FloodGate’s attendance soared as members of other congregations defected to the small roadside church.
Local politicians and activists borrowed his pulpit to promote right-wing interests. As word got around the conservative suburbs of Detroit, Bolin became a minor celebrity. Then came Easter 2020, when Bolin announced that he would hold indoor worship services in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders. And neither had most of the people sitting around me, until recently.įor a decade, Bolin preached to a crowd of about 100 on a typical Sunday. But FloodGate? I had never heard of FloodGate. I knew which pastors were feuding whose congregations were mired in scandal which church softball teams had a deacon playing shortstop, and which ones stacked their lineups with non-tithing ringers. “Neither should you.”īrighton is a small town, and I knew the local evangelical scene like it was a second reporting beat. “God doesn’t bite his fingernails over any of this,” he would say around election time. To his credit, even when my dad would lean hard into a political debate, he was careful to remind his church of the appropriate Christian perspective. Evangelicals-including my own father-became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ. So many people who love the Lord, who give their time and money to the poor and the mourning and the persecuted, have been reduced to a caricature. Having grown up just down the road, the son of the senior pastor at another church in town, I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. After he held indoor Easter services at FloodGate in 2020, in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders, attendance at his church soared. Yet I’m still struggling to make sense of the place.īolin in February.
This isn’t my first time at FloodGate, so none of what Bolin says shocks me. This time, they shout: “Ivermectin!” Bolin nods. “What was that?” he says, leaning over the lectern. A chorus of people responds: “Ivermectin.” Bolin pretends not to hear.
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He tells of a doctor who claims to know that “between 100 and 200 United States Congress members, plus many of their staffers and family members with COVID, were treated by a colleague of his over the past 15 months … with …” Bolin stops and puts a hand to his ear.
“They have 103 vaccine-complication patients.” The crowd gasps. “A local nurse who attends FloodGate, who is anonymous at this time-she reported to my wife the other day that at her hospital, they have two COVID patients that are hospitalized. Instead, he spouts misinformation and conspiratorial nonsense, much of it related to the “radically dangerous” COVID-19 vaccines. “On the vaccines …” he begins.įor the next 15 minutes, Bolin does not mention the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, or the life everlasting. His floral shirt is untucked over dark-blue jeans. View Moreīolin, in his mid-60s, is a gregarious man with thick jowls and a thinning wave of dyed hair. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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