Bill Bolin, the Michigan pastor who politicized his pulpit and was profiled by author Tim Alberta, now leads a local library board and is intent on “changing the sexual tone and nature of some library policies and practices.”
Bolin was a central character in Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory and an article in The Atlantic titled “How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church.”
Floodgate, Bolin’s charismatic church in Howell, Mich., grew from 100 members to more than 1,500 and increased its budget sixfold after he refused to shut down during COVID and instead transformed the church into a venue for rightwing conspiracy theories, misinformation and “diatribes” about vaccines and other hot-button topics. Some members see him as a “rock star.”
In January, Bolin was elected to lead the Hartland Cromaine District Library Board of Trustees, even though he had less experience with public libraries than other candidates. He since has steered the library toward making it harder for citizens to access certain books, especially those with LGBTQ themes, according to reports in Michigan Advance.
“I desire to protect children from the harm that can befall them over coercive behavior.”
“For those who do not know why I ran for this position, I desire to protect children from the harm that can befall them over coercive behavior,” Bolin told the crowd. “The approach I am suggesting, along with certain colleagues, is a commonsense approach to changing the sexual tone and nature of some library policies and practices.”
Bolin seeks numerous changes. He wants to make some books inaccessible to children, to require supervision in libraries’ teen areas, to limit adults’ access to others by storing them in locked cabinets or adding warning labels, and to open the district’s meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. He also wanted to remove June Pride displays from libraries.
The district had discussed some of these measures since 2022, but after Bolin took over leadership of the board in January, he has made them a top priority. He regularly updates his congregation on his board activities.
At a special meeting, the library district’s legal counsel said some of Bolin’s proposed changes already had been instituted in schools elsewhere in the U.S. and had promptly inspired legal challenges. Counsel warned that Bolin’s changes could make the district vulnerable to costly lawsuits from people claiming the district was burdening people’s First Amendment rights.
Bolin rejected their advice, turning instead to Alliance Defending Freedom, the powerful Christian legal group that has won Supreme Court cases on same-sex weddings and helped write the law that led to Roe v. Wade being overturned. ADF encouraged Bolin to pursue the measures, helped him tweak his proposal and will be ready to defend his actions if the board is sued.
One critic of Bolin’s plan warned that Bolin and ADF would savor a lawsuit on the measures.
“Their goal is to trigger as many lawsuits that can get to the U.S. Supreme Court as fast as possible,” said Julie Ohashi of the group Stand Against Extremism based in Livingston County. “That is precisely the point. They want this to go to court, because ADF’s ultimate goal is eliminating LGBTQ Americans’ status as a protected class of citizens.”
Attorney Paul Logan Spena, who works with ADF’s Center for Free Speech, has declined to answer journalists’ questions about the proposals, and he failed to show up for a special meeting where he was scheduled to speak. The meeting grew ever more boisterous until some disruptive attendees were removed and local sheriffs were called in to restore peace.
Bolin was the star of Tim Alberta’s 7,000-word article on “How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church” and of chapter seven of Alberta’s book.
Tim Alberta on “CBS Sunday Morning.” (Video screen cap)
The story of Floodgate is personal for Alberta, who grew up in the area and whose father was pastor of a nearby evangelical church called Cornerstone. Alberta grieves the fact that many of the believers who once belonged to his father’s church have since embraced Floodgate and Bolin’s “tawdry translation of the message of Jesus Christ.”
“Bolin was less a pastor than he was a performer,” Alberta wrote. “He had traded his pulpit for a soapbox” and “openly preyed on the political and cultural insecurities of his congregants. And it worked.
“The hardest part of witnessing all this was to see people I knew — people I respected and cared about from around the community — falling for this spiritual farce. Rather than being challenged and transformed by the gospel, they were now coming to church to have their worst impulses confirmed.”
Speaking from a stage festooned with flags but lacking any crosses, Bolin routinely dispensed utter falsehoods from the pulpit, including the claim that a local hospital was treating two patients with COVID and 103 patients suffering from the effects of “radically dangerous” COVID vaccines.
During one sermon, Bolin referred to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as “Whitler,” using a Nazi hand gesture to salute her. Floodgate congregants jeered Whitmer at the mention of her name.
For Alberta, Bolin was the epitome of the Christian leader who has been “seduced by earthly idols of nation and influence and exaltation,” traded biblical principles for “blood-and-soil nationalism,” and turned churches into circuses of partisan politicking, MAGA symbolism and chants against Anthony Fauci.
Bolin’s tenure on the library board isn’t his first political foray. As Floodgate grew, it attracted a growing number of GOP activists and politicians. And in 2021, Bolin was appointed to a Metropolitan Authority Board. His term expires in 2027.