NEIGHBOR HATRED:

Mastriano's debate with the Lutherans dates back to a since-deleted interview with a couple, Allen and Francine Fosdick, self-described Christian prophets with an online ministry called People of Prophetic Power Ministries. 

"'Separation of church and state' -- anyone who says that, show me in the Constitution where it says it," Mastriano told the Fosdicks while sitting at his desk in the Pennsylvania state Capitol. "It's not in there. It's never been in there." In a formulation that has become popular among conservatives, Mastriano added, "We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."

Mastriano, who was gaining popularity in conservative circles at the time for strident opposition to COVID-19 restrictions, referred to a "fake COVID crisis" and chided his fellow lawmakers who had imposed limitations on large gatherings in Pennsylvania. He insisted Christians should show more "courage" in resisting lockdown measures and offered as a model Martin Luther, the 16th-century founder of Lutheranism and leader of the Protestant Reformation.

"Pastors, it's time for you to lead," Mastriano said in the video, which later disappeared when the Fosdicks' YouTube account was revoked for violating the company's guidelines. (A mirror of the video remains accessible on an archival website.) "If that pastor -- and others -- doesn't want to open up, then congregation, maybe it's time to find another church where they have a little more courage."

As he put it in another part of the interview: "I'd like to see the churches stand up -- we have strong religious freedoms in Pennsylvania."

Local churches did, in fact, stand up, albeit perhaps not the way Mastriano intended. Forty-six local Lutheran leaders -- including vicars, former seminary presidents and the pastor at St. James Lutheran Church, a few doors down from Mastriano's local office -- published a full-page ad in the Gettysburg Times supporting many COVID-19 restrictions and rejecting Mastriano's interpretation of their denomination's namesake. The ad cited the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's position, which quoted Luther to argue that Christian decisions should "always be made in the best interests of the neighbor."

"The senator's interpretations of scripture and Luther's actions in the Protestant Reformation are taken out of context to serve his political agenda," the ad read.

Their voices carried weight in the town, where the oldest continuously operating Lutheran seminary in the country occupies a prominent part of the local landscape -- and U.S. history. Founded in 1826, the school's red brick buildings sit atop a hill known as Seminary Ridge, a strip of land that traded hands between the Army of the Potomac and the Confederacy in 1863 in the Civil War battle that made the town famous.

The seminary is known today as the Gettysburg campus of United Lutheran Seminary, which also has a campus in Philadelphia. Sitting in the seminary's library and leaning over an archival text, Erling, a professor of modern church history and global mission, recalled the debate with Mastriano with barely disguised frustration. She doesn't impugn his personal faith, she said, but has little regard for his public theology.

"I don't take him seriously as a religious voice at all. I absolutely do not," said Erling.

Publicly criticizing Mastriano's faith musings wasn't something the group did lightly, she said -- among other things, she and her fellow clergy had to pay for the ad themselves. But Erling argued the state senator left them no choice.

"He was saying that people should not go to the churches unless they're complying with his 'walk as free people,' and that any restrictions are not of Christ," she said. "He hit a ball into our court."

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