***This piece was published at 7PM on Sunday, June 23, 2024. The Lancaster County DA’s Office published this statement on at 3:40PM on Monday, June 24, 2024. Over the coming days, I will add current reporting to the Google Sheet shared at the bottom of this article.
Three months have passed since the Lancaster County Public Library’s Drag Queen Story Hour was abruptly canceled in the wake of multiple credible - and to-date unsolved - bomb threats. The silence from the media, elected officials and community leaders is stunning.
New screen recordings - including a local school board member’s cryptic statement in the days leading to the planned event.
A roundup of statements from elected officials that reassured and promised the community that answers would be found. Why have they not provided updates to the public? Have elected officials received any themselves?
A roundup of news outlets that reported that the FBI was enlisted to help. Was this detail verified and if so, how and by whom?
In the week prior to the planned Drag Queen Story Hour, FreePA, Moms for Liberty, the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society, the Lancaster Patriot, Pennsylvania Family Institute and a number of Christian churches - both Christian Reconstructionist and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) - were involved in plans to protest against the story hour together on Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 in Lancaster City’s Binns Park. (Read a 101 on Christian Reconstructionism and the New Apostolic Reformation here.)
While LancasterOnline provides a robust timeline of events both leading up to the planned Story Hour and the fallout in the hours and days after its cancellation, what follows are important details which could be critically important in this investigation.
Infographic of Churches and Organizations involved in the March 22, 2024 Jericho walk.
Sunday, March 17th: Lancaster City pastor Matt Kroll of the Lord’s House of Prayer (LHOP) tells his congregation before his sermon that he plans to join Saturday’s gathering and invites the LHOP community to join this effort. Kroll also shares that Kurt Weaver of the Church Ambassador Network, part of the Pennsylvania Family Institute’s “Pro-Family Team” “already put out massive communications to show up and pray.” (Watch, below, to at least the 2 minute mark and then continue. Entire clip is under 3 minutes.)
Kroll’s LHOP Comments: 3/17/2024
Context & Connections:
Pennsylvania Family Institute: While certainly not the first to report the connection, WHYY provided some of our earliest yet recent state level documentation of PA Family’s connections to the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “Designated Hate Group.” The SPLC states, “[The Family Research Council] often makes false claims about the LGBTQ community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to dehumanize LGBTQ people as the organization battles against LGBTQ rights.”
Screen capture from @KiraResistance connecting Kurt Weaver to Life Center.
Pastor Matt Kroll / Lord’s House of Prayer: As KiraResistance first documented, Kroll is connected to Pennsylvania-based NAR Apostle Abby Abildness. Abildness and her statewide leadership with the New Apostolic Reformation has been profiled recently by both the Bucks County Beacon and Mother Jones. Kira’s tweet featured this January 3, 2023 photograph from Pennsylvania Family Council’s Kurt Weaver’s Facebook account which shows Abildness, Kroll and Weaver posing for a picture after attending an Abildness led tour of the capitol building. That Kroll, who has served as a Judge of Elections, would appear with Abildness, who “has told Christian media that she ‘was called by God to lead the government mountain'” is worth noting.
Tuesday, March 19: Danielle Lindemuth speaks at a Lancaster County Board of Commissioners meeting. “I'm very concerned for the citizens of our community that are going to come out and protest. They're going to be protesting on both sides of the street, on both sides of the issue, and I'm very concerned because I believe that there are people coming from outside of our community that are going to be having nefarious intent. That was never the intent of anybody that has spoken out against this particular action.” (Video less than 30 seconds.)
Context & Connections:
Danielle Lindemuth has a number of significant connections that are important to know when interpreting her words.
Thursday, March 21: The perceived unity of orgs gathering on Saturday splintered when some revised their plans to Friday evening, instead. The Lancaster Patriot’s Chris Hume’s Facebook account shared a screen capture of Kurt Weaver whose words mirrored those also found in emails (see images below) from Pennsylvania Family Institute and Gateway House of Prayer - located on the campus of Ephrata Community Church. All of these organizations have connections to the New Apostolic Reformation.
Friday, March 22nd: As reported by LancasterOnline, Weaver and Kroll’s efforts came to fruition on Friday night when over 100 people gathered “to ask for divine intervention to prevent the Lancaster Public Library’s planned “Drag Queen Story Hour.” According to LNP, they “performed what Kroll called a ‘Jericho Walk,’” an action that the NAR considers “spiritual warfare” and was also performed in the weeks leading up to the January 6th insurrection.
Lord’s House of Prayer Pastor Matt Kroll prays at the Jericho walk in Ewell Plaza on 3/22/2024.
Saturday, March 23rd: Commissioner Josh Parsons posted strong statements in at least two posts asserting that this investigation should be successful and that the perpetrator might be from *either side.*
“Emails are normally very traceable. Look forward to the perpetrator being quickly brought to justice.”
“…The perpetrators will be quickly caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This is true regardless of whether they actually oppose the Drag Queen Story Hour or they support it and are seeking to create outrage against those who oppose it. The consequences should be the same and extremely serious.”
