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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Saying Good-bye

By Anna Von Reitz

Today, I had to do something I have been avoiding, just like I have avoided the death of my beloved Labrador Retriever. Some things are just too awful to take straight up, so you parcel out the grief a drop at a time.

I loved the Church I grew up in, a warm, old, motherly Norwegian Lutheran Church full of coffee smells and cookies, Kensington Dinners and Bible School pageants, choir practice on Wednesday nights....many good memories.

But today, I had to write a Severance Letter. The reasons are explained in the following text.

Evangelical Lutheran Church Via: RB 370088 078 US

Attention: Pastor Steve
115 North 5th Street
Black River Falls, Wisconsin 54615

Dear Pastor Steve:
We have never met and I hope you won’t take what I am about to say or explain to you amiss.
My name is Anna Maria Riezinger. I grew up in Black River Falls and graduated from High School there in 1974. I was a loyal and active member of ELC from age 7 until I left home. I was baptized at ELC by Pastor Thomas Hyde prior to my Confirmation, somewhere around 1970.

Some years prior to this, all the churches that were never subject to taxation anyway, were led astray by a gratuitous promise from a foreign government --- an offer worthy of Satan himself --not to tax them if they reorganized as 501 (c) 3 corporations. This bogus offer to give them something they already had, also had other consequences and resulted in the unlawful conversion of the Church and Church assets.

By incorporating the Evangelical Lutheran Church became a commercial entity. The members were redefined as corporate franchises and in exchange for the privilege of bankruptcy protection, the Church became subject to the same foreign government making the improper offer in the first place. All of the Church’s assets --- including the parishioners --- were claimed as property assets belonging to the sponsoring parent corporation.

As token of this, the Baptismal Certificates issued by the Church became “securities” –- commercial paper--- that has since been bought and sold on black markets claiming to deal in souls.

This came as a shock to me, and I am sure it is coming as a shock to you, but it is nonetheless a fact.
I was certainly never given any full disclosure of this consequence of being baptized or confirmed at ELC and I feel that I have been cheated and betrayed; if one cannot even receive the sacraments without the filth and stain of commercial advantage, there is no longer any true meaning to the words or the acts. It has all been reduced to commercial fraud.

Upon discovery of this deceit and circumstance, I have been in a quandary. How does one react to something like this, except to protest and take exception to it? I do not wish to be counted as a member of a commercial corporation, albeit one styled as a “non-profit”, masquerading as a church.
Please draw a line through my name on the baptismal and confirmation records. Thank you.

Anna Maria Riezinger
c/o Box 520994
Big Lake, Alaska 99652
(907) 250-5087

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