Will the Real Pontifex Maximus Please Stand?
Long time readers of the Network News are aware that the World Church of the Creator (COTC), a racist, anti-Christian, anti-everything, save-the-white-race group has been linked to violent acts of racism. COTC has clear connections in Montana including Rev. Dan Hasset of Missoula and The Rev. Slim Deardorf of Superior. In fact, the official Pontifex Maximus of the hate group, Matt Hale of East Peoria, IL, was ordained at Deardorf's house last summer at their national annual meeting.All is not well in COTC paradise these days. Rudy "Butch" Stanko of Laurel is apparently defying Hale's authority, claiming the title of Pontifex Maximus. Stanko was at one point chosen by the founder of the group, Ben Klassen, to be the next leader. Klassen has since committed suicide. Stanko was in prison at the time for selling tainted meat to public schools. Since then Stanko has surfaced time and again in Montana for speeding infractions, running for Justice of Peace in Yellowstone County, planning a racist "Rights Fest," and using his Laurel address as an outlet for Church of the Creator books.
The Montana Human Rights Network has obtained a document which shows Stanko's Laurel address as the headquarters for COTC, and him as the Pontifex Maximus. Dated February 1997, the document indicates that Stanko is ordaining new members and authorizing them to perform marriages, bring in new members, "disseminate the Creed and Ideals of the Church; and to perform all such other activities as are encumbent [sic] upon a Minister of the Church."
When the Network recently asked Pontifex Maximus, Matt Hale about this, he claimed "there is little credit to (Stanko's) assertion, given founder Klassen himself denounced Stanko in his last book, Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs." The bitterness between the two Pontifex Maximi began to show up sometime back. In the November 1996 issue of the The Struggle, COTC's newsletter, Hale called on his fellow Creativity members to put pressure on Stanko to either return all of Klassen's books or at least return the proceeds from the sale. When Stanko refused, Hale came to the conclusion that "Rudy Stanko is interested in Rudy Stanko, not the future of Creativity."
Both Hale and Stanko are dedicated racists with a flair for rhetoric. In this spat it appears that Stanko's tendency for self-aggrandizement has brought him into conflict with a kindred spirit.