{"id":5182,"date":"2015-01-13T10:56:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T17:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2015-01-13T10:56:02","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T17:56:02","slug":"here-are-the-lesser-magistrates-who-hosted-bizarre-sermon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/01\/here-are-the-lesser-magistrates-who-hosted-bizarre-sermon\/","title":{"rendered":"Here are the ‘lesser magistrates’ who hosted bizarre sermon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fielder\"<\/a>

Jennifer Fielder<\/p><\/div>\n

After I published my column<\/a> Sunday, many readers asked which legislators were responsible for bringing in Matt Trewhella to speak in the Capitol rotunda.<\/p>\n

Trewhella, you will recall, is the Wisconsin minister who is on a crusade\u2014yeah, let\u2019s call it a crusade\u2014to establish a theocracy in the United States. He delivered an \u201cElection Sermon\u201d in the Capitol on Jan. 4, the day before the opening of the 2015 Montana Legislature.<\/p>\n

\"Doane\"<\/a>

Alan Doane<\/p><\/div>\n

I wrote that he was \u201cinvited\u201d to the Capitol by far-right Republican legislators, but that was probably the wrong word. The sermon, the fifth in a series that began in 2007, was sponsored by the Covenant Community Church<\/a> in Whitehall. (The website lists the sermons according to the election year they addressed, not the year in which they were delivered.)<\/p>\n

The Helena Independent Record reported<\/a> that Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, was \u201cone of the host legislators.\u201d And a news outlet called Examiner.com<\/a> identified two other host legislators as Reps. Alan Doane, R-Bloomfield, and Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what it means to \u201chost,\u201d such a gathering, but there you are. Examiner.com, which is a network of localized websites that uses paid-by-the-click freelance writers, reported that Trewhella \u201cencouraged 40 to 50 of Montana’s incoming legislators to take their responsibility as lesser magistrates seriously.\u201d

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

Trewhella has written a book, \u201cThe Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,\u201d<\/a> which basically argues that lower-ranking civil authority \u201chas both the right and duty to refuse obedience\u201d to superior authority when it makes an unjust or immoral decree.<\/p>\n

On its website, the Covenant Community Church expands<\/a> on that idea, saying:<\/p>\n

One of the greatest errors, or downright perversions, of our day is the return to that pernicious doctrine that the Christian owes unqualified obedience to the civil government\u2026 . We are shameful wimps that disgrace the memories of our faithful fathers who stood boldly in the face of Kings and Potentates who dared to usurp the prerogatives of God and his people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, according to Examiner.com, Trewhella\u2019s message was well received in Helena:<\/p>\n

\u201cI had many [legislators] come up to me and tell me, \u2018This is something we need to look into more and learn more about,\u2019\u201d he explained. \u201cWhen people are taught for the word of God regarding civil government, they are able to see the purpose, functions and limits of civil government,\u201d he said, adding that when citizens remain ignorant of these matters \u201cit makes it much easier for the state to do things beyond its biblical or constitutional limits or restraints.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Wendy\"<\/a>

Wendy McKamey<\/p><\/div>\n

So, at least according to this article, we have state legislators who believe that civil authorities operate under biblical limits or restraints. Normally, the debate over the separation of church and state deals with fairly nuanced arguments, such as whether a clerk\u2019s duty to issue a marriage license to a gay couple can be characterized as interference with the practice of the clerk\u2019s religion.<\/p>\n

With Trewhella and his believers, we enter into a whole new realm of frank theocracy, of unapologetic promotion of the idea that civil authorities operate solely under the authority granted to them by Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

Here is yet more of the Examiner.com\u2019s coverage of Trewhella\u2019s sermon:<\/p>\n

It was made clear that all civil magistrates are \u201cministers of God\u201d (Roms. 13:4), and that when a higher magistrate manifests a rejection of the authority of Jesus Christ it is up to the lesser magistrate to employ authority to first, bring the higher magistrate back under the authority of Jesus Christ, and that being unsuccessful, to protect the people in their jurisdiction from the tyranny which emotes from a rogue government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the same article, we Montanans have an unhappy distinction as a result of having allowed Trewhella to speak in our Capitol: \u201cThe Election Day Sermon has a long history on the North American Continent yet Montana is the only state in the union to hold an Election Day Sermon in the capitol building directed especially at elected officials today.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is more than a little disconcerting to think that as many as third of our 150 state legislators would attend a sermon by a man whose principles are so bizarrely unconstitutional, and whose calls to action border on treasonous.<\/p>\n

And you will not be surprised to learn that Trewhella preemptively dismissed such criticism. From Examiner.com again:<\/p>\n

While some media outlets demonized Trewhella for the content of his speech and his stance on biblical morality, he states that God used the negative publicity for good.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The mainstream media is] at war with Christ. They promote everything evil and licentious, and they actually make evil look good and good look evil,\u201d he stated. \u201cSo, I\u2019m not surprised by them attacking what we\u2019re doing. I pay very little attention to it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After I published my column Sunday, many readers asked which legislators were responsible for bringing in Matt Trewhella to speak in the Capitol rotunda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1924,1922,1923,1914,1122,1925],"class_list":["post-5182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-alan-doane","tag-community-covenant-church","tag-jennifer-fielder","tag-matt-trewhella","tag-montana-legislature","tag-wendy-mckamey","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}