The New Bethel Church in Kentucky caused a bit of a stir a couple of weekends ago with its ‘bring your guns to church’ service. The full story has been reported in several places, one of which is here. There are plenty of comments we could make about this, and plenty other people have done, both positive and negative.
Instead of writing first and thinking later, we went to the church’s website. Believe it or not, the ‘thought for the week’ is on the theme of protection. More exactly, asking who we can rely on to protect us. The answer – even more incredibly for such a macho gun-toting congregation – is that we need to trust in God! The only thing more surprising about this extraordinary episode is that the denomination to which the church belongs (Assemblies of God) seems to have ignored the it all. But then, they take a strong moralistic line on things like , drinking, lying, cheating, ’family values’ and gambling (though a feature of the event was a prize draw for shooting equipment!). Draw your own conclusions, people.
