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The church has deep ties in Redding’s civic power structure. The megachurch’s Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, attracts over two thousand students from around the world annually. Its pastors and music division are popular across the nation.
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With over eleven thousand members, Bethel Church in Redding is a powerful center of Christianity in the proposed boundaries of the SOJ. Per its creation, the SOJ would not only be over seventy percent white, it would also be over ninety percent Christian. Similar to maps which showed high rates of poverty and state spending, opioid-related deaths and abuse, and gun sales, that which shows the least religious diversity in California mirrors the proposed boundaries of the SOJ. While there was a small amount of religious diversity as the SOJ movement reignited, in 2010, a vast majority of peoples that followed an organized religion in the region identified as Christian. Bethel Church, the most popular and powerful religious institution in the region, certainly does not agree with Toll’s views of the LGBTQ community. 50-caliber machine gun” and have “unlimited ammunition.” It’s hard to believe that the typical SOJ supporter would agree with Toll’s notion of the ideal neighbor, but there’s certainly an affinity for guns in the region.
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Toll described the movement as being “full of a bunch of Bible-thumpin’, gun-totin’, wild-eyed pistol wavers.” “My ideal neighbor in the State of Jefferson,” continued Toll, “is a lesbian and her transgender spouse – they’re married – guarding their marijuana field and their hemp field with their. The page has just over one hundred followers and a vast majority of the content posted receives no attention – this compared to the over nine thousand members on the most followed Facebook page dedicated to the movement which receives a great deal more attention. In 2015, Placer County resident Sam Toll, established a Facebook page named LGBT for the State of Jefferson to combat the reality that the movement did not support LGBTQ rights. The fact that the SOJ movement is not LGBT-friendly and that white conservative pockets in California’s far north exhibit extreme homophobic tendencies has been acknowledged by supporters. “Bible-Thumpin’, Gun-Totin’, Wild-Eyed Pistol Wavers” Source: Facebook.Ī vast majority of people in the SOJ movement – and its supporters – are Republicans, many voted for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections, and they readily tout their support for “family values.” However, many lack human decency when it comes to respecting and supporting the LGBTQ community. Rapoza has posted several homophobic memes and other images for the public to see on her Facebook page and provided a platform for friends and fellow SOJ movement members to spew hateful rhetoric against the LGBTQ community in the recent past. It is based in the same kind of hateful thinking that led to the murder of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder – a gay couple who lived in the Redding area – by two neo-Nazi white Christian supremacist brothers in the late 1990s.Īs far as the SOJ goes, look no further than Sally Rapoza, the director of social media for the movement. The extreme homophobia displayed by churches in the proposed boundaries of the SOJ is dangerous. This hate is displayed by some leaders at Bethel Church, the most prominent and powerful religious institution in the region, which characterizes people in the LGBTQ community as sinners and advocates for conversion therapy, as well as other establishments, like Lake Shastina Church. The LGBTQ community faces a significant amount of hate in the proposed boundaries of the State of Jefferson (SOJ). A July 1999 story in the the Redding Record Searchlight reported the murders of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder.