Some New York-area rabbis are planning to bring weapons to High Holy Day services this month to guard against terrorist threats. In June, a Kentucky pastor invited his congregation members to bring their firearms to church to celebrate the Second Amendment.

Do weapons belong in worship? Should clergy be armed? Do the Ten Commandments trump the Second Amendment?

Weapons do not belong in worship, but they sometimes belong on those who go to worship. Church is not generally the right place to celebrate our civil rights, though we may thank God for them, but it might be the right place to urge citizens to exercise them to protect the innocent.

For Christians, armed force is not the job of the Church as Church. Whatever the provocation, Christians learned from their own history that crusades are not the right response to it. It is inconsistent with our primary message. The Church is about Jesus and Jesus came to heal the sick of soul and body. Christian churches have always built hospitals and came to regret it when they built armies.

We learned to leave usual exercise of military power to the state. While this is the normal state of affairs, Christians are not foolish enough to believe that the state will always do its duty. As responsible and wise leaders of the community, it might be the rare job of ministers to suggest that the time has come for responsible groups of citizens to take on a burden that the state is shirking.

While the Church is pacific, its members need not be pacifists. Letting the innocent die waiting for an impotent state to act is cowardice, and courage is a virtue.

Have we reached a point where reasonable people in the Jewish community feel that the government cannot protect them in their houses of worship on their holiest day? God forgive our nation if this is so.

As an outsider, I am hesitant to judge this situation. Wicked men have made the Jewish community their special target for violence and promises by Western governments of protection have often proven empty words.

If our government really can no longer provide sufficient deterrent to such evil, then no man should rush to condemn the actions of the rabbis. The rabbis, after all, are not posing a threat to society by arming themselves defensively, but are merely doing a job they feel society is failing to do. New York is in no danger from these rabbis, but should consider that her rabbis feel in danger from the perceived failure of New York to provide adequate protection. It is a dangerous course the rabbis have chosen, but in horrid times dangerous paths may be the safest or only paths.

Christians, at least, should not hastily condemn those who act to defend fellow human beings that the state cannot defend. A Christian minister who does not urge his members to defend the weak and the powerless has missed part of the message of Scripture. We are personally called to love our enemy, but love does not demand that we allow our enemy to do mortal damage to his own soul and to the lives of others by harming the innocent.

A Christian man should choose to turn the other cheek, but has no right to force innocents to turn their cheeks. We have a right to choose martyrdom, but must not allow the wicked to force martyrdom on the weak and the poor because we refused to act. A Christian fights for the right of other men to choose their own destiny. He never arms himself for personal vengeance or to impose his faith on others, but he must fight to protect the poor and the powerless.

This is not just a Christian tradition, but is an American tradition.

The founding Revolution of our great Republic saw Christian ministers urge their congregations to protect the rights of the oppressed and resist the demands of tyrants. Whole volumes exist of sermons preached in favor of the cause of American Independence and justice. Some ministers actually led their congregation to enroll in the patriot's cause and fought with their members. After all, any true pastor was a gentleman and citizen before he was ordained a minister.