Does God Kill “Bad Guys?” Some Implications of the Michigan Church Shooting by Rachel Wagner
The shooter’s name was Brian Browning. He was 31 years old. Brian was an occasional visitor to CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan. I name Brian here because it seems likely he was having a mental health breakdown that informed his decision to show up ready to shoot people at the church on June 22, 2025. Brian Browning was the only person to die in the shooter event at CrossPointe Community Church outside Detroit. He needed assistance with auditory hallucinations and had already been to the church several times hoping to find it. The Church’s easy narrative of “good” defeating “evil” by killing Brian is disrupted when we look more closely, revealing the toxicity of this narrative in larger American Christian culture.
Brian had a promising start in life, participating in junior ROTC in high school and graduating as valedictorian of his class. Something went awry, as a decade after high school he was living with his mother again in Romulus, Michigan. Brian had recently attended CrossPointe with his mother a few times, and he may have attended as a child too. In the months before the shooting, Brian met one-on-one with Pastor Bobby Kelly, Jr. to talk about the Bible and told the paster he was a prophet who heard directly from God. Hearing voices is a classic symptom of psychosis. Illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia tend to first manifest in the person’s twenties or early thirties. The pastor says Brian was clearly “struggling mentally” but expressed no anger with anyone during these meetings.
Pastor Bobby Kelly, Jr. talks about meeting with Brian Browning in the weeks before the shooting. June 24, 2025.
Brian showed up outside the church on Sunday, June 22, in his truck. He had more than a dozen fully loaded magazines with him. He got out of the truck wearing a tactical vest and holding an AR-15 style rifle and a pistol. One church member, Deacon Richard Pryor, drove his pickup into the parking lot and saw Brian walking toward the entrance in fatigues carrying the rifle. He said to Brian: “Hey boss, are you OK? Everything alright?” When Brian didn’t respond, Pryor made the snap decision to run him over with his truck. About this decision, Pryor says: “All praise is to the Lord for putting me in the right position.” Brian crumpled onto the pavement. Then he shot up Pryor’s truck from the ground.
Inside the church building, a Vacation Bible service was taking place. The service was livestreamed, so the panic was too. Another church member, Ron Amann, heard the shooter outside and ran to the lobby. Brian, from the ground, shot through the lobby window and hit Amann in the leg. Brian was a clear danger to the people inside.
Jay Trombley, another member of the church’s security team, arrived. He shot Brian and killed him. A Fox reporter calls the whole event a “story of good and evil played out on the lawn.” Chief Ryan Strong of Wayne Police Department sees a story of saved lives: “We are grateful for the heroic actions of the church’s staff members who undoubtedly saved many lives and prevented a large-scale mass shooting.” The temptation to tell this story as a battle of good versus evil is strong, especially since it took place on what many consider sacred ground. But a little pressure on the narrative reveals its fissures.
Sheepdog Church Security offers active shooter training for churches, as well as products like these phone cases reminding users of biblical passages deemed to justify carrying weapons in church. https://sheepdog-church-security.thinkific.com/
***
In processing things afterward, church members describe a sense of divine shelter. Pastor Kelly points to “God’s hand of protection,” saying “what could have been, simply wasn’t.” Trombley says “evil came to our door” and interprets the series of events as scripted by God, who “put us in that precise place at the right time.” He explains:
So many things happened that can only be God-driven. The parishioner shows up late to engage him with his pickup truck, to slow him down. A double-pane window stopped five rounds … to see where rounds from his rifle traveled and impacted…God's hand was protecting me.
Trombley says the safety team was led by God as a “well-oiled machine ... of godly men who would stand up and defend this house of worship." The representatives of the church agree Brian was “evil.” Pastor Kelly claims the voices Brian Browning heard were “from demons, not from God.” Brian’s actions were outside of God’s control.
God did have control over the armed response, though. Amann says God “orchestrated all of the preparations and prepared us exactly for what we encountered…And nobody lost their life. Except the bad guy.” This is a constant theme: individual firearm preparation blended awkwardly with a claim of divinely-guided violent intervention justified by the presumption of “evil” being defeated by “good.” Trombley says people should “trust God first but then be prepared…God will give you the skills to take care of yourself.” God needs help in the battle against evil. He needs men with guns. Such limits on God’s power over earthly events is par for the course in religious reasoning around guns. It infuses contemporary American gun-fueled apocalyptic thinking, as I explore in my recent book.
Still, Trombley frets about killing another human being. He thinks about how Brian was “somebody’s kid” but also a force of evil:
I know I took a man's life, but I know that man was coming to take my life, the life of my family, and 80 children and many more people…Satan sent that man to discourage our house of worship and to disrupt us sharing the word to the people that come to our church and to the people of our community.
Although Trombley killed another person, he will “reconcile with the Lord [at] the time for that” because “I was protecting His people.” The battle between good and evil is a common Christian belief; but the belief that guns are required to deal with that threat is a quintessentially American Christian belief.
Trombley and Amann are on the “safety team” at CrossPointe Community Church. For the past decade, they have been training for an active shooter situation. Trombley says God ordained the training for them to “set in motion for us to defend ourselves against the evil that came to our doorstep.” Does this mean God knew Brian would become “evil” over a decade ago? Did God send the team to train with guns because He knew He would be unable to save Brian? It is chilling to imply that Brian’s turn to “evil,” and therefore his violent death, were predestined. His talks with Pastor Kelly were for naught, it seems.
