SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: David Chen leaving King’s for City Council race is why I hate politics

Sep 15, 2019, 8:34 AM

I’ve talked a lot recently about the hate that Christians are receiving in the hundreds of vicious comments on the Seattle Times article about teachers leaving King’s Schools in Shoreline due to the school’s Bible-inspired views on LGBTQ relationships. Now the controversy has spilled over into the political world.

If you know anything about me, you know that I hate politics. I think that maybe 3 percent of politicians are sincere, and the rest are power-hungry, egotistical, money-grubbing, soulless people. I honestly do believe that.

I wouldn’t normally talk about a Shoreline City Council race, but it illustrates the flip-flopping and lying and soul-selling to get elected that we’re seeing in politics, whether at Thursday night’s Democratic Debate or the state attorney general’s office or the City of Seattle. It’s prevalent at every level of politics.

David Chen, who is running for the Shoreline City  Council, was the vice president and general counsel of CRISTA Ministries, which oversees King’s Schools. He has had that job since 2011. Presumably he understood what King’s was all about — that it sees the Bible as the inspired word of God, and expects its teachers to uphold biblical doctrine.

Dori: No moral difference between homeless encampment drug dealers, Seattle politicians

At 7 a.m. Thursday, David Chen resigned. Why, after working for this Christian organization for eight years, would he do such a thing? He was apparently fine with the school’s message — including its views on marriage — for nearly a decade.

On Wednesday night, the 32nd Legislative District Democrats (whose district includes Shoreline) voted to censure David Chen, and requested that all Democrats in power who have endorsed him (including Dow Constantine) take back their endorsements. This was, of course, because of Chen’s work with CRISTA Ministries.

A few hours after finding out about this, Chen resigned from CRISTA. The Democrat mob backed off.

He collected a paycheck from a Christian organization for many years and presumably believed what CRISTA believed. Did he suddenly change his entire way of thinking? Unlikely — it sounds to me like this guy had to choose between his faith or his career as a Shoreline City Council member.

Now he’s saying he doesn’t want King’s to tell kids how to live their lives — but ironically, he just abandoned his job because Democrats are telling him how to live and think. He’s OK with Democrats being dogmatic, but he’s not okay with a private Christian school being dogmatic.

It sounds to me like this guy has no foundation and no guiding principles, and that politics is more important to him than his faith. But that is true of pretty much everyone in politics. Politics becomes their religion, and that’s why politics is soulless.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: David Chen leaving King’s for City Council race is why I hate politics