The Church of the Divine Luminescence proudly opened its doors last Friday in downtown. In a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by over 500 residents, the new Church’s pastor Gloria Hermann gave a grand speech proclaiming its commitment to bringing light and life to every member of the San Francisco community.
“We will bring illumination to all in our tender care”
-Gloria Hermann, March 2024
Gloria continued, making a firm promise to reach out and support our unhoused community, a gesture that has stirred up some discussion.
But what do you all think of these developments?
I’d love to hear from you all in our Q&A below. This is James Gurn of the Independent Gazzete, signing off.
We swear to secure our people against the wickedness and evil of the invisible world.
We swear to aid the afflicted.
We swear to stay ever vigilant and seek out the abominable witchcrafts committed in this country.
We humbly pray to be blessed by God to hold all those who consort with the Devil accountable. Amen
—Opening and closing prayer for Sons of Salem meetings.
The Sons of Salem is a loosely-organized conservative populist movement in the United States that preaches violent opposition to anything they perceive as witchcraft, demonic, or monstrous.
Blowhard podcaster Ted Gundy and former general of the mercenary group “Hognose,” Roland Rush, founded the movement in 2010 after a series of violent werewolf attacks and unexplained, supernatural murders in Tennessee. Memberships grew quickly, stoked by Ted’s fiery doomsday rhetoric on his podcast "Truth Seekers" and the aspiration of the masculine power embodied by Roland.
Although they speak of duty, honor, and maintaining the “natural order” of things, the Sons of Salem are driven by fear. They collect guns and appear at protests en-masse as a way of easing the all-consuming terror of their powerlessness. At the same time, they have conditioned themselves to respond to fear with “strength” (read: violence).