The church’s safety team participated in trainings with Peacekeepers, a local gun organization. Amann sees such training as part of his religious “calling.” The church also consulted with the United States Conceal Carry Association (USCCA), which has training materials intended just for churches.
A USCCA booklet called “Protecting Houses of Worship” explains: “Of course houses of worship are targets for evil. Why wouldn’t they be?” The booklet argues God needs human assistance in stopping evil:
[W]e act surprised whenever a violent attack is perpetuated against [religious] locations, as though the fact that we go there to pray and commune with God will also create some kind of magical force field to keep bad things and bad people away. I apologize in advance if my next statement sounds blasphemous, but if an armed attacker enters your place of worship, God is not going to stop him. But an armed volunteer just might.
The USCCA warns how easily a dangerous person could come through church doors. They lean on the trope of mental illness as “evil” saying the “bad guy” could be “someone that’s maybe off their medication, talking to themselves, not acting appropriately.” In the next video, they advise church security teams to “put accurate fire on this bad guy and stop him immediately.” They urge careful selection of one’s “church gun” and offer advice from Wyatt Earp for using it: “Fast is fine, but accuracy is FINAL.”
A page from Protecting Your House of Worship, produced by the USCCA.
Keith Graves of Christian Warrior Training says it is a “trap” to believe God will protect you in an active shooter situation. He repeats the claim that “faith and preparedness go hand in hand.” Graves advises “biblical preparedness” and says God wants his people to be armed:
Ignoring security under the assumption that God is going to prevent harm is not faith; it's negligence. Throughout scripture God calls his people to be vigilant and prepared…God is the protector but he often uses his people as the means. Church security teams are an answer to prayer, not a substitute for faith…
The gun becomes a sign of God’s favor when attached to the hand of someone working for God, and a sign of evil when in another person’s hand—even someone in a mental health crisis. While it makes perfect sense that people must defend themselves against an active shooter, it is worrying that people in a mental health crisis are deemed “evil” by design. Surely more theological nuance is possible. But perhaps that would only come at the price of the simple good guy/bad guy Christian narrative.
In another video, Graves cites Ezekiel about “watchmen on the wall,” proposing that God’s people must warn others of an impending attack. He adds:
God's charge to the Watchmen isn't metaphorical; it's a command. When you see danger coming, whether it's a lone gunman or a coordinated threat, you are accountable to act. Church safety is…about faith and action…[I]f you don't have a [metaphorical] sword sell your cloak and buy one.
Graves claims that “for the Christian defender, the sword is not just permitted it's expected.” In this reasoning. God wants people to carry guns to church. The USCCA is already using the CrossPointe Community Church event in its promotional materials. The NRA is too. The narrative of good defeating evil is too tempting, and Brian’s requests for help from the church get lost in the noise.
The NRA is using the CrossPointe shooting to argue for gun rights. June 27, 2025.
Religious organizations have increased security measures in recent years, and understandably so. In 2018, the attack at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue resulted in 11 people dead. In 2017, 26 people were killed at Sutherland Springs Church in New Braunfels, Texas. While such attacks are rare, people are scared. In the past two decades mass shootings in spaces of worship have become more frequent, committed by “perpetrators with a history of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity and Islamophobia, with ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.” Between 2014 and 2018, attacks at religious spaces of worship increased 35%.
But this increase means religious leaders should be more concerned about people with mental illness rather than less. If people with mental illness are not, in fact, inherently “evil,” then religious groups should create plans to help them before the few who act violently get their hands on weapons. And as we know, in the United States weapons are so, so easy to find. And mental health supports, decreasingly funded, are getting worse all the time.
Jamie Aton of Wheaton College sees such caring interventions as supported by Christian values; he invites systemic change and supportive social programs: “If we can love those who are hurting in our community and catch people early on when they are showing signs of trouble and struggling,… the more we can do to provide support, the more we can help prevent…somebody going down this path.” Pardeep Singh Kaleka, from Oak Creek, dealt with the massacre of Sikh worshippers in his community in 2012 by developing programming for those in need of spiritual or psychological help. Kaleka wants to work with people before they commit hate crimes, to “deradicalize” people at risk. His organization, Serve2Unite, is committed to “fearless, creative compassion.”
In 2018, the National Council of Churches reaffirmed a resolution arguing that mental health services are critical. But so is limiting access to guns. To focus on one without the other is “disingenuous.” To be a Christian, they say, is to move beyond “thoughts and prayers” to “taking action to end gun violence.” They demand “common sense and comprehensive gun reform” including a “ban on assault weapons and other weapons of war that have infiltrated our communities.” They refuse to give up hope of “living peaceably one with another.” Perhaps if Brian had not had easy access to guns but instead received real treatment, he would still be alive.
The easy answer? Shoot the bad guy. The hard answer? Figure out what you mean by “evil.” If “evil” isn’t defined by people like Brian, suffering from well-known, devastating, but treatable diseases, what is it? We may find ourselves obligated to have harder conversations about domestic violence, toxic masculinity, and easy access to firearms. If mental illness is not inherently “evil,” then people suffering from it should be helped—well before anything bad happens to them or to others. Brian was a victim too, as messy as that makes things.
You can subscribe to this blog by scrolling down on the home page. : )
