Mark Driscoll: Real St. Valentine Is Turning Over In His Grave at What February 14 Has Become

Pastor Mark Driscoll is weighing in this week on an upcoming holiday that many women love but men dread, saying the real St. Valentine would be “mortified” by what Feb. 14 has become.

In a Wednesday post on his blog, the former pastor of the now disbanded Mars Hill Church in Seattle who now leads Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, highlighted the spiritual roots of Valentine’s Day.

While accounts of Valentine’s remain murky, Driscoll explained, Valentine was allegedly Christian and was canonized as saint by the Catholic Church. His name derived from “valens” a Latin word that means strong and powerful.

And the holiday as celebrated is far removed from the Christian heroism that is attributed to him through several legends.

“Around AD 498, Pope Gelasius chose February as the day for commemorating Valentine’s life because that was the day he reportedly died as a Christian martyr around AD 270. That day proved to be serendipitous, as the medieval legend emerged that birds select their mates on February 14, thereby associating the day with romance and love,” Driscoll said.

But that day became closely associated with what Driscoll called the “Hefner-esque” day of Luperealia, a Roman fertility feast that occurred on February 15, “a drunken naked crazy-fest not unlike modern-day Mardi Gras celebrations.”

This overtly pagan festival was “dedicated to the god of partying, Faunus, and was marked by the usual frat-boy nonsense of naked guys running through the streets while crowds danced and drank heavily, and young singles enjoyed ‘hooking up,'” Driscoll said.

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SOURCE: The Christian Post
Brandon Showalter