"What kind of people would fight against helping the most abused women? The Fort Worth Zoning Commission led by Lashondra Stringfellow, has lied and manipulated, trying to strongarm us into rezoning our property. We are not rezoning our property. Our property is zoned for church related activities and the city of Fort Worth does not determine what those are. The bible does. On July 17, the Stra Telegram published an article claiming that Mercy Culture had already applied for a zoning change. On September 13th, a sign was put on our property saying zoning change requested. This is a lie. We will expose every member of the city council and the Fort Worth leadership who continues to resist, harass, and discriminate against us and our faith. We will not be silenced. We will not be bullied. We will not be stopped." - Landon and Heather Schott
The way that he presents this problem sounds horrible. What kind of people would fight against helping abused women? Turns out it is not the city but the neighbors of this proposed residence. It is also not that they are unsympathetic, but they question if the location makes the most sense for the victims as well as the homeowners. I know the NAR thinks only they have rights but everyone else does as well. As for the whiny victimization card Landon is playing, here is a statement from 2022, from the President of the neighborhood association:
"It has nothing to do with their religion or their practices or their beliefs," Scanlon said. "And it's not even an issue of whether we even want them to do this or not; it has nothing to do with that. It is purely a location issue. That is a bad location for their victims. I don't care what they say." - Chanin Scanlon
I would tend to believe this person. I can easily see the security concerns of housing 100 victims of sex trafficking. I am sure parents in that neighborhood are not being callous. It sounds like they are just being prudent. Landon Schott acted stunned that someone thought they could tell him what to do with the church's property. Yeah Landon, those are called laws. They are called zoning ordinances. You are not being bullied. You are not being silenced. You are being told what the law is but because you already disregarded the law and common sense during COVID, who cares right? People are not discriminating against you because of your faith. Get over yourself. This dominionist nonsense has infected the entire church. Disagreement is not discrimination. I will tell you what discrimination is - telling a black congregant they cannot wear a Black Lives Matter tee shirt you pompous hireling. Where is your understanding of being a good neighbor? Of redeeming the time with the lost? None of that matters when you replace the gospel with Christian nationalism.
"If these elected officials do not serve the people of Fort Worth, we are going to vote out every single one of them. What happens when people stop believing the lie about separation of church and state and they understand that was only created to keep the state out of the church not the church out of the state. When you start getting Christians active in the community - Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God and love people and there is no greater way to love people than getting godly politicians elected that will bring godly policies to serve people." - Landon and Heather Schott
The bullying and threatening all seem to be coming from this church. Schott shows off how he was trained by the finest NAR minds that understand American history less than they understand even the bible. Many of the people founding this country were escaping religious persecution. That LAST thing they would have wanted was to establish a theocracy. Sure, there were some zealots like John Adams, but most were deists who Landon Schott would probably have removed from his church for wearing the wrong tee shirt. I know that dominionists do not want to hear this but there have always been different religions in this country. That is not a "left" thing or a "woke" thing. It is a reality thing. We had a period of time where the church tried to force Christianity upon the unsaved. It was called the Crusades and it was not particularly Christian.
Just two concluding points on the abuse of the scripture Schott cites, which I have included as the key verses for today. It is true that all of the law and prophets hang on loving God and loving our neighbor. OUR NEIGHBOR. It is the neighbors of Landon Schott that are vehemently protesting the construction of this shelter. You can say maybe there is some "not in my backyard" or property value concerns but what you cannot do is make your neighbors your enemies. What you really should not be doing as an alleged pastor then is to try and shift the blame to politicians and name check them, so they will probably be harassed. Your neighbors have spoken but you do not like their opinion. So, you demonize them. You threaten them. You make false accusations against them. You know, in the name of Jesus, right?
The second problem here is the common NAR fallacy that there are evil politicians and then there are godly ones. The "godly ones" are conveniently all in the same political party. Except they are no godlier than the ones you loathe. Heck, Texas cannot even go a month it seems without another pastor being exposed as decidedly ungodly, let alone politicians. Except Landon and Heather Schott think they know better. They are dripping with smarmy arrogance throughout this video, proud of all the chaos they are causing for their neighbors, who they openly admit they are supposed to love. The hypocritical disconnect is staggering. That is what comes from NAR dominionist teaching that reduces the lost to our enemies and emboldens us to view anything positive is divine favor and anything negative as demonic attack. So, when neighbors object to your building plans to dump 100 sex trafficking victims a block from where their kids play, they suddenly are deemed to be attacking your faith. When a zoning commission representative tells you that you have to change your zoning, she is marginalized and dehumanized to being anti-Christian, instead of merely anti-wrong zoning. Then you call her out by name, all but assuring she will then be abused by your followers. I would say it is disgusting but hopefully that point has already been made. I would normally just sign off by saying mark and avoid but I think we should also pray that the people of Fort Worth rise up, Christian and unbeliever to foil this scheme to take over local government and that they find a more appropriate site for their proposed shelter that takes into consideration the command to truly love our neighbor as ourselves. Not despise our neighbors for having the temerity to disagree with us.
