{"id":505,"date":"2009-06-26T14:02:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-26T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html"},"modified":"2009-06-26T14:02:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T14:02:00","slug":"armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html","title":{"rendered":"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors &#8220;bring-a-gun-to-church&#8221; day &#8212; UPDATED"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people bring bibles to church.  Some bring rosaries.  <\/p>\n<p>One pastor is encouraging his flock to pack heat. <\/p>\n<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/26\/us\/26guns.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=print\">New York Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on \u201cGod, Guns, Gospel and Geometry.\u201d And on Saturday night, he is inviting his congregation of 150 and others to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to \u201ccelebrate our rights as Americans!\u201d as a promotional flier for the \u201copen carry celebration\u201d puts it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod and guns were part of the foundation of this country,\u201d Mr. Pagano, 49, said Wednesday in the small brick Assembly of God church, where a large wooden cross hung over the altar and two American flags jutted from side walls. \u201cI don\u2019t see any contradiction in this. Not every Christian denomination is pacifist.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Check out the link for more.<\/p>\n<p><b>UPDATE:<\/b> The Times has <a href=\"http:\/\/thelede.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/27\/armed-and-faithful-count-down\/?hp\">a followup<\/a> in one of its blogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people bring bibles to church. Some bring rosaries. One pastor is encouraging his flock to pack heat. From the New York Times: Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on \u201cGod,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors &quot;bring-a-gun-to-church&quot; day - UPDATED - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors &quot;bring-a-gun-to-church&quot; day - UPDATED - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some people bring bibles to church. Some bring rosaries. One pastor is encouraging his flock to pack heat. From the New York Times: Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on \u201cGod,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-26T14:02:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors \"bring-a-gun-to-church\" day - UPDATED - The Deacon&#039;s Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors \"bring-a-gun-to-church\" day - UPDATED - The Deacon&#039;s Bench","og_description":"Some people bring bibles to church. Some bring rosaries. One pastor is encouraging his flock to pack heat. From the New York Times: Ken Pagano, the pastor of the New Bethel Church here, is passionate about gun rights. He shoots regularly at the local firing range, and his sermon two weeks ago was on \u201cGod,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon&#039;s Bench","article_published_time":"2009-06-26T14:02:00+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\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html","name":"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors \"bring-a-gun-to-church\" day - UPDATED - The Deacon&#039;s Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-26T14:02:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-26T14:02:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/armed-and-prayerful-pastor-sponsors-bring-a-gun-to-church-day-updated.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Armed and prayerful: pastor sponsors &#8220;bring-a-gun-to-church&#8221; day &#8212; UPDATED"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon&#039;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\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","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\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","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\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}