The Resurrection of Mark Weaver

Mark Weaver was the Chronicle's Halloween mask in 1989, just weeks after he convinced H-E-B management to remove the Chronicle from its supermarkets. (Mask by Baby Lucas)

According to the website of the New Hope Church, Mark Weaver remains the pastor and head elder of the small South Austin Wesleyan congregation where he has served for nearly 21 of the church's 37 years. But as Weaver tells it, a few weeks ago he was indefinitely banned from the church and its grounds by church leadership and placed on a paid "medical sabbatical" of undetermined duration. He was informed of the banning, he told the Chronicle, in a letter from the church "local board of administration" that read in part, "As for Mark's stepped-down position [it should say 'forced to step-down position,' commented Weaver], he is banned from the entire property and all pastoral responsibilities, and asked for no contact with the church body ... until he is returned to normal pastoral responsibilities, after being cleared by the LBA."

In short, Weaver is now in what he describes as an "adversarial relationship" with his own church. As unhappy as that sounds, it's an improvement from Weaver's predicament in late November, when he spent 10 days against his will in Seton Shoal Creek Hospital under a mental health watch. From the hospital, he called the Chronicle – and the Austin American-Statesman and, he says, several other local media outlets – the day before he was scheduled for a preliminary competency hearing at the Austin State Hospital, pending an official determination whether he was either "a danger to himself or others" or could be permitted to leave the hospital. Only the Chronicle responded, Weaver says; as it then turned out, a half hour before the Dec. 1 hearing was scheduled to begin, Shoal Creek doctors released Weaver into his own care. According to Weaver, doctors initially asked him to sign a waiver of the hearing for one more day of "detention," and when he refused, they relented and released him.

The 52-year-old pastor and the Chronicle make unlikely allies. Longtime local readers will recognize the name of the man who, in the late Eighties, briefly persuaded H-E-B management to remove the Chronicle from its local stores because the paper published personal ads for gay people, and during that time, as the leader of a group called Citizens Against Pornography, he was arrested for protesting at an AIDS Services of Austin meeting. In 1998, Weaver aggressively campaigned against Austin gay bathhouses, denouncing the "gay lifestyle." No doubt he and the Chronicle staff – along with untold numbers of liberal Austinites – do not see eye to eye on many issues of importance to evangelical Christians. But in his current predicament, Weaver says he was calling everyone he knew who might "help him get out" of the hospital. "I knew who my friends and my enemies were in the past," he reflected, "but I just wanted someone to say, 'This is wrong.'"

Mark Weaver

As Weaver recounts it, his initial commitment to Shoal Creek was in a gray area between voluntary and involuntary. At his family's insistence, he says, he had agreed to a psychiatric evaluation, but when he went outside to leave for the hospital, he was met by previously summoned police officers who eventually took him to Shoal Creek. He suffers from bipolar disorder but has been stable for 15 years; this year, after a spring bout of severe depression, he had entered a manic phase that included some frenzied activity of charity work (he also does tree-trimming on his weekly pastor's day off). He insists he was no danger to himself or others, although the situation was causing family tension. "If you ask my wife," he says, "she'll probably tell you I went out and bought a Harley, but you know, lots of old guys go out and buy a Harley. ... That's not enough to say I'm a threat to somebody."

New Hope lay leader Dirk Dozier did not return calls requesting comment, and the church administration referred me only to Weaver's wife, Cindy, who directs the children's ministries (their son manages the church website). She mentioned no specific incident that triggered the hospitalization (which she agreed Weaver initially entered voluntarily), but said, "He was going up up up, and they [family and a psychiatrist] wanted him to go in, and I wanted him to go in, and he did it for us." Three days later, Weaver learned that his insurance would not cover the $1,500-per-day tab at Shoal Creek, but when he asked to leave, he was refused – and he's told he remains liable for the roughly $15,000 in accumulated costs. (He also says he was injured by another patient when, under the influence of medications that left him disoriented, he wandered into the wrong room.)

So was this a mental health episode or just a particularly acute midlife crisis? Cindy Weaver describes her husband as "very agitated" and that "when you're not thinking straight ... you can be extremely dangerous. He's just a very big person, you know. That can be threatening in itself, just his bigness." Weaver agrees he's "big and beefy" but says that he's never threatened anyone and "never even cussed" at his wife. He and his wife have been separated since the hospitalization, although he has since traveled to Oklahoma Wesleyan University for the graduation ceremonies of two of the couple's three children. "I love my wife, and my wife loves me," Weaver said, "but she's been married to me for 30 years, and she's just plumb wore out. I'm a guy who always lives on the edge, and she's a gal who likes to live as far away from the edge as possible. In this case, opposites attracted, and she's just flat worn out."

Weaver says communication with church leadership has been indirect at best, and he's uncertain what he must do to end the "sabbatical." He's entered counseling, is undergoing therapy for his physical injuries, and has "submitted himself" to other friends in the ministry. Cindy says: "He's been doing what he needs to do, as any Christian needs to do. There has to be reconciliation, after all." She described her husband now as "less agitated – he's still not quite there yet. But we're praying that he will be."

"If I could add one thing to the story," said Weaver last week with considerable emotion, "today, I put my wedding ring back on. When it's all said and done, it'll be another chapter, hopefully, that will make me a better person."