An Oklahoma baptist church has insisted it will proceed with its controversial plan to give away an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle during a youth conference – a move described as “a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event”, according to local Koko 5 news.<\/p>\n
Windsor Hills Baptist apparently has a history of worshipping God through firepower, and last year ran a shooting competition as part of its annual shindig. This year, it reportedly shelled out $800 for said trophy semi, but the church\u2019s youth pastor, Bob Ross, claimed the main thrust of the conference wasn’t about guns but rather “teens finding faith”.<\/p>\n
He stressed that the event featured 21 hours of preaching between bursts of gunfire, and defended: \u201cI don\u2019t want people thinking \u2018My goodness, we\u2019re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn\u2019t respect it who are then going to go out and kill. That\u2019s not at all what we\u2019re trying to do.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No big rallies. No papal homilies. No singing nuns. Just some really cool semiautomatic weapons. Or so it seems, judging from this item out of Oklahoma: An Oklahoma baptist church has insisted it will proceed with its controversial plan to give away an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle during a youth conference – a move described…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\n
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No papal homilies. No singing nuns. Just some really cool semiautomatic weapons. Or so it seems, judging from this item out of Oklahoma: An Oklahoma baptist church has insisted it will proceed with its controversial plan to give away an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle during a youth conference – a move described…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2008-07-16T07:18:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html","name":"WYD, Baptist edition - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-07-16T07:18:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-16T07:18:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/07\/wyd-baptist-edition.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"WYD, Baptist edition"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}