Pubdate: Sat, 19 Apr 2014
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Associated Press
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388

PASTORS REACH OUT ON A HOLY DAY FOR STONERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Social media have been buzzing for weeks with 
jokes about how, this year, Easter Sunday shares the calendar with 
the pot lover's highest holiday: April 20, or 420 in stoner lingo. 
Pot smokers have long celebrated on the date by lighting up for 
reasons not quite clear.

Yet amid the online cracks about worshiping a "higher" power, 
tutorials on how to make a joint shaped like a cross and photos of 
Easter baskets piled with pot-filled eggs, a handful of churches 
nationwide are using the coincidence to make much bigger points.

In the Highland Park (no kidding) neighborhood of Los Angeles, a 
church is using medical marijuana imagery and catchy wordplay to 
attract new worshipers to an Easter sermon series called "Medicated," 
about seeking fulfillment through God, not drugs. In Mississippi, a 
church is hosting a concert to denounce marijuana legalization with 
the title "Reverse 420: God Keeps Me High."

"I was sitting on a plane and I was looking at my calendar, and I 
realized that Easter fell on 4/20 and I thought, 'Man, half of my 
friends, they're going to be doing something else on 4/20. They're 
not going to want to come to church,'" said Pastor Justice Coleman, 
founder of Freedom Church in Highland Park.

"So, how could we put together a talk or a program that wouldn't 
celebrate smoking weed, but would celebrate the idea that there's so 
much more to life," said Coleman, 30. "That's what we're going to be 
talking about."

The church events come against the irreverent backdrop of the 
Internet, where social media have exploded with pictures of bunnies 
chomping on marijuana leaves and posts such as "Blaze it and praise it!"
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom