Oldest Faith-Based Organization in the Country Calls for a Deep Reckoning on Guns and Hate
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 28, 2025 – The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest interfaith peace organization in the United States, established in 1915, is horrified at the senseless loss of young life and the injuries yesterday at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It is sinful that guns receive more protection in our country and are considered more sacred than the safety of our children. There have been too many massacres in our schools and sacred houses of worship. With each shooting, there are expressions of outrage, but then when the moment passes our outrage and resolve fades and we move on.
The Minneapolis murders yesterday were carried out with guns purchased legally. Writing on the shooter’s gun and in the shooter’s manifesto included praise for past mass shooters motivated by white Christian nationalist bigotry. FOR calls on lawmakers and communities to take immediate action to prioritize life over the profits of firearm companies, finally, and to recognize the real-life violent consequences of spreading anti-immigrant hate, antisemitic conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, anti-LBGTQ+ hatred, and other racist bigotry.
As we abhor the hateful language scrawled on yesterday’s shooter’s gun, we cannot help but think of the perversion of psalms being inscribed on assault weapons by weapons companies (Spike’s Tactical “Crusader” rifle, for example, features Psalm 144:1, which the company stated was inscribed to prevent its use by “Muslim terrorists”). Such perversions of faith repulse us. We recall Mary, the resolute mother of all humanity, who stood at the foot of the cross witnessing brutality, inhumanity, and death being inflicted on her child. Today, we are all parents looking on as the brutality and death from another mass shooting.
“Our fickled response to every mass shooting, and in this case the shooting of children once again, only demonstrates our superficiality when it comes to guns and our refusal to deal with the root causes of gun violence and mass shootings,” said Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, the Senior Advisor of FOR.
“Like the Israelites stood praying at the shores of the Red Sea,” said FOR Executive Director Ariel Gold, the first Jewish person to lead the 110-year-old organization, “we must act to manifest our prayers and create a new covenant committed to honoring and saving lives rather than filling the coffers of firearms manufacturers. Together, we call on all people of faith and conscience to Reclaim the Name of God for love, safety, justice, and equality.”
“It is heartbreaking to witness this senseless act of cruelty and loss of life,” said FOR Organizing Associate Saoirse De Mott Grady. “This epidemic of mass shootings in the United States is a stark indicator of our nation’s values: we prize protection, privacy, and profit above all else. Our faith must offer something different — community, compassion, love, and honor rooted in Christ. In the Cross we see mercy, generosity and the sacred dignity of every life. For us, and for all creation, we must root ourselves in these values, and root out our impulse to punish, to hoard resources, and to inflict harm. Only then can we hope to build our Beloved Community.”
All people, and especially children, whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Sudanese, in the Congo, or American, deserve to live in a peaceful world, free from wars and gun violence. It is upon us all to take concrete steps to secure life.
