Newly obtained emails show a wave of heated, anti-Christian opposition from community members and University of Maine staff after UMaine initially agreed to sell the Hutchinson Center to Calvary Chapel Belfast, a Christian church.
The emails, secured through a Freedom of Access Act request, reveal deep outrage over the church’s conservative beliefs, with some calling the sale “horrifying” and “appalling.”
UMaine rescinded its decision to sell the Hutchinson Center to Calvary Chapel Belfast last August, after the church was initially chosen as the winning bidder among three offers, with plans to use the facility for addiction recovery and a homeschool co-op.
Calvary Chapel Belfast filed a lawsuit against UMaine in late November after UMaine reneged on their offer to sell the property to the church, alleging that the decision was reversed due to the “church’s scriptural beliefs on marriage and sexuality.”
This December, UMaine announced that it had upheld its decision to sell the property to Waldo Community Action Partners (WCAP) — a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization funded almost entirely through taxpayer dollars —instead of Calvary Chapel Belfast, rejecting an appeal from the church to reconsider.
Now, the Maine Wire has obtained a large number of emails through the state’s Freedom of Access Act that were sent to the UMaine Board of Trustees and other staff after UMaine’s original announcement that they would be selling the Hutchinson Center to Calvary Chapel Belfast.
Those emails, all sent within days of each other, show a rabid and vitriolic anti-Christian backlash to the decision, with several of the emails claiming to be “shocked,” “horrified,” and “appalled” that the school would even dare to do business with a Christian church that holds to conservative beliefs.
An Aug. 21, 2024 email from Virginia Holmes to the UMaine System Board of Trustees reads, “As a public (and as an educational) institution, the UMS cannot and must not ally itself with a religious organization that not only teaches and promotes discrimination, but also is a representative of one religion, and views itself as the only true religion.”
“So, yes, I am horrified. Shocked. Horrified,” Holmes wrote. “I understand the financial reasons for this choice. They are not enough. A public educational institution is [sic] the United States should never make a decision such as the one you have made. Shame on you. Shame.”
Wendy Schweikert wrote to Umaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy that she viewed the choice to sell to Calvary Chapel Belfast as “appalling,” and called it a “disastrous decision that reflects poorly on the trustees.”
Schweikert pondered whether the sale was “part of the movement toward white Christian nationalism in America? Terrifying thought.”
Sett Balise wrote to the trustees that the sale to the church would “be harmful to the town,” claiming that “The Cavalry Chapel Association [sic] promotes bigoted ideals that are dangerous to members of the community (ie, that homosexuality causes natural disasters).”
Paddrick Thomas-Whittaker wrote to the UMaine trustees and president that he was “personally discriminated against by Calvary Chapel” for being gay, claiming to have been “harassed constantly and mentally abused by the pastoral body for my sexuality.”
“This church and any of its affiliated branches should not be allowed to indoctrinate children through their own school as it is entirely exclusionary to anyone who does not meet their religious based requirements,” Thomas-Wittaker wrote.
“Belfast is a wonderfully welcoming city to the Queer community to the point that a homophobic & transphobic organization such as Calvary Chapel Belfast should not be allowed to take up residency in a building dedicated to helping the surrounding community,” he wrote.
Nina Miller wrote in an Aug. 20 email to the trustees, “Please do not sell to the evangelical church in a place where acceptance is fostered.”
Nancy Perkins wrote in opposition to the sale that it is “pure irony that a public university representing academic freedom and educational values would sell an important resource to a biased, fundamental, and discriminatory organization.”
“If due diligence was performed then it defies common sense,” Perkins wrote, taking issue with the fact that a Calvary Chapel pastor sued Maine Gov. Janet Mills over her COVID-19 lockdown policy.
Morgan Lowe told the UMaine trustees that she is a “survivor of the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian approach to education,” and asked that the university reconsider the sale.
“[Calvary Chapel’s] sermons are readily available online. They want to teach children anti-science, anti-history Young Earth Creationism. They want kids to learn that LGBTQ lifestyles are a sin worthy of eternal damnation,” Lowe wrote.
“They want them to believe that in marriage wives should be submissive to their husbands. They will tell children that ‘the word of God supersedes earthly law that is contrary to the holy scriptures’. The list goes on—you can find this all on their website,” she wrote.
Michael Cressey told the board he was “strongly concerned” that Calvary Chapel is “radical and extreme” for not ordaining women as pastors and for not requiring a seminary degree for their pastors.
Michelle Ratte in her email to the UMaine president called the university’s decision “distressing-mystifying,” and referred to Calvary Chapel Belfast as a “fundamentalist, White Christian Nationalist, openly bigoted and homophobic, religious organization.”
Ratte also appeared to take issue with the face that a Calvary Chapel pastor deigned to oppose Gov. Mills’ COVID lockdowns.
Landon Fake wrote, “I’m very disappointed in your decision to sell the Hutchinson Center to a right wing fundamentalist church group, and I hope you will reconsider.”
Fake claimed Calvary Chapel pastors have “denounced traditional education, science and anyone not cis-gendered.”
Elizabeth Garber, a Belfast-based writer and acupuncturist wrote, “I have read letters from students who attended this church school and suffered under the hateful teachings of the church and its pastor, with their beliefs that ‘gay marriage is wrong,’ that ‘humanism and Satanism go hand in hand,’ while promoting conspiracy theories instead of teaching science or history to it’s students.”
Bruce Pratt, a professor in the UMaine Orono English department, wrote to the UMaine trustees that to proceed with the sale of the Hutchinson Center to the church would be a “sham.”
“Supporting an ultra right wing church hostile to LGBTQ people by selling a valuable property is egregious and antithetical to all I believe Umaine stands for,” the English professor wrote. “UMS could have partnered with one of the other bidders in ways that could have benefited the university and the midcoast.”
“This was a shameful sellout of what we claim t stand for [sic],” he wrote.
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