Activists, journalists, and a school board official mounted pressure against a restaurant facility in Boulder, Colorado , for allowing a...
Activists, journalists, and a school board official mounted pressure against a restaurant facility in Boulder, Colorado, for allowing a conservative evangelical church to rent the company’s space for worship services.
The Well Church, a congregation in Boulder with roughly 250 members and attendees, drew the attention of the local activists for sermons which affirm the immutability of manhood and womanhood, as well as the reality of marriage between one man and one woman. Online discussion surrounding the church’s doctrine bled into The Daily Camera, one of the primary local newspapers in Boulder, where a guest opinion piece provided readers with the date and time for the church’s recent Easter egg hunt at a local courthouse lawn.
Labeling the congregation “divisive,” “misogynistic,” and a potential “hate group” for asserting that “homosexuality is a sin” and that wives should “respect and obey” their husbands, the author of the opinion piece emphasized that The Well Church meets at The Rayback Collective, a food truck park located in Boulder and initially launched by Matt Patrick, one of the pastors and elders at The Well Church. “I will not patronize the Rayback,” the author of the article wrote, contending that supporting the business would spread “forced-birtherism, homophobia, patriarchy, Genesis-based ‘complementarianism,’ animus towards faiths not their own, and Bible-inspired ignorance anathema to a more just society.”
The author also claimed that members of The Well Church are “Christian Nationalists” who desire to “merge church with state,” citing the fact that they used to meet at a public middle school. He referenced excerpts from sermons which said that “the removal of Christian morality from the public square” is responsible for “the societal disintegration we see around us.”
Chase Davis, another pastor and elder at The Well Church, said in an interview with The Daily Wire that the author and one other protester appeared at the egg hunt to pass out pamphlets claiming that Christianity is psychologically abusive. He added that the article’s assertions about his purported desire to “merge church and state” are false, noting that other sermons affirm the doctrine of sphere sovereignty, which contends that church and state are separate institutions with distinct mandates even as each remains bound by the moral principles of the Bible.
The opinion piece was nevertheless shared on social media by Lisa Sweeney-Miran, the vice president of the Boulder Valley School District Board of Education, who publicly asked The Rayback Collective whether they would “continue their alignment with hate groups.” She said in another post that “if you believe that homosexuality is a sin and you preach that harmful and violent belief at your church then I have no problem reasserting that you are a hate group.”
Other journalists and activists in Boulder shared complaints about the association between The Well Church and The Rayback Collective, from which Patrick sold his shares five years ago. The Rayback Collective issued a statement asserting that “all people are welcome” at their facility in response to the controversy.
“When pastors speak about biblical sexual ethics in our day, it should come as no surprise that many in our culture are repulsed by it,” Davis told The Daily Wire. “Ours is a very confused age. It is imperative that pastors hold the line and that the pulpit function as a bulwark of truth in order to equip the church to stand fast.”
The pressure from local activists against The Well Church is indeed a microcosm of the various misrepresentations which often affect conservative Christians: the term “Christian Nationalism” initially emerged in the media and among theological liberals as a boogeyman for believers who desire to advance public policies which correspond to biblical morality. Those unfamiliar with historic Protestantism may therefore conclude that Christians want to force conversion through the government rather than desire a Christian culture as a natural fruit of successful evangelism.
Davis observed that officials such as Sweeney-Miran likewise have their own morality which they seek to impose on their neighbors by means of the state.
“In any culture, there will be a common cultus or shared guiding beliefs for right worship. It is not whether but which. Right now, in our culture, that ground is hotly contested. And that is precisely why pastors must be ready to offer a sufficient defense of the faith where the battle rages most fiercely,” Davis continued. “Secularists have a moral vision which they seek to advance and impose on their opponents. This makes sense because they are working out what every human is by nature: a worshiper.”
“We will worship. The question inevitably becomes who or what they worship. As Bob Dylan said, ‘You’re gonna have to serve somebody.’”
No comments