As Tim Walz, the previously obscure governor of Minnesota, continues to be introduced to the American public, we are learning more about the church to which he belongs. The Christian Post has done our nation a service by detailing policies and practices at Pilgrim Lutheran Church (PLC), the parish he attends in St. Paul.
PLC is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the only explicitly pro-abortion Lutheran denomination in the country. The church embraces the "LGBTQIA+" agenda, and its newsletter lists the “preferred pronouns” of most staff members as male, female, and others.
Martin Luther, founding precursor of the Lutheran faith, possessed an evident pro-life mindset (according to Pastor Joel Gerlach, pastor and professor emeritus at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary), but Walz seems to embrace his church’s and party's two “super-rights”: abortion and sodomy. We are unable to say specifically whether it is the doctrine of his church or the platform of his party (or both) that informs Walz's position on abortion. Whichever is the case, he joined Kamala Harris last March for an unprecedented visit to a Minnesota abortion facility.
Pilgrim Lutheran has hosted self-described progressive poet and theologian David Weiss (not the Delaware prosecutor), who used a recent Sunday church service to scorn the Trinity. "It's Trinity Sunday and I must confess, I'm not much interested in reflecting on the sacred mystery of the godhead: three persons in one divinity … whatever that means," Weiss stated before reeling off a laundry list of musings about race and guns at the outset of his message (though he returned to his trinitarian reflections).
The theology at PLC is clearly "woke" and gender obsessed. The article in The Christian Post (mentioned earlier) cited a live stream of a recent Pilgrim church service, noting that the pastor led the congregation in "The Lord's Prayer." However, she replaced the opening "Our Father" with "Our guardian, our mother, our father in Heaven."
Pilgrim Lutheran has a "partnership" with Reconciling Works, a pro-LGBTQ "ministry" linked with groups who support deforming surgeries, including the removal of healthy body parts from children as "life-affirming" medical treatments. On a related note, Governor Walz has supported laws in Minnesota that reflect these radical gender views taught at his church.