Thursday, March 28, 2013

Norfolk Pastor Arrested for Child Porn

Yet another example of hypocrisy in the pulpit has arisen.  This time it involves David William Smith (shown at left), pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Norfolk, Virginia.  Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, Trinity Lutheran is a member of the vociferously anti-gay Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church which largely ceased all cooperative work with the larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (which I belong to) when that denomination adopted gay friendly policies and voted to allow gay clergy.  Like the stridently anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention, the Missouri Synod Lutherans need to focus more on cleaning out their own foul house as opposed to stigmatizing and denigrating gays on a regular basis.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

The pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church was arrested this afternoon on child pornography charges.

David William Smith, 35, faces 10 counts of possession of child pornography, a felony, police said. He is in city jail on no bond. The arrest followed an investigation by Norfolk police’s computer crimes section.

The church, which also operates a school, is in the 6000 block of Granby St. According to the church’s website, Smith was installed as the pastor in November 2010.

It almost always seems to be the far right denominations that are bizarrely obsessed with all things sexual like the Missouri Synod crowd that have the sexual deviants in the pulpit.


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