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North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, that state’s Republican nominee for governor this year, just can’t seem to avoid stepping into controversies that follow him around like multiple streamers of toilet paper stuck to dogshit on his shoes. Then again, that is the fashion in the GOP these days.
Fresh — if that’s the word — off the news last week that he had sermonized at an evangelical church about how “some folks need killing,” Robinson is now either planning to hold or has already held a fundraiser at a North Carolina church that’s been described as a cult, according to a report Monday from WRAL. (The story said the event was planned for “Tuesday,” so we assume it went ahead yesterday, although we haven’t seen any follow-up reporting.)
Robinson has spent a lot of his time campaigning at fundamentalist churches, but this one, the “Word of Faith Fellowship” in a rural county in the west of the state, sounds like quite a place for Modern MAGA “Christianity,” which may bear little resemblance to the more mainstream brands of that religious product. WRAL describes Word ‘O Faith as a
secretive religious group that for years has been publicly accused of wielding cult-like control over its followers and of engaging in criminal behavior including slave labor, financial fraud and the sexual and physical abuse of children.
A WRAL analysis of state campaign donation records shows that the church’s leaders and members have donated “tens of thousands of dollars” to Robinson’s campaign this year, and that while folks involved in the fundraiser have given plenty of money to a variety of candidates and political groups, roughly a third of their donations, totaling about $28,000, has gone just to Robinson in the last two years.
As for the allegations about church leadership, it’s A LOT, although the church and its supporters point out that there haven’t been convictions in many of them, so obviously everything’s fine and former church members are just lying, and the media is engaged in a Satanic crusade of persecution. That’s just obvious.
As always seems to be the case, the accusations are horrible, complete with blaming child victims of sexual abuse, because didn’t Jesus say the little children must suffer? Or so the Christian-hating media would have you believe. Trigger warning obviously:
The Associated Press reported in 2017 that church founder Jane Whaley — who is also listed as principal of the Word of Faith Christian School — was secretly recorded saying she knew of at least three children who had been sexually abused, but she didn’t report it to authorities. Another secret recording showed Whaley blaming the 13-year-old girl whose molestation led to the conviction of a church leader in 1995, the AP reported.
Whaley’s son-in-law Frank Webster was a local prosecutor until 2017, when the Associated Press reported that he and another prosecutor and church member, Chris Back, “helped disrupt a social services investigation into child abuse in 2015, and had attended meetings where Whaley warned congregants to lie to investigators about abuse incidents.”
Webster is listed as a main sponsor of Robinson’s fundraiser Tuesday; Back is listed as a patron.
“None of the allegations are true,” Webster told WRAL. “Chris and I were investigated by the NC SBI over these claims and we were cleared a long time ago.”
As everyone knows, “not charged” is exactly the same as “exonerated beyond even a shred of doubt,” and since the investigation’s records aren’t public, nothing happened at all. Mr. Webster’s lawyer, Noelle Tin, explained that the lack of any prosecution is all anyone needs to know:
“The fact that these sensational accusations have not made it to any courtroom in the past seven years proves that they were and are fabricated,” he said.
As the Lord Himself said in the Letter to B-Movie Gangsters, “Thou hast nothing on me, copper! I’ll walk, thou shalt see! Verily, I say unto thee, I shalt see thee in HELL!”
What is it with fundamentalists — okay, and DAMMIT, Alice Munro — insisting that 12- and 13-year-old girls are irresistible temptresses whose feminine wiles lead good Christian leaders to molest them? Not that it’s all that far from Mark Robinson’s own belief that rape and incest victims shouldn’t be able to get abortions, because it “makes no difference why or how a child ended up in that womb,” and abortion is only about “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”
Robinson’s campaign, WRAL reports, “declined to comment on a list of questions about the fundraiser with Word of Faith, his opinion on the church, its teachings and the accusations it faces.”
Robinson’s Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Josh Stein, a sane human being, didn’t comment directly on the alleged loonies Robinson pals around with, but campaign spokesperson Morgan Hopkins said that the fact that Robinson would hold a fundraiser with the Word of Faith people demonstrates that Robinson is “too extreme and dangerous to be governor.”
Hopkins added, “It is disturbing, but unsurprising, that Mark Robinson would raise money from leaders of a group alleged to have engaged in child abuse.” Why, it’s as if Hopkins didn’t know that “not prosecuted” means “nothing ever happened.”
The congregation has also made news for its legal but definitely gross and awful “blasting” sessions, described on its website as a way to help people get right with God through prayer, singing, speaking in tongues, and also
“any strong demonstration of the Holy Spirit … against the temptations of the devil.”
Former members say it often involves a group of people surrounding someone accused of being gay, or of questioning church leaders, or facing any other suspicion — and then hitting, shaking, choking or screaming at them, sometimes for hours at a time.
“Victims of the violence included pre-teens and toddlers — even crying babies, who were vigorously shaken, screamed at and sometimes smacked to banish demons,” the Associated Press reported in a 2017 article, based on interviews with 43 former members of the church.
A former teenaged member of the church, Matthew Fenner, accused five people of beating him in “blasting” session that was supposed to blast the gay right out of him; one church leader’s trial ended in a mistrial in 2017 and the other defendants’ cases were transferred to another county; WRAL wasn’t able to find out how those cases turned out.
But not to worry! As always, the gay kid had it coming to him:
The Associated Press reported at the time that part of Covington’s legal defense was to say that Fenner requested the “blasting” session, he knew what would happen when he did, and he only later brought charges to try to punish the church for its anti-gay stances.
It really is a shame that all these good Christian people are so oppressed, and if Mark Robinson gets enough of them to vote for him, no doubt we’ll find out more about which of the Word of Faith Fellowship’s critics and accusers need killin’.
NC Gov Nominee Mark Robinson Not Personally Coming To Kill You. He’s Just Asking Others To Kill You.
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[WRAL]
