PREACHER GIVING AWAY AR-15 AT HIS CHURCH IS AWFUL IN NEARLY EVERY POSSIBLE WAY

A preacher in Troy, New York, is giving away an AR-15 -- again.

Grace Baptist, which is [led] by alt-right wing pastor Rev. John Koletas, has given away assault rifles at least twice before, once in 2014 and again in 2017. Six years ago, the giveaway was in response to New York's SAFE Act and stricter gun laws. The church says it is doing another gun giveaway Monday night.

This is not a joke.



Fun fact:

Touching a ham was required to enter.

Yes, really:

As always, there will be a slice of ham (the Bible word is swine) outside the front church doors.

Everyone entering the building for the service is required to touch the ham before entering the building.

Anyone refusing to touch the ham outside the front church doors is not permitted to enter the building.

Your first reaction is probably that this is anti-Semitic, although:

GBC reserves the right to allow any Orthodox or Hasidic Jew to enter without touching the ham.

A Vice article written at the time of the first giveaway probably explains the reason for this:

When it was time for the raffle, Pastor Koletas announced that the church retained the right to disqualify any winner with questionable character.

“If your name is Hussein, or Karim, or Mohammad, you may not qualify! ..."

There's also a sermon excerpt on the church's Fabook page titled "Every Muslim Is a Terrorist" -- although Koletas does think Muslims have better ideas about how women should dress than Americans do. (This is from the unfortunately named Twitter account @FakeSermon, which publishes real clips of Koletas and other preachers.)

Deuteronomy 22:5 has always been there as a command for women not to wear men's clothing. A woman wearing pants or shorts in public is an abomination! There's more hope for the Muslims than America.#OldPaths #IFBpreacherclips

Pastor John Koletas, Grace Baptist Church Troy, NY pic.twitter.com/a2XIo4iWGl

— IFB Preacher Clips (@FakeSermon) February 27, 2020

Koletas prides himself on having black attendees at his church, but he's deeply into racial provocation. Here he is defending his use of the N-word.

🚨 *Language Warning* 🚨 NSFW

There are many names that the N-word equates to. Like there is a country called Nigeria. If you are offended by this, you don't love the Word of God.#OldPaths #IFBpreacherclips

@ greek_baptist
Pastor John Koletas, Grace Baptist Church Troy, NY pic.twitter.com/6YGU5tqJZL

— IFB Preacher Clips (@FakeSermon) April 16, 2020

Here, too (and oh yeah, he thinks the Pope is the Antichrist).

🚨*Language Warning* 🚨 NSFW
The Pope is the Antichrist on planet Earth. The MOG explains the dictionary usage of the word queer, the b-word, & the n-word. #OldPaths #IFBpreacherclips

@ greek_baptist
Pastor John Koletas, Grace Baptist Church Troy, NY pic.twitter.com/ymQfyP76HX

— IFB Preacher Clips (@FakeSermon) April 15, 2020

And here's a sermon excerpt at Facebook that I can't embed:



In it, he says:

You're cool because you're acting like a bunch of blacks coming from the jungles of Africa and Caribbean and Egypt, and you're listening to their music that's destroyed you. That's why you like your rock and roll. That's why you like your country music with the metal twang. Yeah, you know where that comes from? Straight from Africa, straight from Egypt, straight from Caribbean. And Its ruined American society. One of the first things to go in any nation is their music. The first thing to go in your life, the first thing to go in the church's life, is usually the music. That's why you don't like the music. "It's not moving enough for me, Pastor. It's not emotional." Yeah, you want to go back in the jungles of Africa and dance to the jungle beat like they did, and just let your body just jiggle and move like a bunch of wild natives.

Yeah, this guy has issues, as a local columnist noted in 2017:

... the Rev. John Koletas ... has identified a national problem that never would have occurred to me, not in a million years.

Koletas mentioned it in his sermon last Sunday. If you want to give it a listen, it's on the church's website.

"The problem we're having in America — you listen to me good — the black churches, they don't preach against fornication, they don't preach against adultery no more, they don't preach against gambling no more, they don't preach against liquor no more."

At this point, it's worth wondering how Koletas knows so much about what's preached in the thousands of black churches out there. He wasn't done, though.

"They don't preach against heresy no more. And so you have — listen to me good — black America sitting in black pews who are rebelling against God. And it's coming out of the church pews into the streets."

Sadly, Koletas wasn't done.

"They don't preach about personal responsibility. They don't tell them how to get a job. They don't tell them to live right with God. And so what you see is a bunch of thugs out there that are blaming everybody else."

And more recently:

In a recent sermon, he denounced the officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis as "evil," but then linked post-protest violence as being caused by "a bunch of savages who have let their sins run rampant."

So you can understand why there were Black Lives Matter protesters at the church today.

The gun giveaway is tomorrow night.

What a country.

(Hat tip: Joshua Holland.)