Ministers Warn Evangelicals About "Unholy Alliance" With NRA

Interesting presser comes across the wire this morning:

On Visit to Shooting Scene, Evangelical Leader to Warn of Unholy Alliance with NRA

Contact: Peggy Nienaber, National Clergy Council202-236-0953
ISLA VISTA, Calif., June 5, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ — The Reverend Dr. Rob Schenck, president of the Washington, DC based National Clergy Council, will speak at a news conference tomorrow, June 5, 2014, at 11:00 AM in Isla Vista, California, the scene of a recent mass shooting. In his remarks, Dr. Schenck will warn evangelical pastors and other church leaders against an “unholy alliance” with the NRA.
Schenck said, “Too many evangelical pastors default to the NRA position on guns. By doing so, these church leaders shirk their responsibility to form a biblical position on the life-and-death issue of gun ownership and use. If a Christian’s answer to gun violence in America is, ‘The NRA says,’ then he or she is wrong.”
Schenck is in the Santa Barbara area with Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney meeting with church leaders and family members of victims.
Details
News conference with representatives of National Clergy Council, Revds Rob Schenck and Patrick Mahoney
Thursday, June 5, 2014, 11:00 AM
In front of the Wall of Remembrance,
6549 Pardall Rd Ste C,
Goleta, CA, US, 93117
For information call 202-656-1252

I don’t know how many people this group represents or can influence but this is a reasonable warning. I appreciate something said in a similar press release yesterday:

Mahoney said, “It’s time for the Christian community, especially pastors, to stand up, speak out, and take action. We have spent so much time conducting funerals and comforting the grieving, now we must spend equal time working to avoid the next tragedy. If Christians don’t have answers to this problem, who does? My hope and prayer is that a national conversation on the connection between gun violence and mental illness will begin among pastors and other Christian leaders.”

 

Today Show on PANDAS

Back in the spring, I wrote an article on Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcus (PANDAS). The disorder has opened my eyes to the potential role of bacteria in mental illness. Recently, the Today Show did a segment on PANDAS with a remarkable case of a boy attending school at nearby Carnegie-Mellon University. Watch and learn.


 

I also blogged at length about this condition. Part one dealt with the condition and part two with a potential paradigm shift in mental health and part three developed an interactionist perspective.

Tennesee church shooter needed help but didn't get it

The Tennesee church shooter, James Adkisson, sounds like many other mass killers in this article from the Knoxville News-Sentinel. In the USA Today, the note he left was described as “irrational.”
In reading the Sentinel article, you get the sad picture of a person who was in need of mental health treatment but did not get it. His ex-wife attended this church which may have been a motive in the shooting.