In response to the devastating Nashville school shooting, a congressman from Tennessee called for a national religious revival, which comes a few weeks after a campus revival in Kentucky, which had inspired thousands of people from across the country to come together in prayer and worship.

“It is horrendous. I lived in Nashville; I was in the state legislature for 16 years. It’s just a horrible situation,” GOP Rep. Tim Burchett from Knoxville told reporters near the Capitol Tuesday.

The congressman offered that Congress was incapable of resolving the issue of mass shootings and that the country must instead return to its spiritual foundations.

As he gestured toward the Capitol building, Burchett said: “We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals. My daddy, who fought in the Second World War, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese, and he told me, he said, ‘Buddy, if somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.’”

“We’ve got a mental health issue in this country. We need to start addressing it,” he added.

After a reporter suggested that he was too close to the issue since he is from Tennessee, Burchett responded, “It doesn’t matter what state it happens in; we’re all Americans. It doesn’t matter the color of their skin. They all bleed red. They’re bleeding a lot.”

“I don’t see any real role that we can do other than mess things up, honestly, because of the situation,” Burchett said. “Like I said, I don’t think a criminal’s gonna stop from [getting] guns; you know, you can print them out on computer now, 3-D printing. I don’t think you’re gonna stop the gun violence. I think you gotta change people’s hearts.”

Burchett then said that a return to spirituality is badly needed.

“As a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I’ve said this many times; I think we really need a revival in this country,” he said. “I think our ministers and our communities of faith need to come together and start preaching about love from the Bible; it’s in the Bible, from the pulpit, and maybe that could go a long ways towards it.”

“Numerous academic studies have demonstrated that communities with high numbers of religious adherents have lower crime rates,” the Rand Corporation has pointed out. “Other studies also find that more religious individuals are less likely to be involved in criminal behavior.”

Last month, Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday praised a spiritual revival taking place at a Kentucky university, describing it as “amazing” to the student body president who appeared on his program to discuss it.

Carlson said that the nonstop Christian meeting at Asbury University in Wilmore is much-needed in today’s world, noting that it is becoming harder not to describe the things that are happening in theological terms – good vs. evil.

In the interview, Carlson told student leader Alison Perfater that much of what is taking place is simply “pure evil.”

“And the good news is a lot of people are starting to think about what happens when you die, and they’re becoming much more interested in the spiritual life, which has been basically extinguished in the public square for a long time,” Carlson offered, going on to show footage from a meeting at Hughes Auditorium on the campus where people were worshipping and praising Gog through prayer and music at all hours of the day and night.

“What is this?” Carlson asked the student leader.

“That’s the question, right?” Perfater replied.

“A theme or a Bible verse that we’ve all been sharing with each other is Habakkuk 1, and the Lord says, ‘Look at the nations and watch, for I am doing something in your day that you wouldn’t believe if you were told.’ And it’s happening, and we can hardly believe it,” Perfater said.