Blog / 2025 / Putting Jesus and Guns in Every American School

If you’re an American, you’ve almost certainly seen some version of this meme on a t-shirt or bumper sticker sometime in the last decade or so. The image above is taken from a March 2013 post on the official Facebook page of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who was still the state’s Attorney General at the time.

Whenever I come across this bit of pro-second/anti-first amendment propaganda, all the questions bubble up again:

Who do Abbott and his fans mean when they say “American”? Do they mean every citizen or just the ones with the right (AKA white) skin color? How does a person even “use” the Bible? Is it a weapon like the pistol? Or are guns religious doctrine? Where exactly do firearms and Christianity intersect?

I, for one, did learn about the Bible in school—first in a middle school where I only lasted a year and a half before the unmitigated bullying pushed me out, and then for four years in high school. I learned all about Jesus and far too much about the sometimes very confused people who believe he’s God. I learned that I would have been better off not having academics and religion presented to me together, and I learned I wasn’t the only kid who felt that way.

At the end of this month, the US Supreme Court will hear St. Isidore of Seville v. Drummond, an Oklahoma case in which a Catholic virtual school claims it should receive money from the state and contends that the reason it has been denied funding is because Oklahoma is engaging in religious discrimination. On April 30^th eight* of the justices will hear the arguments for why the government should give even more money to religious institutions—even more, because, of course, churches, temples, and mosques are already exempt from paying taxes.

None of this makes sense to me as someone who knows for certain that theocracies never turn out well for the people, especially women and femme-presenting people. I’m adamant that religion needs to be kept out of government as much as possible—yes, even Christmas.

That’s my take on the matter when I’m thinking of my personal experiences with the comparatively peaceful religious people at my schools in the 1990s, and today’s American Christianity has evolved into something different. Jesus has a lot of followers like Greg Abbott who embrace what they see as holy violence. When St. Isidore of Seville and its backers argue for state sponsorship of religious teachings, it’s advocating for state sponsorship of a violent ideology.