McCoy merging church, state


Pastor Mayor Rob McCoy has indicated that he does not recognize a bright line between church and state. Whatever his parishioners think, the citizens of Thousand Oaks do not remotely consent to trading in pluralism for creeping theocracy.

McCoy’s recent actions, while acting as mayor, provide evidence that he intends to pursue here at home the goals of his work for the American Renewal Project across the country: to merge church and state in a way that’s dangerous to our pluralistic society.

Let’s not forget that, two years ago, McCoy was discovered to have taken a side trip to Richmond, Va., for one of his ARP workshops while in Washington, D.C., ostensibly on city business. Those workshops are the primary means by which McCoy, with help from his wealthy local benefactor David Lane, recruits right-wing clergy nationwide to run—as McCoy himself did—for local office.

Their goal? As Lane put it several years ago in World Net Daily, it’s “to engage the church in a culture war for religious liberty, to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage, and to reestablish a Christian culture.”

Pastor McCoy is savvy; you’ll rarely find him quoted saying anything quite as incendiary as Lane frequently does. But by the time McCoy became the public face of ARP, he already was known to some nonevangelical Conejo Valley residents from a speech he gave at a local Tea Party rally in 2010, talking about the evils of Social Security.

And his recent “American Legacy” lectures have contained bits of wisdom such as comparing the income tax with armed robbery. Now he is tying those lectures to a “youth academy,” and on a flyer that was distributed to CVUSD students he used his mayoral position to lure students to his church to participate.

I wonder what the city attorney thinks of that and whether anyone at City Hall (including McCoy’s fellow council members) or perhaps the Acorn editorial staff has the respect for proper governance to call him on it.

Lauren Gill
Newbury Park