It makes perfect sense that a church would bribe people with the promise of guns, right?
Has there ever been a more natural combination outside of peanut butter and chocolate than Jesus H. Christ and firearms? According to a Joplin, Missouri preacher, that answer is a resounding yes.
Lead pastor of the Ignite Church (that’s an indicator right there) Heath Mooneyham thought it would be a good idea to stage a gun giveaway on Father’s Day, of all days. The church gave area dads the chance to put their names in a hat to win one of two Black Rain AR-15 rifles.
Everyone entering in the free raffle put in a ticket for themselves and each child who went to church with their dad. This also included the option of getting another ticket for dads bringing their own dad, because why leave out grandpa. In other words, guns for everybody.
According to Mooneyham, giving away free guns was all part of a plan to attract a specific demographic group to Ignite Church: males age 18 to 35.
“We thought instead of a lot of small things, we’d give away stuff the guys were interested in,” Mooneyham, told the Joplin Globe. “We’re not trying to put on a show for anybody, we’re just dudes.”
Naturally, not everyone was cool with the giveaway. A quick scan of the Ignite Church’s Facebook page brought up some interesting discussion:
Still, for all the back and forth, those who believe that Ignite is completely justified in their efforts are still pretty vocal about it. Dan McCain, who owns a local guitar shop and plays lead guitar for the church’s band, was one of the two AR-15 winners. As far as he was concerned, giving away free guns doesn’t exactly send bad messages.
“I was very happy to win the rifle. I’ve never won anything in my life, so it was exciting,” he tells the Joplin Globe. “I enjoy hunting and target shooting. I haven’t had the opportunity to hunt in a while…Firearm ownership does not equate to violence.”
To their credit, Ignite Church isn’t some fire and brimstone conservative church. Quite the contrary. Looking at their website (note: there are a number of churches named “Ignite Church”), they’re certainly churchy in the sense that they believe in god and the devil and all the secret sauce that lies within, however, they’re probably one of the more liberal-minded churches out there, allowing for, as they put it, “democrats and republicans, soccer moms and rockers, carnivores and vegans, construction workers and pencil pushers.”
As a way to lure in followers (outside of giving them guns), Sunday morning services start later than many churches, they emphasize an almost punk rock theme with a neon-like black-and-green color scheme, and Mooneyham himself sports tattoos and a short Mohawk.
According to the Joplin Globe, in 2011, Ignite Church managed to draw national attention by sponsoring a series of billboards featuring couples gettin’ a little freaky in order to promote a series about marriage and sex. The goal of that series was to get married couples to screw more in order to avoid porn and cheating on one another.
“It’s easy to not like us. It’s not hard,” Mooneyham said. “You don’t need to go out and find ammunition, we’ll just hand it to you — we give away guns and talk about sex.”
It’s one thing to be the cool church, in some ways, it’s actually an ingenious way to get new followers that wouldn’t normally adhere to the structured conservatism of more traditional churches, but when you give away guns, in a way, it makes the whole thing seem a bit hollow. While the people of Ignite Church in Joplin, MO may not be slack jawed yokels looking to hide behind an amendment of the Constitution, they are, in their own way contributing to a culture that’s part of a much dangerous whole: Guns may not kill people, but people with access to guns often do.