LOS ANGELES (RNS) — As the FBI and local police investigate an explosion at First Works Baptist Church in El Monte, California, which has been the center of protests for its anti-LGBTQ messages, both supporters and protesters of the church are denouncing the attack.
Brandon Olmos, II, an organizer with Keep El Monte Friendly, a group that has led protests outside the church recently, said he and his fellow protesters were shocked when they heard of the explosion. He said no one in the group was affiliated with the explosion.
“We weren’t expecting anything like this,” Olmos told Religion News Service on Saturday. ”It’s made it harder on our cause.”
El Monte Police Chief David Reynoso takes pictures of graffiti on the side wall of the First Works Baptist Church, after an explosion in El Monte, California, on Jan. 23, 2021. (Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)
Local police responded about 4:30 a.m. Saturday (Jan. 23) to what they initially believed was a vandal who had broken the windows of the church.
“Then we realized that the windows were not smashed, that they had actually blown out from some type of explosion,” Lt. Christopher Cano of the El Monte Police Department told the Associated Press.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said that while it was premature to call the incident a hate crime, “that’s always going to be considered as a theory when a house of worship is attacked.” No injuries were reported.
First Works Baptist’s pastor, Bruce Mejia, told the New York Times that the church would continue to hold services at a different location.
“It’s not going to really deter us from doing what we always do,” Mejia told the Times. “We’re not afraid of this.”
Olmos said Keep El Monte Friendly had formed about a month ago when a local freelance journalist posted about the church’s anti-LGBTQ messages on social media. He said the group aims to make the LGBTQ community more visible in El Monte, a largely Latino and working-class city in Los Angeles County. El Monte, he said, doesn’t have “a huge queer representation.”
“We want people from El Monte to know it’s a queer safe space for all genders and sexual orientations,” Olmos said. “This church is the opposite of that.”
“We never encouraged any forms of violence,” he added.
The church, founded in 2017, believes that “homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty,” according to its website.
“We oppose worldliness, modernism, formalism, and liberalism,” the church website reads.
Pastor Jonathan Shelley of Stedfast Baptist Church, in the Fort Worth, Texas, area defended Mejia and First Works Baptist in a YouTube video on Saturday. Shelley, in the video, linked the explosion to the recent demonstrations against the church, calling protesters “sodomites.” First Works Baptist Church shared the video on its Facebook page.
“We preach what the Bible says,” Shelley said. “It’s not our opinion. It’s not pastor Bruce Mejia’s opinion. It’s the Bible’s opinion that tells us these people are dangerous.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019 listed First Works Baptist as a hate group for its anti-LGBTQ message. First Works Baptist is part of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, a network of 22 domestic and eight international churches led by pastor Steven Anderson, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Anderson, pastor at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, has called for the execution of LGBTQ people, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Mejia, at a “Make America Straight Again” conference, also called for the executions of LGBTQ people by civil authorities, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“We don’t advocate Christians to go out and be vigilantes and try to put these f— to death,” Mejia said. “We want the government to do it.”
