Two stories caught my eye on Thursday. One, a press release from LifeWay Christian Resources, announced publication of a book that puts Southern Baptists’ official publisher squarely on the frenzied “we’ve got to defend America against socialism” bandwagon. 
The book, called Saving Freedom, is by Jim Demint, a Republican senator from South Carolina. According to the release, “DeMint contends that increasing government control and a socialist agenda are weakening the freedom and Christian values upon which the United States was founded.”
Yet another hyperbolic brick in the wall being built by those who are determined to polarize, divide, and undermine the country with revisionist history: people who can’t stand to lose control, so they claim we’re about to lose the country to “socialism.” It’s no surprise, but still sad, to see LifeWay sidestepping its main mission and buying into the brouhaha.
The other story was an Associated Press report that gun-lovers are building up their arsenals and buying bullets at such a pace that ammunition makers are working round-the-clock shifts but can’t keep up with demand. Apparently, there’s a widespread fear that the Democrats, now in power, will clamp down new gun control laws (although none, according to the article, have been proposed), so they’re stocking up.
Let’s just hope that none of them intend their bullets for imagined socialists.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
