Purple Palace Protest

Remember way back to the 2000 Presidential election, the one with the “hanging chads?” On November 22nd of that year a group of Republicans purportedly staged a “riot” at the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board offices, protesting the manual recount of certain ballots that weren’t counted by the original machine count.

Can you imagine that? A group of Republicans in polo shirts staging a riot! Well, the LCMS has it’s own equivalent to the Republican “riot.” Were they protesting hanging chads? Hardly. Something of much greater import. They were protesting the cancellation of Issues, Etc. of course. It happened on April 14th, 2008 at the International Center, the spiffy looking headquarters of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, “lovingly” called the “Purple Palace.”

This was the first and only demonstration at the IC. Not too amazingly, there were no arrests, just a few ruffled hairdos from the wind. Included in the crowd were Pastors Fritz Baue, Paul Beisel, Charlie Henrickson, Wil Weedon, as well as journalist Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. The big protest made the local newspaper, but not any of the official LCMS publications.



Photos compliments of Pastor Paul Beisel