Pastor Clashed With Freemen Interpretation Of Bible Entangled Young Lutheran Minister, Protesters In Roundup
The Rev. Jerry Walters was fresh out of the seminary three years ago when he ran head-on into a group of Bible-toting, government protesters known as the freemen.
Walters was a 29-year-old minister, called to his first post as pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Roundup, Mont.
The Seattle native soon found himself in angry theological debates over the meaning of Scripture with many of the men who eventually holed up in an 81-day standoff with the FBI.
When Walters began preaching from his pulpit the error of the freemen’s theology, they took out a $100 billion lien against Walters and his church, branding the pastor an agent of Satan.
Walters will outline his dealings with the freemen to 1,000 Lutherans gathered for a national conference at Whitworth College this weekend.
Other speakers include missionaries, sports figures and theologians, including the Rev. H. George Anderson, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The conference is designed to inspire and inform Lutherans involved in missionary work both in the United States and abroad.
Walters’ presentation, which will include anecdotes from his attempts to convert the freemen, is expected to be well-attended, said Abby Brown, a conference organizer.
Walters said he believes all churches need to reach out to extremist groups and individuals whose radical beliefs are rooted in Scripture, such as the Christian Identity movement.
All ordained ministers should feel compelled to guard the Bible against misuse and misinterpretation, he said.
“One of the illusions is that with the arrest of the freemen this is all going to go away,” he said. “These groups are all over the country.”
Walters was in Roundup just three months when he got a letter from freemen leader Rodney Skurdal, who wanted to know if the pastor was preaching the truth about the white race of Israel.
Rather than being offended and repulsed by what Walters sees as a perverted interpretation of the Bible, he was intrigued.
“I began to study this so I could minister to him and to other families,” Walters said.
At Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., Walters had won an award for his knowledge of the New Testament.
Until he met the freemen, Walters thought his passion for scriptural studies would be a hobby. Now he thinks it’s all part of God’s plan for him.
“God told Jeremiah: ‘Do not say that I am only a youth, you will go where I send you,”’ Walters said. “I cling to the belief that I was called to Roundup to address these issues.”
Since that first encounter, Walters has diligently tried to tear down biblical misconceptions built up by followers of the Christian Identity movement.
He counsels them one on one or as families. And he preaches against them.
Such people are driven by the two-seed theory of the origins of life, he said. They believe that white people are descendants of Abel and all other races came from Cain. The brothers, sons of Adam and Eve, are the embodiment of good and evil in the world.
“They believe in justification through race, we believe in justification through grace and faith,” he said.
Although they draw people in by their anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric, their biblical beliefs are the driving force behind their other agendas, he said.
The pastor said he is not afraid of the freemen, but asked that all information about his family be kept private.
Walters can’t say if he’s having much of an impact.
“Success in the ministry is an ambiguous term,” he said. “We try our best to plant seeds and hope that someone else will be there to water.”
Walters hopes such watering will come from denominations across the country. He is successfully prodding the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as well as other large denominations, to devote the resources needed to expose the misuse of Scripture.
And he encourages Christians everywhere to pray for the freemen.
“We need to remember that these are human beings who are deeply loved by God,” he said. “And we are called to love them as we are able.”
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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SEPARATING RELIGIOUS WHEAT, CHAFF The Rev. Jerry Walters has spent three years debating Scripture with members of the freemen, who believe the Bible sets white people apart as a special race. But chapter after chapter, verse after verse, the freemen and other followers of the Christian Identity movement have developed a perverted theology, he said. For example, in Matthew 13, Jesus told his followers the kingdom of heaven was like a man who sowed wheat in his fields, only to have his enemies plant weeds. The man’s servants wanted to pull up the weeds. “While you are pulling up the weeds you might root up the wheat along with them. I will tell the harvesters, first collect the weeds and tie them into bundles to be burned. Then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.” -Matthew 13:29 The freemen would see themselves as the wheat and other races as the weeds, Walters said. Thus, the wheat will be gathered into the kingdom of God and the weeds will be burned. Most Christians believe Jesus was telling his followers not to judge ahead of time what is wheat and what is weeds, because the two cannot be distinguished, Walters said. The bundling and separating is not man’s work, but God’s. Kelly McBride