Story for the Friday after Ash Wednesday

Perhaps the gun-obsessed Alex Jones worshipping leaders of the Grace Baptist Church were just punning around, and really wanted their Troy, New York neighbors to think, “my piece I give unto you” as they published a flyer advertising a gun give-away as a way of increasing their congregants.
“My Peace I Give Unto You…John 14:27″ reads the flyer. “Does the Bible defend my right to keep and bear arms?” it asks.

Pastor John W. Koletas, in a letter explaining his mission to add yet one more assault rifle to the streets, writes that his church has “decided to hold a special service honouring hunters and gun owners who have been so viciously attacked by the antichristian socialist media and antichristian socialist politicians the last few years. Our country was built with the King James Bible and the gun.”
Indeed, Pastor Koletas has a penchant for guns — and for Alex Jones, the libertarian conspiracy theorist. The church website has a section on “Conspiracy Truths,” featuring a link to Jones’ website and a link to frightening website titled Vatican Assassins. It also has a link to the anti-gay hate group American Family Association, professional hater Michael Savage, and a bolded statement that “Evolution is a lie.”

On their home page, the church offers this link: “Seventy-two killed resisting gun confiscation in Boston!”

The church’s site also states that there “is a literal Hell, which will be cast into a literal Lake of Fire with brimstone where the devil, fallen angels, and all lost people will spend eternity without escape, hope, or relief for rejecting Jesus Christ.”

No doubt, an AR-15 is a good way to get there.

Meanwhile, Republican state assemblyman Steve McLaughlin is totally A-OK with the give away.
“It’s a legal product,” McLaughlin told WNYT News. “Churches raffle off items all the time. My church has a $10,000 raffle every single year. I mean, I don’t know how it’s a controversy, quite honestly, that law-abiding, church-going citizens of New York that are legal gun owners are taking part in a raffle to raise funds for a church. I don’t know why that’s controversial.”
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For what it's worth, the reading from the Hebrew scriptures in Catholic churches on this day is from the prophet Isaiah (58:1-9A)

Thus says the Lord GOD:
Cry out full-throated and unsparingly,
lift up your voice like a trumpet blast;
Tell my people their wickedness,
and the house of Jacob their sins.
They seek me day after day,
and desire to know my ways,
Like a nation that has done what is just
and not abandoned the law of their God;
They ask me to declare what is due them,
pleased to gain access to God.
“Why do we fast, and you do not see it?
afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?”

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits,
and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting,
striking with wicked claw.
Would that today you might fast
so as to make your voice heard on high!
Is this the manner of fasting I wish,
of keeping a day of penance:
That a man bow his head like a reed
and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

Mmm. Doesn't sound like the Christian agenda being touted at CPAC, does it?