Word: churches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...five minutes before New Bethel Church's highly publicized "open-carry service" was set to begin Saturday evening, Lynne Smith walked into the sanctuary with her husband and two friends and took a seat in the front row. Asked what weapon she had with her, Smith had to stop and think about which gun she'd brought but finally said it was a Beretta .25 automatic. Her husband, Michael Houston, wore a Browning .380 in a holster. Their friends, Ted and Barbara Grant, were also carrying weapons. Barbara, wearing a NYPD baseball cap, had a Ruger .38 revolver, while...
...congregating arsenal was all perfectly legal as well as perfectly acceptable to the leaders of New Bethel, an Assemblies of God church in Louisville, Kentucky, that invited people to bring their unloaded guns to this first-ever event. Neither of the two couples in the front row are New Bethel members. Smith told TIME she read about the service in the Louisville Courier-Journal and came "to see what was going on." All four are longtime NRA members, she said, and all are deeply worried that the federal government will mount an effort to take away the right to bear...
...ways by various people at the service, which became an international media sensation when it hit Louisville's mainstream press early this month. Pastor Ken Pagano, a former Marine and a volunteer chaplain with the Louisville Metro Police Department, suggested the idea more than a year ago when the church board was brainstorming ways to expand its outreach...
Lobbying rules like these stifle speech of all faiths. Clergy fear voicing their views on legislation if it means opening their books to investigation. OSE says it looks at only the portion of church finances dedicated to lobbying. But to distinguish that portion is impossible. Do we count the homily, the bulletin, the prayer group? State Representative Chris Caruso, an unsympathetic Catholic, chides the Church to “Give unto Caesar, what is Caesar’s.” But the Church’s everyday finances are none of Caesar’s business...
...should drop all charges against the Church, and the legislature should revise the rules immediately. We don’t need to register every person marching outside the pearly gates, just the guy trying to slip Saint Peter a few coins. Moreover, it would help both church and state if a court didn’t settle every dispute. Otherwise, we may see the day when the penitent Catholic, at the start of Confession, instead of saying “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” demands, “Bless me Father...