have conceal and carry.
Not just legally, but the reason people are being killed is because of conceal and carry.
We have plenty of guns within our community. And so I think that it is a poor reading of
Scripture: one, to claim that Jesus is affirming the carrying of automatic weapons; the greatest
weapon that Jesus is affirming is the weapon of your mind - that we can change hearts.
We can change communities utilizing our mind and our heart. That's the only weapon you
should be concealing is your heart and your mind, utilizing that to transform your community.
[WG]: Would you talk about the contrast between the media coverage of a mass shooting as opposed
to the seeming almost dismissal of the bloodshed of America's streets, particularly in a city
like Chicago?
[OM]: Well, media coverage of a mass shooting usually is framed within the context of it's
some type of anomaly - but now it seems like, well, it's just another shooting. What happens
in streets every day is dismissed because of the racialized imagination in America;
when it's in black and brown and poor communities, we assume that that is normative. When it
happens in, whether it's Connecticut, or in DC, or Maryland, Texas - wherever it may be
- we make the assumption that it's an anamoly, it's an exception. And we do not take into
account the fact - or as I heard Frederick Douglas Haynes, who's doing our revival this
week, he says, "Do not make a judgement about my choices until you understand about my options."
In other words, the choices that I may make, you may not agree with; but you need to understand
that my limited options in reference to those choices.
And across the country - in urban areas, in rural areas - we have people who have limited
options. We have people who are in communities where people are making money off of guns
that are flowing into our community. In Chicago - you cannot buy a gun in Chicago, but there
are three major gun stores, right outside of Chicago, that roughly sixty percent of
every gun is purchased that is involved in a crime.
Number two is that if I buy a gun - just like if I purchase a car and sell it to you - I
have to transfer the title so that I can track down where that car was purchased. I cannot
do that with a gun. I can buy it and then I can sell it in Chicago and I have no responsibility
whatsoever. Just as we have a title for a car, we should have a title for a gun, so
we can track down the group of people who are selling guns to irresponsible young people
with limited options, and we can begin to live out what Jesus says, is that we love
our neighbor as ourselves. Every child's life is important, whether they are well-off, or
whether they are poor.
[WG]: It was chilling to hear that despite a history of gun violence and hallucinations,
Aaron Alexis was able to legally purchase a shotgun just a few days prior to the massacre.
Otis, why do you think it has been so impossible to make any headway in fixing this broken
system, in spite of the vast majority of Americans strongly supporting commonsense changes?
[OM]: Money, money, money and money again! The gun lobby is not focused on supporting
those who are hunting or those who are recreational shooters - but primarily, people who are the
manufacturers of guns. And if we were to put this legislation in place, we're talking about
someone's bottom line being affected. And when profits are under attack, it is the role
of the prophets to make sure that they do not get the upper hand. And that's really
what's happening: we have a billion dollar industry that is making money off of the death
of many children. We have a billion dollar industry that is funding people on Capitol
Hill to ensure that they will vote a particular way - even though the majority, eighty five
percent of people in the NRA say, "I support sensible universal background checks." There
is no argument.
Second thing: the NRA has been fighting against the CDC - the Centers for Disease Control
- to do research to look at gun violence as a disease; to be able to show predictors and
be able to track, because that again would affect the bottom line. So money is in the
mix, and every time money is in the mix we will always see people who are poor, who are
hurt as a result.
[WG]: Rev. Moss, just a few weeks ago you wrote a heartbreakingly personal piece in
Ebony Magazine. You talked about the loss of your only sister to mental illness and
suicide. Would you be able to share some of your thoughts regarding what faith should
teach us about mental illness?
[OM]: Absolutely, and thank you for bringing that up. And I appreciate Ebony Magazine for
publishing the article that people can pick up online, titled "Losing Daphne."
My sister Daphne Moss, graduate of Spellman College, graduate of Kent State University,
was really the smartest one in our family, and was a brilliant writer, a poet and an
educator - and struggled with mental illness. As a child, she used to read to me - she was
nine years my senior - we used to read James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou, and Zora Neale
Hurston, and Countee Cullens - to me, even though I didn't quite understand everything
she was reading. But I developed a love for literature as a result of her.
