Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz attends a church that preaches beliefs related to gender, race and sexuality that many Christian denominations strongly oppose.
Walz, who is the governor of Minnesota, identified Pilgrim Lutheran Church in St. Paul as his parish during a 2020 briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials published by Pilgrim Lutheran Church instruct parishioners not to refer to God using male pronouns, push congregants to support reparation funds, encourage them to celebrate Ramadan and include a modified gender-neutral version of the Lord’s Prayer, among other liberal practices.
Pilgrim Lutheran Church is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a mainline protestant denomination that has been criticized by some conservative Christians for ordaining transgender and lesbian bishops as well as for its embrace of LGBT ideology.
“The ELCA is, broadly speaking, a liberal American mainline Protestant denomination,” Jonah Wendt, a policy adviser for Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom and a member of the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They reject the inerrancy of scripture, ordain women to the pastoral office [and] hold what many would believe to be unbiblical views on abortion and homosexual behavior.”
Pilgrim Lutheran Church in 2015 approved “guidelines for language in worship” wherein the congregation asserted that “a patriarchal culture gave birth to the writing of scripture and the selection of the canon” and, to rectify the purported injustice, committed to using gender-neutral language to describe God. Members of the church, for instance, are encouraged to “choose non-anthropomorphic language” like “hen” or “baker” to refer to God, and urged “not to limit these by following them with male or female pronouns.”
The guidelines instruct parishioners to refer to God using titles that signal actions but don’t imply gender, like “advocate” or “healer.” Walz’s church also uses a modified version of the Lord’s Prayer, beginning with “Our Guardian, Our Mother, Our Father in heaven” instead of the traditional “Our Father who art in heaven.”
“This approach certainly runs contrary to scripture,” Wendt told the DCNF. “Throughout the Bible, God chooses to use male pronouns and we should take God at his word. I’d hope that any Christian, Lutheran or not, would flee from a pastor or church body that decides to change how they represent who God is to fit their own political agenda.”
During the racial unrest following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Walz’s church encouraged its parishioners to hit the streets and protest for racial justice, according to a social media post from Pilgrim Lutheran. The church directed its members to vigils and marches to protest the death of Floyd as well as to “come hear community updates on uprising/riots, how we can support our neighbors and how to pray particularly for our neighborhood.”
Walz faced criticism over his handling of the Floyd riots as he failed to deploy the Minnesota National Guard to Minneapolis the day its mayor and police chief requested help to quell the intensifying looting and arson that was racking the city, the New York Times reported. Damages in Minneapolis from the riot totaled $107 million, with over 1,000 buildings being burned or damaged, according to the Minnesota Reformer.
“It was obvious to me that he froze under pressure, under a calamity, as people’s properties were being burned down,” Republican Minnesota State Senator Warren Limmer recently told the NYT.
Racial justice is a major focus of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, with the congregation also pushing its members to donate to a reparation fund housed by a local nonprofit to provide housing stipends to black residents in St. Paul so that the predominantly white congregation could “atone” for their role in systemic racism.
“We white citizens and congregants have been complicit in the systematic exclusion of Black, Indigenous, Immigrant and other People of Color from full participation in and benefit from the common good,” a statement from the church reads. “We lament the suffering caused by our racism. We endeavor to live more fully a Gospel commitment to love our neighbors as ourselves by listening well, changing our hearts and partnering with our neighbors in building an antiracist community of justice where all may thrive.”
Walz signed a bill in 2023 that sent money to communities purportedly harmed by marijuana criminalization, the Star Tribune reported. A Democratic state legislator who sponsored the bill called it “a form of reparation.”
The Pilgrim Advocates for Racial Equity team was responsible for drafting the church’s reparations program. A similar team, the Pilgrim Racial Justice Task Force, hosted a two-part forum on “white privilege” in October 2019, according to a social media post.
Walz’s church has also promoted dozens of pieces of leftist literature to help its parishioners become “antiracist.” The 1619 Project, which teaches that America is fundamentally racist, was among the titles highlighted.
Pilgrim Lutheran Church also takes a liberal stance on issues of sexuality and gender by sending its members to march at gay pride parades, working to amplify the “voices of women and nonbinary/gender non-conforming individuals,” having gender-neutral restrooms and celebrating “coming out day,” among other initiatives.
Walz signed a bill in April 2023 that empowered the state of Minnesota to revoke custody from parents who deny their children sex changes, hormone replacement or cosmetic surgeries, among other interventions.
Pilgrim Lutheran Church, much like Walz himself, positions itself as an ally of the Islamic community by encouraging its congregants through its now-defunct Twitter account to attend meals celebrating the Muslim holy day of Ramadan and by providing them signs to paste in their windows wishing those around them a “Blessed Ramadan.”
Walz regularly attends Muslim religious meals and has spoken at events hosted by local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
“Satan wants to do everything in his power to separate Christians from the one true faith,” Wendt said. “Many mainline protestant denominations in America have fallen prey to the spirit of the age and are willing to make any concession necessary to stay in line with an ever changing culture.”
Walz’s office, the Harris campaign and Pilgrim Lutheran Church did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
(Featured image credit: Flickr/Nikolas Liepins/Official Governor’s Office Photo)
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