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Reverend Rob Schenck

Rev. Rob Schenck: Being Pro-Life Is More Than Abortion

October 28, 2015 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

Reverend Rob Schenck, a pro-life activist and missionary to politicians on Capitol Hill, broke with his expected evangelical position on gun ownership when he found himself questioning what it meant to be pro-life. In her directorial debut, The Armor of Light, Abigail Disney documents Schenck’s conversations on the subject with politicians and people of faith, while also highlighting his interactions with Lucy McBath, the mother of an unarmed teen murdered in Florida. To find out more about Schenck’s story, we caught up with him in the midst of his ministry to those struggling with the violence at Umpqua Community College in Rosemont, Oregon.

The Armor of Light documentary focuses in on Schenk, who is the chairman of the Evangelical Church Alliance and president of the National Clergy Alliance. Schenck has been serving as a commissioned missionary to elected officials since 1995, sent to Washington, D.C.  intentionally for that purpose of ministering to members of all three branches of the United States government. While he has been pro-life when it came to abortion, he began to question his stance on guns after being repeatedly asked to pray after violent situations involving guns, like the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 and the Naval Shipyards in 2013. The change in his position on guns and laws concerning guns caused many of his previous supporters to question his beliefs and his politics. The controversy escalated, drawing director Disney to him.

When the opportunity for the documentary presented itself, Schenck admitted that it was intimidating at first to have the cameras following him around but that, ultimately, it proved therapeutic to give voice to his internal struggle over whether Christians should be gun owners or not.

While some issues tend to be defined based on divisive lines between those who claim to be religious and those who are not, Schenck’s stance has been highlighted by what some Christians, like Tenn. Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, have said in response to recent violence. Ramsey posted on Facebook that Christians should better arm themselves to be prepared for similar situations, and Schenck gently rebutted him.

“While the Lt. Governor of Tennessee may be well intentioned,” Schenck wrote, “it’s not good advice. Anyone with good firearms training knows that when you strap on a gun, you are psychologically ready to kill another human being. That’s a paramount moral decision. Guns are lethal weapons that put lives at risk, including the gun owner’s own life and the lives of loved ones, neighbors, and friends. The best people to give moral advice on guns or any other issue are church leaders, and they’ve been conspicuously silent on the question of Christians arming up in fear. I appeal to pastors and other church leaders to speak out clearly, prayerfully, and biblically on the Christ-like approach to guns, fear, and even love of enemy. I appeal to Christians not to look to secular sources for their most important moral decisions. We must turn to God in prayer, search the Scriptures for wisdom, and look to Christ as our only model for dealing with evil.”

That silence by Christian leaders with conviction about escalating violence troubles Schenck, and is why he chose to step out and take a stand. “I’ve received a couple of emails and a phone call,” Schenck said, “but people have to sit with this kind of challenge. It took me months to accept Abby’s invitation because I had a reticence to share my voice. I had to find courage. I knew that the film could cost me long-established friendships, so I had to weigh the cost. We’re told to count the cost by Jesus, but the truth is that people are starving spiritually, ethically, and morally for guidance.”

Schenck wanted to be clear that many of the things that made people defensive about his stance were natural, and that he respected them for holding those values. “I’m careful not to dismiss the impulse to take care of your family,” Schenck said, passionately. “Some of those things don’t make the film because we had ninety minutes to share two years’ worth of conversations, distilled down.”

“The challenge of the gospels is to go beyond that, but we’re missing that in the Western church,” he continued. “We talk about how to live for Christ but we don’t talk about how to die for him. I know a few pastors who are armed in the pulpit in case someone comes there, but I’ve been asking if it’s always the will of God that we survive?”

The theologian, evangelist, and missionary said that we have a natural human response that is powerful but we’re called to work to get to Jesus’ response. Schenck pointed toward Jesus’ injunction to his disciples to put their swords away in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was being arrested, and his encouragement to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

“Paul tells us in Philippians to refer to others as better than ourselves,” he shared, “so I have to remember that I’m not the most important person in the equation.”

The film’s impact certainly has Schenck aware that what he expected and what happened are often miles apart. “People tend to jump to conclusions,” Schenck continued, “because the conversation questions their orthodoxy. It puts people on the defensive, so I’ve learned to be sensitive and work to relax their defensive reactions.”

Regardless of what you believe about the Second Amendment, guns, or faith, The Armor of Light is a discussion starter that allows us to see one experienced pastor’s perspective in a world where violence is becoming more and more prevalent. Hopefully, audiences will watch the film with their friends and family, and then offer up their opinions about how our communities, our churches, and our country can move forward, holding the Constitution of the United States in one hand and the hand of God in the other.

The Armor of Light will be in select theaters on October 30. 

Filed Under: Current Events, Featured, Film, Interviews Tagged With: Abigail Disney, Armor of Light, Christians, Gun control, Pro-Life, Republican, Reverend Rob Schenck, Umpqua Community College, violence

“Armor Of Light” Director Abigail Disney: “I Don’t Think Everyone Has An Itchy Trigger Finger”

October 20, 2015 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

armoroflightDirector Abigail Disney is out to push your buttons, make you think, and openly challenge the things that you believe to be true about guns, violence, and peace. Since she engaged fully in charitable work in her thirties, she has had a love for people often dismissed by society and the issues that either bind us together or drive us apart. In her latest film, The Armor of Light, Disney serves as both executive producer and director, taking aim at our understanding of what it means to be faithful, gun-carrying citizens of the USA.

“I started traveling when my kids were older, and I encountered these stories that I felt needed to be told,” Disney shared from New York. “In Liberia, I found this fully ready-for-film story [Pray The Devil Back To Hell] and it worked.”

Disney has admittedly pushed buttons with her films, and Armor of Light is no different, saying that there’s a weight that comes with her last name. [She’s the daughter of Walt Disney World co-founder, Roy Disney.] “I’m willing to push buttons, and not everyone likes that. Some people think that the Disney name means that I should keep everything comfortable,” Disney told me. “But the end result is that after they’ve seen it, the name seems to push them toward too happy or too mad; my name really drives out the neutrality.”

The Armor of Light is the kind of polarizing movie that everyone should see… but they will be extremely divided over. When Rev. Rob Schenck found himself praying as a representative of faith at situations like the Navy Shipyard or Sandy Hook Elementary, his convictions about being pro-life [in regards to abortion] began to challenge his politically conservative thoughts on gun ownership, control, and ideology.

“Our country is built on an identity entrenched in certain attitudes and frames of mind,” the director continued. “Gun ownership is a way of declaring who you are, and people feel threatened by more than gun control. They see it as a confrontation over respect for authority, tradition, and history.”

“People seem to be divided into two camps, where the other side has been traumatized by situations where guns were involved and can’t imagine why some people are so connected to their guns. We tried to explore the story with a sensitivity for what people are thinking and feeling.”

To find the right person to frame their documentary around, Disney told me that she called people on the left and the right. As executive producer and director, Disney put in calls to see who had worked on the Narnia movies, and encountered people along the way who weren’t willing to say what they believed publicly. Then, a progressive friend of Disney’s told her about a minister who she had met at an interfaith forum, and Disney called Schenck to see if he would be willing.

After Disney’s crew filmed months worth of footage, the director sat down for a year to process the footage. “We knew that we needed to find the story,” Disney said, chuckling. “It’s like there’s a giant pile of spaghetti, and you pull out the one strand that’s just right to keep it all connected.”

This exploration of gun-related deaths, Schenck’s involvement and inner musings, and conversations featuring both sides of the argument resulted in a ninety-minute film that will leave you questioning how you handle confrontation. But Disney is clear that this is a bigger issue than just ‘gun control.’

armoroflight2“I don’t think that everyone who owns a gun has an itchy trigger finger,” the director shared. “I think that not everyone has run the risk/reward analysis, but they’re presented with facts from both sides that are contested. I wish we could get everyone to agree to let a neutral third party provide the ‘facts’ of the situation.”

“I really struggle with the language we use: ‘stand your ground,’ ‘make my day,'” Disney said. “There’s nothing Christian about that as an approach. I could say I was going to run over and kick someone in the shins, but there are other ways to handle things. There are non-lethal, non-violent options. In this land of creativity, where we trumpet ingenuity, we can’t think of another way to fix these situations?”

I asked Disney what she thought of more recent situations, including Schenck’s response to the shooting at Umpqua Community College or the ‘justified’ shooting of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and the way we respond to them politically. “There are higher principles than what’s written in the law,” she said. “Whether you’re Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, you believe there’s something else. You’d hope that our elected officials would carry those things that many of us believe into their responsibilities as they represent us. We would certainly be better served by principled decisions, but that hasn’t been happening.”

The making of The Armor of Light has drawn Disney herself back to a place of faith. After years of running from conservative, Catholic faith, she has accepted faith over simply ‘believing’. “I was always that kid who was listening, and it never really left my heart,” Disney shared. “I think it’s liberating to be part of the community, to find faith together.”

Disney’s desire for peace – and her recently renewed faith – have set her on this road, and what happens next will be determined by how far she can take this message. No matter what, she’s telling stories that need to be told, and asking others to put down their arms and sit down to talk at the table.

 

Filed Under: Current Events, Featured, Film, Interviews Tagged With: Abigail Disney, Christians, guns, Pray The Devil Back To Hell, Reverend Rob Schenck, violence

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