Well, frumps, it’s Sunday and the day that some of us take ourselves off to the church of our choice in the hope of laying down our workaday, worldly woes and, hopefully, finding some peace.
For some folks, in Louisville, KY, that quest might have taken them to the New Bethel Church where the Rev. Ken Pagano recently hosted an Independence Day celebration called an “Open Carry Celebration” for which the pastor had invited his congregation to bring along their Bibles, a tin of canned food, a friend – and their guns.
The service will celebrate the second amendment, the controversial and disputed constitutional law that enshrines the right to carry a gun. Pagano said that some of his congregation were concerned that Barack Obama might restrict gun ownership.
Although the White House has said repeatedly it is not planning any such measures, the National Rifle Association has played on these fears and encouraged the idea that Obama is about to take away people’s guns. The White House view is that Obama has enough on his agenda without taking on the gun lobby too.
Kentucky’s gun laws, among the most liberal in the country, do not allow people to take guns into places such as bars, schools or jails. But churches are currently exempted by a loophole because it did not occur to legislators that anyone might want to take a firearm to a service.
Time also reported that:
Some locals opposed to Pagano have planned an alternative rally, “Bring Your Peaceful Heart … Leave Your Gun at Home,” which is scheduled to coincide with the New Bethel event. Terry Taylor, executive director of Interfaith Paths to Peace, which organized the rally, told TIME he is particularly troubled by the open-carry service because it gives the wrong impression of Louisville, which he believes is the “spiritual center of the United States” because of its mass of interfaith work, connection to the late monk Thomas Merton and the presence of the Southern Baptist and Presbyterian seminaries and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s national headquarters.
Ken Pagano, the pastor at New Bethel Church, prepared to try a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun at a shooting range
Ken Pagano, who packs a pistol of his own and works at a local firing range, wants his parishioners to openly wear their firearms at the New Bethel Church in Louisville to mark the 4th of July Independence anniversary and celebrate the part guns played in the making of the nation.
Pagano, a 49-year-old former marine, acknowledged that bringing guns to church was uncommon in modern culture but pointed out that, in New England, in colonial times, there were racks at the back of the church for rifles for militia men. America’s founding fathers had a genuine belief in arms, he said: “I stand in that tradition and I am proud of it.”
That argument is a major fail, in my opinion. America’s founding fathers also had a genuine belief in slaveholding and public witch-burnings which, I am relieved to say, have, for the most part, faded away.
What worries me most about this event is that it is part of a much wider pattern of fringe elements, wrapping themselves in the flag and the constitution and banging the drum of fear to persuade others that their civil rights are currently threatened. President Obama’s election has driven some of the more extreme white supremacists into an absolute frenzy. Mix that, with mainstreaming public gun-toting and there could be real trouble afoot.
Rev. Pagano New Bethel Church Louisville KY open carry guns church
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Unbelievable.