Court upholds Georgia ban on guns in church

A federal appeals court has upheld Georgia’s ban on bringing guns into places of worship. Jonathan Wilkins, pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle of Thomaston, and a gun-rights group had argued that church members should have the right to carry guns into worship services to protect the congregation.

But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 20 that a Georgia law adopted in 2010 does not violate the Thomaston congregation’s First and Second Amendment rights. Gun-rights advocates might want a weapon for self-defense, but that is a “personal preference, motivated by a secular purpose,” the court ruled.

While the idea of carrying a gun to church might strike most clergy and lay members as unthinkable, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which ended July 12, adopted a resolution that asks “every parish and every diocesan place of work to declare their establishments as Gun Free Zones.”