Tuesday, March 4, 2014

On giving away guns as an evangelism tool

To state the obvious: the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s gun-giveaway evangelism is ill-concieved.  Using instruments of violence to lure men to a sales pitch for the Prince of Peace, is wrong on so many levels.


My Baptist friend and clergy colleague the Rev. Joe Phelps has commented:  “Surely there is more to a faith experience than wandering into a church service that is veiled as an outdoor store. You show up like an unsuspecting deer at a feeder near a deer-blind, on the off-chance of winning a gun, but to your surprise amidst the jokes and hunting tales you hear an entirely new philosophy of life which awakens you from your nightmare of materialism and the love of violent weapons which drew you like an junkie to this event in the first place. In this sudden awakening you believe that you have so thoroughly examined the strengths and weaknesses of this radically new value system that you make a decision more life-altering than signing the lease on that new fully-loaded truck without telling your wife or best friend, a decision that could possibly dissuade you from owning the very weapons that drew you to this evening’s program in the first place.”