Story by: Jack Frederick
Video by: Colleen Brown
On Sunday morning at Hayes Barton Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh, the church has made safety and security a top priority. After shootings have rocked faith communities across the country, the church has committed itself to preventing the worst scenario from becoming a reality within their own sanctuary.
“Safety should be integrated into all church functions,” said Vann Langston, a 30-year member, deacon and chairman of the church’s security council. “That should be one of their top priorities. I can’t think of a higher priority, really.”
By the time congregants bow their heads for the opening prayer, the policies of the security team are being practiced.
Once the service begins, the church is locked, except one or two doors that have people present at them throughout the service. If an intruder wanted to come into the building, he — and they are usually males — wouldn’t be able to wander in near the nursery or children’s halls. Because he would have limited access to the building, the expectation is that he would be seen and stopped.
Outside in the parking lot, a Raleigh police officer is at the ready in a squad car. For the better part of two years, the church has contracted off-duty officers to have a presence on site every Sunday. Hidden from view within the church is another police officer in plain clothes.
Both officers are armed, as are several church members sitting in the pews who will be singing, praying and worshiping — but at a moment’s notice could spring into action.
Cameras located around the inside and outside of the building watch the campus at all times. A member of the security team is in charge of monitoring the 30-plus cameras every Sunday, though the church hopes soon it can upgrade to a new $90,000 system with motion detection.
All of these efforts are designed to prepare for the worst without anyone noticing, a part of what the church sees as a Christian duty to protect those it serves.
“The best security program is one that nobody in the building knows is there,” Langston said. “You just don’t want that sort of anxiety and negativity in front of the congregation.”
Hayes Barton believes that it’s the responsibility of the church to protect its congregants. But as many churches have taken preventative actions, others wrestle with the idea of weapons becoming an accepted part of religious life.
‘You owe it to your members’
In the South, a higher percentage of the population owns guns than anywhere else in the country, according to a 2017 Pew Research survey.
Gun owners reported a major reason for having the weapon is for personal protection in their daily life in that same survey.
After the Charleston shooting in 2015, the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last year and the anti-Semitic hate crime in Pittsburgh in October, the desire for protection has extended into religious life.
While concealed carry permits have restrictions in public schools and government buildings under current North Carolina law, no such restrictions exist about weapons on the property of religious institutions.
As an issue at the intersection of the First and Second Amendments, the government gives churches the freedom to make decisions and set their own policies. When it comes to ensuring the safety and security of members, churches may allow or prohibit weapons upon entrance into the building.
Hayes Barton has only had an armed officer around for the last two or so years. The church has issued no outright restrictions that limit weapons for members, leaving guns among the pews as an unspoken reality of the congregation.
Proponents of comprehensive church security see providing safety and security as a Christian duty and responsibility under the other aspects of hospitality associated with churches.
“Yes, we may be a church and we may have wonderful goals and whatever, but there’s bad people out there and you better be ready,” Langston said. “You owe it to your members and your guests as Christian hospitality to protect them.”
Allowing guns in church has its risks and rewards. If an active shooter were to enter the building, a church member with a pistol could possibly prevent the damage the shooter is there to inflict.
But there’s also the possibility that leaving untrained members to protect the church could lead to more damage, and it presents a massive liability for the organization if that gun ever was fired.
In crisis situations, law enforcement might misidentify a church member with a gun as the active shooter. Police officers might wound or kill a person just trying to help instead of neutralizing the threat.
“That’s why the police officer is a good compromise,” Langston said. “People will trust that the police officer will have a lot more training than another person might…We would hope that if we shared with them, ‘Look we’ve got police officers here now with weapons, and it might be risky for you if you were to pull your weapon in a situation. Decide what you want to do with that.’”
‘People trust us’
AJ Farthing can remember an armed officer being present at Summit Church for as long as he’s worked there.
The associate campus pastor for the Chapel Hill campus coordinates security weekly, and a part of that process, a Chapel Hill police officer is contracted to be on site every Sunday.
Summit falls back on the officer around East Chapel Hill High School, where church is held weekly, as the primary safety measure that takes the pressure off the shoulder of the church’s security team in case of a crisis situation.
“One of our main goals on the weekend is safety,” Farthing said. “People trust us and they come spend time with us, so we want to honor that the best we can.”
