Standard-Examiner staff?jfrancis@standard.net?

Several area church leaders disagreed Thursday with Weber County Sheriff Terry Thompson’s letter to his staff telling them they were doing God’s work and that God approves of capital punishment.?Others, however, expressed their support for the sheriff.?Thompson also posted the letter on the department’s Facebook site, but took it down Wednesday after Salt Lake City civil rights attorney Brian Barnard objected, saying it was inappropriate.?”I think his comments were inappropriate, and I disagree with him theologically,” said the Rev. Theresa Novak, of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden. “He doesn’t believe in the same kind of God I believe in if he thinks that.”?Novak said her views about God are that he or she is all about forgiveness.?”I think Jesus taught about forgiveness, and many other religious leaders have taught about loving your enemies,” she said. “Theologically, I disagree with him on the capital punishment issue for sure.”?Novak said she believes Thompson’s comments about God were not appropriate also because he is a government employee.?”I was a federal employee and a federal manager for many years,” Novak said. “People could make their own faith statements, but you didn’t tell employees what to believe.”?Bruce Davis Sr., pastor of New Zion Baptist Church, said he feels sorry for the sheriff because he doesn’t believe Thompson realizes the difference between the teachings of the Old Testament and those of the New Testament, which supersedes them.?Davis said God gave the Israelites in the Old Testament a lesser law, which allowed “a tooth for a tooth” because they were evil.?

“It was because of the hardness of their hearts,” he said.

?Davis said when Jesus was alive in the New Testament, he clarified that people should pray for their enemies.?”Capital punishment is not in God’s vocabulary system,” Davis said. “If we can’t forgive, we can’t really be a nation who trusts God.”?When contacted at the end of his shift Thursday, Thompson said he was not prepared to respond to comments from area religious leaders.?”This thing has just gotten so much bigger than it needed to be,” he said. “This thing has just gotten so out of control. I think it’s more than run its reasonable course.”?

Thompson earlier sent a letter to the Standard-Examiner?addressed to Weber County citizens in response to Thursday’s article about the issue.

?In the letter, Thompson said he had made no secret during his campaign that he believed in God.?”The letter that I wrote with office members was meant to improve agency morale by ensuring that employees understand that they are engaged in far more than just a job,” he wrote.?He said the original text of his letter stated that the service of those in the sheriff’s office was also a service to their God in “whatever form they picture him.”?Such a statement, he said, left wide open their personal interpretation.?”The founding fathers of our country referenced God, a supreme being or creator, many times as evidenced in the Declaration of Independence and other famous writings,” he wrote. “Our nation’s motto is ‘in God we trust,’ which is imprinted on our currency.”?Mark Gomez, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Wasatch Front, in Clearfield, supported Thompson’s efforts, stating that Thompson was trying to find a way to encourage his staff.?”This role as leader would include encouraging, directing, reprimanding and counseling them on a day-to-day basis,” Gomez said.?”In his role as leader, he decided to use religious terminology to encourage them. Like the rest of us, Mr. Thompson does not live in a vacuum.”?Gomez criticized Barnard.?”Mr. Barnard as an advocate of separation of church and state, and the new tolerance does not understand that it is not tolerance when you do not tolerate everyone according to their own definition of tolerance,” Gomez wrote in an e-mail. ?”Removing all traces of religion from public life is not possible; and it establishes religion in the name of no religion.”?In answer to the question of whether police officers are doing God’s work, Pastor Karl Dumas, of First Baptist Church of Ogden, said they should be.?

“If we truly believe that God is worthy of glory, honor and praise, then everything we do should be dedicated to His service: Sunday worship, work, play and the Sabbath rest,” Dumas said. “So in that sense, working at any job, in any capacity, as long as you’re a Christian would mean that you are working in God’s service, doing God’s work.”

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He said he didn’t believe people should view Thompson as crossing any line, adding that polls have indicated 76 percent of Americans considered themselves Christian in 2008 and more than 85 percent thought themselves so in the 1990s.

?”While I don’t see a need to be deliberately offensive to nonbelievers, I also don’t see why a Christian should be prohibited from expressing views that a veto-proof majority claim to hold as their own,” he said.?Also in defense of Thompson, a local police chaplain who asked not to be named said law enforcement officials definitely receive their mention in the New Testament of the Bible.?The chaplain quoted The Message translation of the Bible in Romans 13: 1-5.?Those verses read, in part: “All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order.”?The passage goes on to read: “The police aren’t there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it.”