Anyone in Ferndale who has to drive or walk by St. Mark’s Lutheran is probably familiar with the sign out front that their radical pastor uses on a weekly basis to post his hateful, discriminatory religious messages.

He has posted messages that bordered on being political before, but this week, his sign and his website definitely crossed the line by directly naming and attacking Gov. Newsom, who is currently up for re-election.

Most of the time I just laugh, or shake my head at his ignorance, but there comes a time when you have to act. Upon reading his latest missive, I decided the time is now.

This site will serve as a public rebuttal to the drivel he posts in front of his church.

Aside from the fact that posting such political messages is a direct violation of the church’s 501(c)(3) non-profit status, there is the problem that Jesus isn’t anything, either pro-choice or anti-abortion (anti-abortion is not pro-life, let’s be clear about that). If he ever existed, he’s been dead for two millennia. But given what people wrote about him centuries later, I really doubt that he would be in favor of withholding medical care from a mother with an ectopic pregnancy.

I could debate the whole Jesus/abortion thing further, but I’d rather delve into the pastor’s own hypocrisy.

To start with, it’s ironic that he’s concerned about the bible quote that Gov. Newsom used in his ad.

“Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.” Mark 12:31

I truly wish that the pastor followed the advice given in that passage. Because he seems to get off on not loving you if you’re black, or LGBQT, or atheist, or basically, anyone who isn’t a white Christian that follows his tiny, specific version of Christianity.

Even other Lutheran pastors in the area consider the pastor of St. Marks to be “ignorant, bigoted, and racist”. ¹

I was raised as a Christian, and one of the reasons I stopped going to church was I couldn’t rationalize why there were so many flavors of Christianity, not to mention so many other religions around the world. It kind of made it seem like maybe, just maybe, religion was a man-made institution. Because if god existed and was all powerful, he certainly could have improved getting the word out on just what the actual rules are. Whether you ended up Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or Christian seemed to be based more on where your parents had sex than any rational choice you made.

If god had wanted us to not fight wars over which religion was the correct one, a much bertter plan would have been to have the whole world speak the same language. That would have made it a lot easier for everyone to get along, and you wouldn’t have all those pesky problems of interpreting an ancient book that was translated from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to German, and then to English. Interpretations done by people, with their own biases, like King James.

Has the pastor of St. Marks, or anyone in his flock ever pondered why there are two different flavors of Lutheran churches just in little ol’ Ferndale? Not to mention the existence of other churches, like the Catholic one down the street that should have claim to being the “right” Christian church to follow, as their tradition predates the Lutheran reform. I mean, if you’re going to claim your god is perfect, why are you following a religion with a version number like 3.2.17? Were there that many bugs and feature requests to deal with?

I have a whole lot of other questions that I’m sure the pastor doesn’t have a logical explanation for. But if he has an answer for that first one, I’d love to see him post it on his sign.

11/11/22 Update: Gavin Newsom won reelection. Since god is in total control, I guess god is ok with abortion. He should be after all, as more fetuses are aborted by him than by doctors.

References:

1. “Feeding the Culture War”, Ferndale Enterprise, September 15, 2022