Kate Joncas, head of the Downtown Seattle Association, spoke rather effusively in yesterday’s Seattle Times about the expansion of Mars Hill into downtown Seattle’s former First United Methodist Church after outgrowing its current location in Belltown.
Joncas told the Times:
“Twelve years ago, downtown churches were really in danger. Their congregations were aging and they could no longer take care of their buildings. Now we’re seeing a revival,” Joncas said. […]
“They’re not just a Sunday church. They have an active, urban mission that will be a community asset,” Joncas said.
What’s odd about Joncas’ assertion that Mars Hill will be a “community asset” is that much of Mars Hill’s mission is firmly against the DSA’s stated support for gay marriage and women-owned businesses, among other policies. (Not to mention the church’s beliefs, as documented by the PI.com, that Mormons are cult members, that yoga is demonic, and that infidelity is the result of women who “let [themselves] go.”
Here’s what Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll had to say about gay people in a story I wrote a few years ago:
Seattle logic [says] two consenting adults can have sex whenever they want. This is what happens when you walk away from Scripture: You walk away from what’s right and wrong. [The next thing you know], You’ve got a rainbow on your camel. You’ve got pink taffeta on your toga. You’ve got a church float in the pride parade. … Your banners, your floats, your buttons—they’re not good. It’s just like letting cancer come into a body… until the cancer consumes the body and kills you… We will extricate the cancer, and if that person who has the cancer is repentant and wants to kill the cancer, then we’ll welcome them back. But they have to accept that anything but one man, one woman, one God, one life, is sexually immoral.
And, just for good measure, here’s what he had to say about women’s proper role in the world:
God made the man and put him in charge and gave him a job description… and the woman was made to help him… Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. … There is no occasion where women led a society and were its heads and the men complied and followed.
DSA spokesman Jon Scholes, who notes that Mars Hill was downtown already (albeit with a smaller congregation), says it isn’t the DSA’s job to “police who can be downtown.”
“You do have churches downtown that play an active role in the neighborhood,” including churches whose beliefs may collide with DSA positions, Scholes says. “You can recognize an entity’s decision to locate in an urban center and distinguish that from their personal and religious beliefs.”
That’s obviously true—Target opposes unionization, the Catholic church opposes abortion, and Chase Bank opposes government regulations. But by applauding Mars Hill’s presence on the record, the DSA is making a statement that it likes the fact that the church is expanding, and in downtown Seattle, which isn’t the kind of message a pro-gay rights, pro-woman organization ought to be sending.
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