Prayers, preachers and packin': Is this the vision of Christ?

Louisiana not only has liberal gun laws, but it's a place where you can take a gun to church. So while a high school in Washington state bemoans the violence of another school shooting, what does it mean when faith-talking conservatives praise gun-toting laws for Sunday worship protection?

Louisiana passed a law allowing guns in church several years ago. It did so as it has a popular foundation of support from a state where Second Amendment rights are as critical to the culture as are the Ten Commandments. Governor Bobby Jindal, whom few may know well outside Louisiana, outside of television images about the oil spill along the coast, advocated, supported and signed the bill into law.

The Ten Commandments, however, were modified by the words of Jesus Christ.  One might wonder when weapons are forged for violent response in places known as God's house rather than the rational and peaceful ways the ways of Christ proclaimed.

In the Old West gunslingers were supposed to check their guns at the door.  These days guns may be hidden from view, then taken into church without worrying about being checked by anyone.

And while guns are celebrated by the National Rifle Association, and are being taken to church, mental health experts remind us it is the verbal atmosphere of praising guns that allows violence to breed. Perhaps in that sense it isn't guns themselves. Instead it's the constant barrage from apologists who take extreme positions when it comes to guns.  Automatic rifles are seen as the best for hunting deer.  Those who argue about any type of restriction for guns are mocked even as multitudes of gun-lovers, and their lobbyists, continue to assert that it isn't guns who kill but people.
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This reporter conducted a survey of preachers in Natchitoches, Louisiana five years ago.  The survey found that most of the ministers contacted across Protestant groups either collected or just owned guns.  The Catholic Church in the main part of the city responded to the survey by stating that at no time did the priest in charge have a gun on the premises.

The violence of the gun remains a symbol of Western expansion, part of the symbolic takeover of the country, a country whose land was wrested from Native Americans as the expansion grew particularly great after the Louisiana Purchase.. Settlements developed with gun protection in Arizona and Oregon, where the Lewis and Clark trail ended.

The gun is glorified in stories, and by the media, and its rights are consistently upheld at election time, even as school shootings continue every year and as the number of guns in the United States continues to grow.  This is true in spite of the fact that in the small towns of Oregon, in the 1940's and 50's when hunting for deer was particularly an activity involving men whose families ate the meat brought home.  And in a town like La Grande, Oregon where almost every man had a rifle locked up and where every man's son was taught to hunt with their fathers, no school shooting was front page news.  Guns are as American as apple pie, but they were not talked about for defense but for hunting game.

In the wake of Washington State's misery, as the most recent example of a school shooting, it is likely, sadly too, that the gun-owning politicians will likely condemn the violence as an isolated thing and continue advocacy of guns even within the church. Oregon will continue to display its gun shops proudly on main thoroughfare and offer gun shows alongside car shows as entertainment.
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The saddest commentary of all in the public pronouncements of guns is that in the place where Jesus is to dwell as the head of the church, the gun can go to the altar in the pocket of the
supplicant while on knees bended in prayer. It is a symbol of the violence available anywhere, in a shopping mall, at a school, and even in a church where parishioners brandish weapons with pride as they pray for protection---or to shoot straight.

An Oregon saloon continues to bring western cowboys and old time, goodtimes

[caption id="attachment_19896" align="alignleft" width="300"] Big 'O' Saloon[/caption]

Carol Forsloff---The pretty bartender smiles and pours you a drink.  She has all of the wit and charm you would expect from those gals who worked the bar back in those western movies, outside of the fact she isn't flouncing a skirt and singing as well.  But she and the ambiance of the saloon make one feel like they are right back in an old Roy Rogers movie, only it's a way station on the way to the Oregon Coast, but with the appeal that speaks to everyone of old time, good times.

Christina Kaul makes strangers feel right at home, as the restaurant serves food and those delightful beverages cowgirls and cowboys like to imbibe a bit on a journey or on the way home.  This restaurant - bar has all the decor of the Old West, which is what Oregon is, of course, as the last outpost of the United States that Lewis and Clark discovered and that people from everywhere have as well, finding those old ways still captured in places like the Big 'O' Saloon.