But she struggled with paranoid schizophrenia, and eventually took her life. And I have been
an advocate - and it's taken me some time to come to grips with the issue around shame
- because within our community, the faith community, we have this peculiar, strange,
erroneous and completely un-biblical, theologically not founded doctrine that if someone takes
their life, that somehow God is going to punish them for eternity. It is a disease. Mental
illness is a disease, just like cancer is a disease; just like *** is a disease; just
like hepatitis, kidney disease, hypertension - it's a disease that can be managed; it's
a disease that can be diagnosed; and families can be helped when they have the proper treatment.
We need to take mental illness out of the shadows, and we need to stop the theological
foolishness of stating and terrorizing families by saying someone who is mentally ill is not
worthy of the love of God. It falls into the same category of when the Church stated that
Native Americans were not worthy of the love of God; that people of African descent did
not have souls and were not worthy of the love of God; that women are not worthy of
the love of God; that people who are a different *** orientation are not worthy of the love
of God. We need to remove that language from the theological lexicon, and recognize, as
the Scripture clearly states - as Paul stated - that nothing can separate us from the love
of God.
[WG]: How frustrating do you think it's been for President Obama, who attended the church
that you pastor while he was in Chicago, to not be able to pass any federal gun control
measures - and then face this kind of attack right in the nation's capital, and even worse,
on a military installation?
[OM]: Well, I think it's probably heartbreaking - not only for President Obama, but also for
many of the activists like yourself who had focused on bringing together different groups
of people to ensure the development of our common good. For a president who is deeply
committed, I believe, to seeing that the common good go forward, and believes in bringing
together right and left, even though it must be very difficult - it must be heartbreaking,
and something that should be easy for us to pass - especially since the NRA made a conscious
decision, I believe it was in the sixties, the late sixties, to move from the focus on
hunting and recreational shooting to being a lobbying organization that is strongly supported
by gun manufacturers. I think that that shift between the Johnson and Nixon administrations
has changed the way that we see gun legislation today. It makes no sense that in Chicago or
DC that it's easy for us to get military-grade weapons that can be used against other citizens.
It makes no sense that someone - a responsible adult - of an organization as large as the
NRA would say that we don't need gun legislation; we need more guns in schools, that we need
to arm our teachers. Teachers are there to teach. They're not there to pull out their
weapons and fire back at individuals. And to have guns near our children - five, six,
seven, eight years old in the classroom sitting on a desk, or in a holster, or wherever it
may be - it's just absolutely ludicrous. And we need to call these people out.
For those who are in rural areas, hunting and utilizing - it's part of their culture.
Fine. But for someone such as me in Chicago - it just makes no sense that we can sell
a gun to someone without anyone taking any type of accountability.
[WG]: Rev. Moss, you do many things well, but I know you are preeminently a pastor.
You know a lot of hurting people, and you're aware that there a lot of hurting people in
this nation. What is your pastoral message for America at a moment like this?
[OM]: I think it is a message, one, of hope. And we find our hope in each other, when we
lean upon each other and lean upon God. That we have the space to cry, to sing the blues
but we continue to cast our gaze knowing the gospel; and the beautiful thing about the
African-American tradition is that gospel music is built on the blues. That you cannot
have a gospel song unless you know a blues chord. And out of our tradition, we believe
that if you know how to play the blues, you can always wrap a gospel lyric around it.
Another way of saying it is, in the intellectual tradition would be: if you know your existential
moment, you can move to eschatological hope - when you understand the blues. And so we
are unafraid of the blues at Trinity, because we know that our gospel is deeply rooted in
our blues.
[WG]: Oh, that's a powerful word. Thank you.
The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III is pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. His moving
article on the loss of his sister to mental illness and suicide, "Losing Daphne," appears
in the October issue of Ebony Magazine.
I know that my hunch was right. You were the one to speak on this today, and Rev. Moss,
I thank you so much for taking the time to be with us on State of Belief Radio.
[OM]: Thank you very much.