(RNS) — Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, that state’s controversial Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, has a long record as a religious right zealot.

Moore has been suspended twice from the state Supreme Court, for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments statue from state grounds and for refusing to obey the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriages.
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Because of his beliefs and actions, Moore has been labeled a theocrat. But I prefer a different and more precise term — “Christocrat” — to describe Moore and other politicians who share similar views.
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(RNS) — Sutherland Springs is now one more name inextricably linked to murderous gun carnage in America. Even a partial listing of recent bloody assaults is chilling, and the number of domestic killing fields in our nation is rapidly increasing: Texas and South Carolina houses of worship, a Colorado movie theater, a Planned Parenthood facility, a Connecticut elementary school, a Nevada country music festival, a Florida nightclub, a Virginia university.

No person is safe and no physical location provides total security.


But we can permanently eliminate three overused and well-known linguistic phrases that prevent us from recognizing the grim reality, the brutal truth of gun violence in the United States. These stale phrases are frequently invoked after a mass shooting and they provide, especially for political leaders, the necessary and shallow protective cover that allows them to take no action on meaningful gun control.