Sunday, March 24th: Pastor Kroll again takes the opportunity to share his thoughts about Drag Queen Story Hour, including why the “City Pastors” chose to pivot away from Saturday and instead pray and performed a Jericho walk or march on Friday night. (View the following video clip - under 3 minutes - before continuing to read.)
Kroll’s LHOP Comments: 3/24/2024
The reason we moved [our action] to Friday was not cuz we were scared. It’s because when I said, “Hey let’s fast and pray,” I got a text from Jed King. Thank you Jed King for hearing God and caring enough to let me know. (Jed King is the son of Lord’s House of Prayer’s founders Mark and Abby King and it appears from LHOP’s website that he leads LHOP’s “Gate Keeper Ministry” and serves as LHOP’s “Church Security.”)
LancasterOnline, 7/24/2005.
“Hey Matt: I’m just sensing - I’m not sure it’s the Lord but I think, you know, here’s what I’m sensing -- that Saturday might be filled with hate. And it may not be good to tie in the Gospel with that crowd.”
I listened.
Ah, you see, to be honest with you, I was showing up Saturday.
Sometimes we can be so caught in our own plans that we could miss the wisdom that God’s saying. Thank God I wasn’t, and we - other pastors - weren’t caught up in our own plans. We were praying. You have - this week we gathered. We prayed. We were listening.
And then all of a sudden I get a phone - an email - you gotta call this person - I won’t - I’ll leave names out. Somebody very tied into a level of things in the city that I wouldn’t know about. And they said - and they’re a believer - and “just warning, just giving you this warning. Things could get chaotic and there may be an agenda Saturday that is not God.”
So we all met and prayed and we said “ok what is God saying?” We said “Well, I think God is preparing the way. Let’s go Friday night. Let’s be separated from the junk and [sic]. Let’s pray that place. Let’s ask God to send Angels. Let’s repent down there. Let’s take care of business. And perhaps, maybe, this thing could get shut down.”
Kroll continues. (Again, please view the following 90 second video before continuing.)
Kroll’s LHOP Comments: 3/24/24, cont.
But I will just say this, for the record: It’s just interesting how the dogs sniffed something at 10:30 in the morning when the library wasn’t even open. It wasn’t open when we were down there at night. And then, that’s what really shut it down.
I think, unless Officer King I’m wrong.I personally believe that that was God’s answer to prayer.
Leaders of the anti-LGBTQ actions, including Matt Kroll of LHOP and Kurt Weaver of PA Family, were well aware of the varied groups planning to meet on Saturday. They knew there would be LGBTQ and allied families attending the Drag Queen Story Hour. They knew there would be LGBTQ people and their allies outside of the library for a planned “Wall of Love.” They knew there would be an unusual - and often oppositional - mix of conservative Christians meeting in Binns Park.
What, then, was the “hate” and “chaotic…agenda” that compelled them to pivot to Friday night and with whom/what organization would it stem from? What did the King brothers and the “somebody very tied into…the city” know in the days before the planned events? What did Pastor Kroll know? What did Danielle Lindemuth know?
Most importantly, are these questions being asked and by whom?
Timeline, cont.:
Monday, March 25th:Mayor Sorace spoke out on WGAL saying, “We are continuing to investigate and will do everything we can to find the perpetrator who sent the email.” (Video under 30 seconds.)
Thursday, March 28: Multiple news outlets report that the FBI is involved in this investigation. Fox 43 was the first to report, “Assistance is also being provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigations according to the DA's Office.” ABC 27 reported the same detail later that day. LancasterOnline and CBS 21 reiterated that statement the following day.
Are journalists compelled or required to verify details like “the FBI is involved”? Do the same journalistic standards apply to government entities and officials as they do to private citizens? Did any of the reporters speak with the FBI field office? Can the public trust local government response to an incident that some leaders attribute to that same local government?
These are worthwhile questions to pause on. Interestingly, Martic Township Supervisor Charles Stouff posits similar questions - albeit from a different angle - in an opinion piece that appeared in the right-wing Lancaster Patriot. “What’s curious to me is that in our seemingly ‘surveillance state’ everything can be monitored and tracked, phone records permanently stored, and the footprints of our IP addresses are easily traced. And yet nobody has yet to have been found.”
A Note on Blame:
There is no doubt that Commissioner Parsons’ words directly impacted the sequence of events. But the roots of this happening have been cultivated by the Christian right for decades - and boiled up with fresh fervor in the Spring of 2022 as the Libs of TikTokgained traction.
Prior to that, LGBTQ depictions - including trans, nonbinary and drag - commonly appeared in popular media but the pushback remained largely invisible to the public at large. In 2022, the Libs of TikTok - fueled by the Christian right - managed to gain control of how the LGBTQ narrative was framed and used that to manufacture and cultivate fear. Their bias seeped into mainstream spaces which created fertile soil for unconscious bias.
Did far right politician Commissioner Parsons’ actions in 2024 add lighter fluid to the well-established fire of spring 2022? Did the local religious community light a match? Absolutely.
Meanwhile, not only are there no answers, no one is even talking about it. An important question to ask is, “Is that by design?”
Resources:
Find all the links included in this piece and more here.
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