[caption id="attachment_19897" align="alignright" width="300"] Customer at the old saloon[/caption]

Country music on the weekends, beer on tap, great food and smiles from great looking gals dedicated to bringing the best, while enjoying the job as well work at the Big 'O' Saloon.  Christian and her friend and co-worker, who runs the convenience store that is tucked alongside the bar-restaurant, are the kind of young women one might think of as part of what's happening in some big town.  But these small town girls like living in the country.

"It's fun here," Christian exclaimed.  "There's plenty to do, horseback riding, meeting friends, being outside, living in the country and never dull around here."

[caption id="attachment_19898" align="alignnone" width="300"] Christina and Shelley, with Christina tending bar and Shelley tending the general store[/caption]

The West is here, in its full regalia, with the Olney General Store and the Big 'O' Saloon.  Enjoy the moment vicariously through pictures or stop by on Hwy 202 on the outskirts of Astoria, Oregon next time you're passing through.

Oregon region working to remove its red, to be green in race relationships

[caption id="attachment_10684" align="alignright" width="336"] La Grande, Oregon--one of the conservative towns in Eastern Oregon[/caption]

Carol Forsloff — The South has wonderful traditions of courtesy, decorum, family connections, and a friendly way of greeting people that make people smile. It is, however, a region that remains in the shackles of its past, still struggling to cross the racial divides. But it is not the only place where racial divisions continue and where history put an X on the hearts and minds of people for generations, with Oregon being one of those places that many would not know, or remember, with its own racist past.

Oregon also almost became a slave state. There were loud voices from those who saw the potential of the new frontier, discovered for the country’s expansion by Lewis and Clark, sent by Thomas Jefferson following the purchase of the Louisiana territory, extending to Oregon. The expedition brought a hardy type of folks with rough and tumble ways and also a tradition of using slave labor or cheap labor for expansion. That was particularly true of the gentlemen farmers and the new entrepreneurs, who saw opportunity in the new lands. Those new lands promised a level playing field for the new, bright business man of land and cattle and later railroads and the industrial movement, that also maintained a caste system of color throughout much of the Wild West.

The Oregon County provisional government may have outlawed slavery in 1844 but that was to keep African Americans out of the state and was not a voice of the abolition movement.

When Oregon became a state in 1859, the country was divided North and South. The term Yankee often did not reference the Westerner, but the classic country man was not one dedicated to the expansion of human rights in the new territories. And the restrictions on personal affairs continued until the 1950’s, a time when intermarriage between people of color, including Hawaiians, African Americans, Asians, and Native Americans, was illegal under Oregon law. Miscegenation laws were passed in 1866 and remained until 1951, with a number of legislators opposing the law as "unfair to children"

The problem continues in some places in Oregon. While the spotlight often focuses on the South, the rural areas of Oregon retain its racial divides. Portland, the progressive city that folks point to as modern, upbeat, and environmentally friendly, still has a low percentage of African Americans, and most of these people live in defined districts, areas of the city that have been labeled by color for generations. Only 6.4% of Portland's population is African American. And Bend, Oregon, about a three-hour drive from Portland, is one of the ten cities in the United States with populations over 50,000 with the least population of African Americans at .3%. Folks who visit there notice it is a "very white" city, yet still extol the friendliness of the folks.

There have been pockets of enlightenment and the enlightened, dating back decades. Girls Polytechnic, a technical high school that no longer exists, with the transitions of its once active base  in central Portland. Girls came from all over the city to attend the school.  African American girls (as it was an all-girls school) were on the rally squad, student council offers and figured into school beauty contests, albeit not the more prominent one at Rose Festival. That has changed, and many of the high schools have integrated May courts and representation at major affairs. But it has been a long, hard road for the rank and file of African Americans who continue to face problems related to the state’s past in many areas of Oregon. And Oregon as a whole is considered enlightened with most people cringing with notions of racial prejudice and looking forward, not behind, when it comes to the advancement of minorities.

Those government officials and humanitarian groups often focus on the South and sections of the Midwest for racial imbalance, but Oregon is one of those areas in need of education and communication on matters of race. It may be green on the outside, but it has conservative areas and its redness in the areas of race continue to haunt a state known for its enlightenment and yet a place that has had its own struggles with race in America.