This is normative traditional Seventh-Day Adventism, the religion in which I was raised. Not all Adventists believe this, but most of the traditional ones do.
In my experience, I’ve noticed that blacks tend to believe in conspiracy theories at a higher rate than other races and traditional religious types at a higher rate than other types. Any adherent to a tradition is likely to look skeptically at outsiders.
Frank C Girardot posts to FB: “Just finished listening to several sermons from Dr. Eric Walsh, Pasadena’s director of public health.
His condemnation of the Pope as the anti-Christ is outrageous and completely unacceptable from a public official. His comparison of Muhammed to Satan is equally sickening. This man needs to step down. And if he doesn’t, the city of Pasadena needs to seriously examine his fitness for office.”
George Martinet: “Scripture is not politically correct. God tells us who the counterfeit is and he doesn’t care where the chips fall or how unpopular it is.”
Here is his City of Pasadena bio:
Dr. Eric Walsh was born in Hartford, CT. A graduate of Oakwood University, The University of Miami School of Medicine, and Loma Linda University School of Public Health, he is currently the Director/Health Officer for the City of Pasadena Health Department in Pasadena, CA. He has previously served as the Medical Director for the Family Health Division of the Orange County Health Care Agency in Santa Ana, California.
In addition to being on staff at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and at the University of California, Irvine as an adjunct Professor, Dr. Walsh has served under the current and previous White House Administrations on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Dr. Walsh is the immediate past President of the California Academy of Preventive Medicine and has been on committees with the Centers for Disease Control and has a strong track record of serving on boards or in collaboration with many grass roots organizations in Southern California to improve the health of at risk populations. The recipient of many awards, including a Congressional Recognition for his leadership and contribution to the health of children, he was most recently awarded the prestigious 100 Black Men of Orange County Award in Health and Wellness Care.
Dr. Walsh is a sought after speaker on issues related to social justice, social determinants of health, spirituality and health and maternal/child health issues among other topics. He is dedicated to serving the residents through public health practices and policy development that increases the ability for individuals to attain health and wellness.
Walsh, the replacement speaker, seems like an accomplished person. His online bio says he has championed maternal and child health issues, violence prevention and is committed to the “highest level of care for individuals infected with HIV.”
He is also a devout Seventh-day Adventist and a proponent of intelligent design who has said that anyone who teaches the theory of evolution is a “Satanist minister” doing “the devil’s handiwork.”
He has also expressed harsh attitudes toward other religions, particularly Catholicism, and has embraced some downright kooky cultural theories.
Should that have knocked him off the PCC speaker’s dais? Not necessarily.
But it does raise questions about PCC administrators and trustees consider “controversial,” the word Rocha used to describe Black in an email to trustees.
To that end, I think it’s worth taking a look at some of Walsh’s workshops and sermons, which are available online.
In 2010, he told an Adventist youth gathering about how he once met a transgender doctor at a conference on religion and sexuality. He mocked her dream of bringing low-cost sex change operations to minority communities, and, chuckling, said he accidentally called her “shim” (a combination of “she” and “him.”)
A PCC professor who did not want to be identified was upset about Walsh’s 2012 talk with Adventist students, in which he equated the Catholic Church’s veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with pagan idolatry. Statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe, he said, are “a lie of Satan.” Likewise, he said, Buddhists who offer food and flowers at altars, he says, are also engaged in pagan idolatry.
Walsh’s statements about popular culture are way out there on the religious fringe. He singles out the Walt Disney Co. and comic books as particularly bad influences.
“Disney is a dark empire,” Walsh says in the 2012 talk. “We take our children there, but we don’t understand it’s all full of witchcraft, superstition. There’s no praying to God. When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are….So when you wish upon a star what are you really wishing to? Demonic forces.”
“The Lion King,” he says, is a vehicle to teach voodoo.
Batman is a “Luciferian” plot. “The Dark Knight is supposed to be the hero,” says Walsh, “but he really represents Satan.”
But Walsh reserves his greatest scorn for the theory of evolution. “I want you to understand,” he says, “that evolution is a religion created by Satan.”
He is outraged that Pope John Paul II embraced the theory of evolution. “How does the pope bless evolution when he’s supposed to believe in the Bible?” he asks.
“The idea that the Earth evolved over millions of years,” Walsh says, is “a farce. It’s not true. It couldn’t have happened that way….There is no evidence that we evolved. Where are all the half-things in the world? Where are the animals that are still evolving?”
