A Harvard University professor described the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization” during morning prayers at the school’s Memorial Church on Tuesday. He also said that “Congress must act” to pass gun control laws in the wake of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas this weekend.
The professor is Jonathan L. Walton of the Harvard Divinity School.
“This nation is sick. Our cultural anxiety, toxic masculinity, and racial, religious, and ethnic bigotries are eating away at the soul of this nation. It even caused us to elect a madman to the presidency that embodies the worst aspects of our country’s cultural disease,” Walton said in his address, according to the Harvard Memorial Church website.
“Congress must act. No more slogans,” Walton also said. “Guns in the hands of good guys are not stopping the bad guys. No more hiding behind anachronistic appeals to the Second Amendment.”
“It is time to stop the madness and excuses. We have to have the courage to call the NRA exactly what it has become: a domestic terrorist organization that places profit above the lives of the American people,” the divinity school professor declared.
Walton also suggested that God will punish the United States with Old Testament fury if Congress fails to restrict gun rights.
“If Congress is unwilling to act, then this nation should just own our sick and twisted reality. Mass shootings will just become a part of the quotidian fabric of American life —– a sad, but an unsurprising event,” he said. “Thus, don’t ask me to pray. Don’t ask me to hold a vigil for victims. Nor will I light any more candles. I recall the words of the prophet Isaiah on behalf of God to a hard-headed nation. ‘When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.'”
Walton is Harvard’s Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister of the Memorial Church, according to his Harvard biography. He is also a professor of religion and society. His academic forte involves “the intersections of religion, politics, and media culture.”
Harvard’s morning prayers have been a daily tradition at the fancypants Ivy League school since 1636.
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