Having an armed officer on campus is just part of that commitment. At each of the nine campus churches for Summit the policy remains the same. The church works with the local law enforcement to make sure an armed guard is present in the lobby of the church from 30 minutes before the service starts until 30 minutes after the preacher wraps up his sermon.
In his time coordinating security for Summit, Farthing has only really had one complaint about an armed officer in church.
“They didn’t realize there was going to be an officer there, so it freaked them out,” he said. “Other than that, I’ve heard bits and pieces of people feeling thankful the officer is there. It’s nice having someone there who has access to emergency response teams.”
Other churches across the Triangle haven’t developed quite as extensive policies to address safety. At Forest Hills Baptist Church, located less than half a mile from the campus of N.C. State, security has not been as big a concern and there’s no formal security team.
Rather than contracting an officer or spending money on elaborate security systems, three men are primarily in charge of walking the grounds and keeping an eye on the church. Someone walks the grounds and keeps an eye on the church each Sunday.
“Thank the Lord, there’s been nothing to be concerned about,” said Graham Spencer, who is a part of that three-man team “Unfortunately, I hope it doesn’t take something to get us all up in arms, but you kind of think that way sometimes. What if, and what would we do?”
Spencer and the other men aren’t armed and haven’t ever run into a situation when they needed to be.
‘It’s a weapon for the purpose of killing’
Michael Sizemore has never held a firearm before, let alone fired one.
But that hasn’t stopped the third-year divinity student at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, from forming an opinion about them.
“I personally wish guns were never invented,” Sizemore said. “That would be ideal to me. It’s a weapon for the purpose of killing, so it sucks that it’s a thing, but it’s the reality.”
Though the world can’t grant him his wish, Sizemore concedes that he would prefer weapons stay outside of the church doors.
Sizemore felt a call to the ministry about five years ago while studying psychology as an undergraduate at UNC-Charlotte. When he decided to go back to school to receive formal education in becoming a minister, confronting his thoughts about church security became a part of his life.
After working at three churches across the state, all with varying policies about church security and weapons in church, he remains firm in his resolve to stand in favor of keeping them as far away from the pews and pulpit as possible.
“I think it does more harm to the growth of the people who are there,” Sizemore said. “I just think it causes more harm than it does the potential for good.”
Sizemore sees the idea of spending time worrying over safety as a distraction to the worship church-goers are there to participate in. He doesn’t often worry about it himself in or outside of ministry.
“I don’t think of it at all,” he said. “It never crosses my mind whether I’m safe or not. There’s just an assumption that I am.”
Sizemore noted that in recent years, gun violence and hate has been directed toward religious minorities, not often against mainline white Christians.
“In all seriousness, as a white male and working at churches that are predominantly white as well, I feel safer because of that,” he said.
Sizemore has felt grief and sadness over attacks on churches in recent years that have resulted in the death of people worshiping. But he believes Christians are called to favor peace over violence, following a model set by Jesus.
“I think we should always lean toward love and openness and that obviously comes at the risk of safety in some ways,” Sizemore said. “But I don’t think we can positively change the world if we’re insulated so much and only care about our safety.
“If we’re hoping for the future reality, I think we have to be working towards it each and every day. We can’t hope for it and then respond in a different way that causes the opposite to happen.”
Diversity of thought
Does evidence support weapons actually make churches safer?
The North Carolina Council of Churches, an organization that represents 18 denominations and 6,200 congregations across the state, says that it doesn’t.
In a news release sent out by the organization last April, Executive Director Jennifer Copeland cited statistics that link firearms to other societal problems — worsening suicide rates, domestic violence and increasing the number of accidental child deaths annually.
For that reason, she and the council oppose the presence of weapons at church, believing they provide little more than a perceived sense of security that poses more risk for unintended consequences than reward.
“Nearly 70 percent of the people who carry a gun claim they do so for safety, while the statistics clearly show guns make us less safe,” Copeland said in the release. “This makes guns a false idol.”
“Guns are not the solution to our safety,” she later added.
In 2018, the council became more outspoken about its disapproval of gun culture, putting up billboards across the state to try to change the conversation about weapons in church. The signs equated a reliance upon firearms for protection to breaking the Bible’s Second Commandment.
With two starkly different worldviews separating the pro and anti-gun crowds, churches within the same communities are at odds with one another when it comes to safety policies. Both groups are resolved in their stances, while agreeing with one another that when people walk into church, they deserve to be able to walk out safe and alive.
