A Burlington pastor is in the middle of a controversy after pamphlets urging the removal of an Iowa Supreme Court justice surfaced at his church last month.
A woman who attended the service at The City Church in Burlington on September 30 told the pastor displaying the pamphlets was illegal. In an October 7 sermon posted on the church’s website, Pastor Steve Youngblood said the brochures were not being handed out — they were just available on a table.
“What’s crazier than that is that a member of our church gets offended by it,” Youngblood said.
The pastor said the woman doesn’t “have a clue” what his church is all about.
“If that’s what we’re going to produce…if that’s what we’re going to stand for, then let’s quit, because my God, we don’t need to aid the Devil,” he said. “We need to resist the Devil.”
A man in the congregation responded, twice saying: “Amen.”
According to Youngblood, the woman’s “rebelliousness” isn’t proper Christian behavior.
“Did you know every bona fide prophet in the Bible stood against the wickedness of a nation…I want to slap that person: ‘Wake up!'” Youngblood said. “What makes me madder is that they can hide among us for years — in and out and among us — and none of us heard it before and none of us confronted it before. That ain’t a church. What kind of church are we?”
Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins faces a retention vote next month. Several religious and socially-conservative groups are campaigning to remove Wiggins from the bench because he joined the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.
(Reporting by Brian Crozier, KBUR, Burlington)