The Invasion of Cities Church is a Lesson for All Christians
By now, you’ve seen the videos of what happened on January 18, 2026, the Lord’s Day, at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. A cadre of anti-ICE agitators and Walz’s warriors, orchestrated by civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong and affiliated with the Racial Justice Network and Black Lives Matter Minnesota, deliberately invaded the sanctuary. Infiltrating the assembly, they rose amid the opening prayer, chanting “ICE out!” and “Justice for Renee Good,” encircling congregants, terrifying young children, and forcing the elders to suspend the service. Among the key organizers was career activist William Kelly, a self-described combat veteran known for his disruptive tactics, who was captured on video storming the sanctuary, accosting members, and contributing to the mob’s harassment.
The protestors targeted bi-vocational Pastor David Easterwood—absent that day but serving faithfully on staff while acting as director of ICE’s St. Paul Field Office. His role illustrates the biblical call for Christians to exercise authority in civil spheres: enforcing just borders, removing violent criminals, and safeguarding communities from lawlessness. Such service aligns with Scripture’s teaching that nations must steward their boundaries given to them by God (Acts 17:26). As Albert Mohler reminded his listeners on The Briefing Monday morning, ICE is a federal law enforcement agency that, contrary to what the Left implicitly suggests, was not established just last year as Trump’s personal stormtroopers.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, embedded with the agitators and previewing the breach in a livestream, amplified the profanity through his live YouTube broadcast. Confronting Senior Pastor Jonathan Parnell amid the chaos, Lemon lectured on the First Amendment, insisting on “freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest” as justification for the terror inflicted. Parnell, with firm conviction, rebuked the intrusion as “unacceptable” and “shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship,” affirming, “We’re here to worship Jesus because the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.” When Lemon pressed for dialogue, Parnell replied, “No one is willing to talk. I have to take care of my church and my family so I ask that you would also leave this building.” Lemon’s callous dismissal, that making people “uncomfortable” and traumatizing children is “what protesting is about,” unmasks the moral bankruptcy of woke politics, its ideological anarchy. Despite Lemon’s erroneous First Amendment protestations, the Justice Department has signaled that he and other trespassers may be charged under both the FACE and KKK Acts, which prohibit intimidation and conspiracy against civil rights.
Parnell’s resolute defense merits profound commendation: remaining composed, redirecting the confrontation to Christ’s lordship, modeling the shepherd’s duty to protect the flock without capitulation. Lemon’s actions, however, racializing the diverse congregation as “entitled white supremacists” and defending mob tactics, epitomize woke ideology’s inversion: too radical for CNN, it perverts justice into license for disorder, distorting biblical hospitality into demands for national dissolution while slandering ICE’s vital mission as oppression.
Kelly’s involvement extends beyond Minnesota. As Doug Wilson pointed out this week, Kelly has been linked to ongoing harassment at Christ Church DC, where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth attends. For the past six months, Kelly and fellow protesters have gathered weekly outside the church, using bullhorns, chants, and obscenities to disrupt services, scream at minors, and intimidate families, requiring police escorts and resulting in one member’s hospitalization from a shattered eardrum. This pattern reveals a network of paid activists exploiting causes to wreak havoc on faithful assemblies.
This is but a commencement. The American Church has always been a target of the Left, especially Evangelical churches that represent the antithesis of Leftist ambitions. It is more apparent now than ever. Cities Church is multiethnic, but to BLM protestors and Don Lemon, it is a participant in “whiteness,” “fascism,” and whatever else comes to mind, and these great oppressors, must be stamped out. The invasion this past Sunday is a product of an insidious framework that cloaks anarchy in compassion and justice, weaponizing racial grievances to assail godly order. Family Research Council data reveals the escalation: 415 hostile incidents against churches in 2024, with armed aggressions doubling, and 1,384 acts from 2018 to 2024.
Enablers bear culpability: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, through sanctuary policies, obstruct federal cooperation amid the Biden-era migration crisis, fostering environments where “loud and urgent” dissent devolves into sacral violation. In short, Waltz and Frey are exemplify the opposite of a good and godly magistrate who has a duty, as the Westminster Confession puts it, “to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered… to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.” Neither shall the pretense of “infidelity” be allowed to justify or excuse violence against religious assemblies. Make no mistake, what Cities Church suffered for what, to the left, is infidelity to the prevailing orthodoxies of Minnesota. Waltz and Frey are dutiful priests of the new orthodoxy and prophets of lawlessness and persecution.
The governor and mayor cannot plead ignorance. Rioting and criminality have ruled Minneapolis for some time, and federal law enforcement has been clear in its description of the broader situation: “Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too. They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
As Joe Rigney, founding pastor of Cities Church, rightly stated:
“Responsibility for this lawlessness is squarely placed not only on the agitators themselves, but the Democratic politicians who have aided and encouraged them—from Joe Biden, who willfully allowed the mass invasion of illegal migrants during his four years in office, to Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, who have refused to cooperate with federal agents and instead have encouraged their activists to ‘protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully.’ The last qualification is a vain and ineffectual attempt to contain the chaos and disorder that Walz has unleashed on Minnesota’s citizens. For the left, their only law is lawlessness.”
Romans 13:1–7 establishes the magistrate’s divine responsibility to restrain evil and uphold public order. When churches are intimidated without consequence, lawlessness is rewarded. Scripture warns that delayed justice emboldens wrongdoing (Eccl. 8:11). Civil authorities already possess the necessary tools: laws against trespass, conspiracy, and interference with religious worship—including Minnesota statute § 609.28—plainly prohibit obstructing access to a church.
The desecration of divine service at Cities Church summons faithful resilience. Christians should call on magistrates to execute justice swiftly, and should not succumb to woke stratagems, nor the schemes of the devil. Displays like those at Cities Church are meant to envelop ordinary Christian citizens with a spirit of fear. As ever, the church should resist any schemes that would silence the gospel and disrupt worship. “Sovereign Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29).
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
