Church attendance is declining in America. For mainline denominations, like your Methodists and Episcopalians, declining church attendance has been a reality for decades. More gleefully, however, church membership among the nation's more conservative evangelical churches has likewise be in decline these past several years. As Bob Allen reports for the Associated Baptist Press:
Annual baptisms in Southern Baptist churches have declined by 100,000 in the last 12 years, last year dropping to the smallest number in 64 years.
LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention released figures June 5 reporting 314,959 baptisms in 2012, down 18,385 – or 5.5 percent – from 2011.
Total membership of 15,872,404 marked the sixth straight year of statistical decline for the nation’s second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics. Membership dropped by 105,000 – two-thirds of a percent. Weekly worship attendance, meanwhile, fell below 6 million to 5,966,735, down 3 percent.
For Southern Baptists, declining membership isn't something they're accustomed to, so in an effort to combat these losses, a growing number of churches have taken to giving away guns. And why not? As everyone knows, Jesus loves his guns. I mean, that's why he's called the "Lord of Peace" (because guns ensure peace); and why also, we associate doves with Christianity (because as the Bible states, Jesus loved a good fowl hunt.
**Kos keeps crashing, but here's that link to Baptist gun grab.
http://www.npr.org/...