On Sunday October 16th, a group of 20-30 antifascists and allies gathered at SE 32nd Avenue and Taylor Street to oppose the opening of Mars Hill’s Portland branch. Demonstrators carried banners with statements of support for the LGBTQ community and maintained a presence in front of the church throughout the service. As church attendees exited the building, demonstrators held a dance party with the aid of a portable sound system and chanted, “Homophobes get out of here! Pro-Choice! Pro-Queer!”

The vast majority of passersby were supportive of the protest. Some neighbors expressed concern with the neighborhood association’s failure to effectively deal with the church’s arrival in SE Portland, especially in regards to the safety of the area’s queer residents. A few neighbors offered criticisms about the protest itself, however the overwhelming majority of community feedback was positive.
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Mars Hill is a misogynistic, homophobic, evangelical megachurch founded by Mark Driscoll in Seattle, Washington. Driscoll’s charismatic persona and lively combination of pop culture references and “Radical Reformism” proved to be a dynamo combination for tapping into a new vein of pierced and tattooed recruits. His tiny flock first met in his living room in 1996 and swelled to a membership of 1,000 by 2003. It now boasts 12 branches in four states. The original Seattle branch alone was reported to have an attendance of 3,500 people per week in 2006, and numbers have grown since then. There are congregations of Mars Hill specifically devoted to “converting” queer people, encouraging them to suppress their sexuality and live a straight lifestyle. The newest church outpost here in Portland aims to change the sinful ways of the Rose City: namely the city’s Left-wing, feminist, and pro-queer culture.

Mars Hill is of particular interest to Rose City Antifa because of its extremely conservative social agenda wrapped in a stylized package that appeals to activist youth, specifically targeting young men. Mars Hill has been successful in growing its ranks through its laid back, faux-rebellious image, underpinned by rigid authoritarian values and a hierarchical, patriarchal structure. Pastors utilize social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to provide a constant stream of church messaging to their followers, and promote a series of Driscoll’s online sermons to broaden their base of support in a franchise-like fashion. Driscoll’s style of sermon, peppered with humor and slang, appeals to a hip, younger audience that may be put off by stodgier, traditional church services. His casual, conversational demeanor, however, belies the intolerant, hard Right foundation of Driscoll’s teachings. The version of “God’s Kingdom on earth” that Mars Hill is explicitly interested in creating is one in which women are subservient to men and homosexuality is banned.
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These ideas are hateful and dangerous.  As rates of queer teen suicide and queer-bashings demonstrate, ideas have real world consequences. Religious organizing can create political and ideological space, in the case of Mars Hill this includes the dehumanization of women and queer people. We do not think it is wise or safe to let Mars Hill gather numbers and continue their agenda of creating a theocratic society. Mars Hill follows in the neo-Calvinist tradition of the new evangelical movement, the activist Religious Right, that grew out of the anti-choice movement and developed into a powerful conservative force. This type of theology teaches that its adherents should be actively fighting for a Biblicaly fundamentalist world. Mars Hill does this in a new way that is appealing to a new audience, one they have come specifically to Portland to reach. We urge others to stand in opposition to Mars Hill and in solidarity with women and queer people.
 
Gems from Mark Driscoll

On women:

“Now what we mean by “be subject to” or “submit to” is that the husband is to lovingly humbly, sacrificiously, selflessly –let me put lots of words behind this– lead his family. And that the wife is to respect him and follow his leadership.”

“If your wife is working, you are a selfish bastard...[Women should be] homeward focused [and should not work outside the home even if] given permission by her husband”

"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. ... It's a matter of Biblical creation."

“Because I am speaking to fellow men, my tone may not be well suited for some women and, therefore, I would request that they not read this booklet, unless they are a wife whose husband has read it first and he can discuss its contents with her in love.”

“A woman with a hot body and no discretion regarding to whom she shows it is nothing more than a well-accessorized animal. This explains why the women men lust after are not the kind of women they would marry, because pigs are fun to roll around and get dirty with but you'd never want one sitting next to your mother for holiday dinners.”

“First Corinthians 11:7 says that your wife is a reflection of your leadership. If your sex life is not satisfying, then it is your responsibility, whether or not it is entirely your fault, because you are the head of your wife.”

"At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either."

"Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up, it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture.”

On abortion:

“Do you think that abortion as a result of rape is wrong?” “YES.”

“Driscoll, a prominent emerging church pastor whose theology is conservative, encouraged any woman facing this dilemma [whether to have an abortion after being raped] to seek prayer, comfort and counsel from him that very night [that they were raped]”

“The bottom line is this: the first two purposes of birth control pills are contraceptive in nature and therefore acceptable for use by a Christian couple. However, the third function of birth control pills is potentially abortive in that it seeks to disrupt the ongoing life of a fertilized egg. That potentiality is incredibly controversial; thus, faithful Christians who are staunchly prolife and believe that life begins at conception are divided over the issue.”

On “effeminate” values:

"[The church has produced] a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks... and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks.”

“The effeminate nature of pastors and churches causes many masculine men to feel unwelcome in what they perceive as an organization solely for women, children, and weaker men. Third, there is a timidity among weak pastors to wade into controversial issues in general, and sexual ones in particular. Lastly, the sad truth is that many pastors are also enslaved to their own sexual sins and/or are languishing in unfulfilling and infrequent sex with their wives, and therefore are unable to speak of sexual matters out of a sense of disqualification.”

" [The mainstream church has transformed Jesus into] a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ... a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”

"[Driscoll is not a] weepy worship dude...singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”

On homosexuality:

"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, he says, "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....The people of the church are so confused. They think that in tolerating [homosexual] behavior, they're being like Jesus. 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."

“Speaking of God's people in Exodus, Paul warns us that throughout history God was so sickened by sexual sin that he killed perverted multitudes in the desert, as well as in places like Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, God does
whack some people. Sometimes it's all at once, and sometimes it's a bit at
a time, say with a sexually transmitted disease.”


On masturbation:

“First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual
act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while
engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not
be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his
wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if
he's watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male
body.”

On yoga:

“Should Christians stay away from yoga because of its demonic roots? Totally. Yoga is demonic...If you just sign up for a little yoga class, you're signing up for a little demon class."  

Sources:

http://theresurgence.com/books/porn_again_christian/introduction

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=32140

Mars Hill Blog

http://www.christianpost.com/news/mars-hill-tackles-sex-rape-birth-control-the-biblical-way-30842/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/furore-as-us-pastor-calls-yoga-demonic/1/116838.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11punk-t.html

 


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