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As I recall Churches used to be sanctuaries. Holy ground where those persecuted by dictators and despots could escape from their tyranny and threats. The authority of the church was not based on the priests, nuns and pastors packing heat, but on the moral authority of the church as the house of God. A loving and caring God.
Now, in the heart of the so-called Bible Belt, the moral authority of the church is being further eroded by guns in church; I would go further and say these churches are being defiled by allowing guns, rifles or whatever weapon parishioners wish to bring inside it's hallowed halls. A church belongs to the ephermeral and not the temporal. If a church cannot be a sanctuary then where can one ever find peace.
Last edited by TreeBeard; 05-03-2014 at 07:21 AM..
As I recall Churches used to be sanctuaries. Holy ground where those persecuted by dictators and despots could escape from their tyranny and threats. The authority of the church was not based on the priests, nuns and pastors packing heat, but on the moral authority of the church as the house of God. A loving and caring God.
Now, in the heart of the so-called Bible Belt, the moral authority of the church is being further eroded by guns in church; I would go further and say these churches are being defiled by allowing guns, rifles or whatever weapon parishioners wish to bring inside it's hallowed halls. A church belongs to the ephermeral and not the temporal. If a church cannot be a sanctuary then where can one ever find peace.
How many of those happened where there was no gun present?
Don't you know the answer to this.
If no gun was present, then there would have been an "accidental" stabbing or "accidental" punching that would have killed these poor people.
However, since this thread is church related, with no guns present you can't exclude the possibility of deaths caused by people dropping bibles or offering plates on other folk's heads and stuff like that.
On Oct. 24, a shooting attack at Atlanta megachurch World Changers Church International killed a volunteer leader as he led prayer during a service.
Now, that attack has many pastors–from Washington D.C. to Knoxville–reviewing their churches' safety measures in order to prevent similar violence from occurring closer to home as church violence continues to soar.
Rolling Out, an African American news site, noted that the Atlanta incident is one of five attacks on largely black congregations within the last year. But other pastors say the attack, perpetrated by a former church employee who resigned this summer, is a warning for all churches that are generally open and welcoming.
Regardless of security precautions, church-related violence has been on the rise for the past decade. According to Carl Chinn, a former Focus on the Family building engineer who tracks church crime and violence statistics, 115 attacks–63 of which resulted in at least one fatality–have occurred so far in 2012, up from 108 attacks last year and just 10 such attacks a decade ago.
Why on God's green green earth would you want to take a gun to church?
No, no, I don't want to hear about how you're "protecting your family." Wanna know why?
It's because the biggest church shooting, the Sikh Temple, was committed by the very same kind of nationalistic, xenophobic, paranoid, fearful, anti-government, Muslim-hating gun nut that claims to need protection.
Yeah ... it was one of the big 2nd Amendment supporters who thought Sikhs were Muslims and so went and shot up the place. Because, you know, we should be allowed to bring guns just in case we see someone with darker skin or who aren't Christians that we might want to shoot on the way to the grocery store or something.
The people who think we need to bring guns to church to protect their families aren't the ones in danger. They're not going to get shot up by a xenophobic "yahoo." It's the immigrant that needs to come packing.
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