I’m a big fan of Dave Ridley‘s work, but he’s got this one wrong. While it’s true that churches aren’t supposed to pay taxes, the Shire Free Church will be making voluntary contributions to the people calling themselves the City of Keene based on which city services the Church ministers find valuable. Nonetheless, Ridley mischaracterizes the Shire Free Church parsonages in Keene as a “tax revolt” in this series of editorial videos from Ridleyreport.com.
Anyone who bothers to read the Shire Free Church page will discover the purpose of the church is to give religious liberty lovers a home, when so many churches today worship “the state” as a god.
Here’s Ridley’s first video critique of the Shire Free Church. In it he initially expresses confusion as to what the house in question is – is it a church or a parsonage? A quick call to me or another minister would have helped clear up his questions. (It’s a parsonage.) Instead, he just editorializes without much in the way of facts or any input from Shire Free Church ministers. He claims that we don’t have the support of neighbors, but he’s never bothered to talk to any of them. I know for a fact that some of the neighbors support liberty activism and others do not.
Ridley eventually encounters a Wendy, a minister of the Shire Free Church, and has a discussion with her about how the jail is treating Rich Paul which in the third video eventually turns to Ridley’s church issues. In it, he insults her (perhaps unintentionally) by suggesting that Wendy and the other ministers are a ‘freakshow’:
In his most recent installment, he ridicules the idea of being loving towards one’s “enemies”. He calls it “hippie peacenik crap” and says I and others of peace should see the city people as enemies rather than as I see them, which is as my misguided brothers or sisters. Ridley echos a common snipe against me, and calls compassion towards state agents “passive aggressive”. As usual, this statement says more about the person making it, than it does about us peacenik hippies.
I hope Ridley gets his facts straight the next time he reports on the Shire Free Church. Considering I’m one of his advertisers, it would not be hard for him to reach out to me for comment.
