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Violence is opposite of teachings, founder says
Mar. 13, 2005 (Web), Mar. 14, 2005 (Print)
Alan J. Borsuk
www.jsonline.com
More articles on this topic: Living Church of GodThe founder of the Living Church of God said Sunday that the church is opposed to all violence and if the man who killed seven church members on Saturday in Brookfield was motivated by any sort of religious feeling, he was acting against church beliefs.
The Rev. Roderick C. Meredith, the central leader of the Charlotte, N.C.-based church, said in a telephone interview that he felt deep sorrow for all the victims of the shooting spree and that he was shocked by the actions of Terry Ratzmann, a church member from New Berlin, during services at the Brookfield Sheraton hotel.
“We’re a pacifist church,” he said. “We do not believe in violence or killing.”
Meredith said that while the church emphasizes its beliefs that cataclysmic events will occur at the end of time and that that time is coming soon, it taught that people should not take matters into their own hands. If that was a factor in Ratzmann’s thinking, Meredith said, “that would be exactly opposite what we’ve been teaching.”
Police say they have not determined Ratzmann’s motive. Some people who knew Ratzmann said he had been upset by a taped speech by Meredith he heard recently that told people to prepare for the end times and major economic upheavals. Others have suggested Ratzmann was depressed or had been having problems at work.
Meredith said he did not know of an explanation for why Ratzmann opened fire on members of the church and that nothing like that had happened before in the church’s history.
Meredith said several leaders of the church were in Milwaukee or traveling here on Sunday to help members and to deal with the aftermath of the shootings. They included Charles E. Bryce of Charlotte, the administrator of the church, who was not available for comment.
“It is hard to understand. It is a terrible tragedy,” Meredith said. He said God causes all things to work together ultimately for good, but “we don’t understand the specifics; we wish we did.”
James Tabor, chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said Sunday that the Living Church of God was created in a splintering of the Worldwide Church of God, founded by Herbert W. Armstrong and based in California.
Armstrong held to some unconventional Christian beliefs, including that the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday and that holy days on the calendar are those given in Leviticus, which included holidays such as Passover. He also emphasized that the end of time was coming soon.
After Armstrong’s death in 1986, his church ruled that some of these beliefs were in error and moved toward the mainstream of the evangelical world, Tabor said. Meredith remained more faithful to the original Armstrong positions and broke away. In 2003, Meredith’s church, now known as the Living Church of God, moved its headquarters from San Diego to Charlotte.
Tabor described the church as conservative and evangelical, but said, “The key thing would be apocalyptic.”
In its Official Statement of Fundamental Beliefs on its Web site, the church says its mission includes: “To preach the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ to all nations as a witness” and “to preach the end-time prophecies and to warn the English-speaking nations and all the world of the coming Great Tribulation.”
The church holds generally that members should not take part in politics, juries or military service, and it continues to observe the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
Tabor said that although the church puts “strong emphasis on the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith,” including its Sabbath and holiday observances, it would not be correct to view it as connected to Judaism. The church believes strongly in the divine identity of Jesus.
“They would tend to really revere the Old Testament alongside the New Testament more than most Christian groups do,” Tabor said.
See the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for complete coverage of the Brookfield shooting.
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