Residents of Coronado rallied at the Hotel Del Sunday afternoon after the facility agreed to host a “preview service” from Awaken Church ahead of its attempt to establish a permanent location there, decrying statements from its pastors.
“Our concerns with Awaken are that leaders consistently share hateful messaging to LGBTQ and their presence is a threat to this already-marginalized group of people,” said coalition group Coronado Islanders Against Hate in an emailed statement.
“These are our neighbors. These are our friends. They are the young students in the community. They are our co-workers. For some people, it’s family members. They are part of our community and are worth protecting.”
The group also said that the Hotel Del’s decision to host the church is in direct conflict with its managing company’s stated policies around inclusivity and diversity.
Its pastors have a long history of making public statements that further the service of disinformation narratives.
Besides those statements, Awaken Church is perhaps best known for its public repudiation of vaccines at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and hosting well-known anti-vaccine and far right speakers, such as Tucker Carlson and Simone Gold, who later received prison time for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
The church, which has six campuses in San Diego, locally hosted the national ReAwaken Tour, which featured speakers such as Michael Flynn, Eric Trump, and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive officer.
Coronado Islanders Against Hate says that the church is also heavily involved in recent attempts to ban books with content that Awaken deems offensive.
“One of the pastors has also recently spoken at Coronado City Hall and written letters to the Coronado Library urging that the library remove LGBTQ-themes books from the children’s section after a controversy at our library,” the group said in an emailed statement, pointing out that more than a thousand Coronado residents have already signed a petition to spread awareness about and publicly repudiate the church.
There are other concerns as well, said the group. “The head pastor also shares violent messaging and images, argues for the ‘public hanging’ and “torture” of people he disagrees with and encourages the violent overthrow of the government. These are made on public social media posts.”
The protest and rally took place in front of the Hotel Del starting at 4 p.m.; the “preview service” was scheduled for 5:30 p.m.