From the moment Metro City Church announced a workshop for teenage girls struggling from peer pressure and questions about sexual identity, Jeremy Schossau, the lead pastor for the church with campuses in Riverview and Taylor, Michigan, said he and the congregation had faced “unbridled” hate and vitriol.
“Every kind of threat imaginable, from killing my family to burning down our church, has been leveled against us,” Schossau said at a press conference at the state capitol last week with other pastors and supporters.
The latest threat came from a man who was arrested after threatening that Antifa would show up at the church. Brian Carl Begin II was arraigned Feb. 15 on misdemeanor charges.
“In the middle of the voicemail the male states if the church goes through with the gay conversion therapy class in the state of Michigan, I promise every member of the Antifa will show up ‘armed and ready. This is not a joke,’” the police told the News-Herald.
Protesters gathered at the church on the occasions of the six-week workshop — which has since been canceled — and the church has received a continuous stream of emails and voicemail claiming the aim of the course was “conversion therapy.”
The complaints and protest led two state legislators to speak out against the church, introduce a bill to make conversation therapy illegal in the state, and called on the attorney general’s office to investigate the congregation. READ MORE
