Radical Protestors Crash A House of God
The Left might have finally gone out over its skis. As Minneapolis-St. Paul continues to collapse under the “leadership” of Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, and a church became the latest target of the Left’s crusade against normal Americans.
On Sunday, dozens of professional anti-ICE protesters interrupted a worship service at Cities Church, which is part of the Southern Baptist Convention. They chanted “ICE out,” “Justice for Renee Good,” and “Hands Up Don’t Shoot”—the famous line Michael Brown never actually said—and called the churchgoers “fake Christians.” Protestors prevented the congregation from giving thanks and praise to the Triune God, a serious sin that requires repentance and civil consequences.
What was the supposed crime that ignited the protestors’ fury? Cities elder David Easterwood reportedly leads the local ICE field office in town.
In a strong public statement, Cities Church noted that protesters “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat.” They went on: “Such conduct…will not be tolerated. Invading a church service to disrupt the worship of Jesus—or any other act of worship—is protected by neither the Christian Scriptures nor the laws of this nation.”
Don Lemon, a self-promoter who’s clearly looking to make sure that his name is back in the news, was with the protestors, documenting their desecration on camera. The failed CNN host shoved a microphone in the face of Pastor Jonathan Parnell, who called their actions “shameful” and “unlawful,” and asked the protestors to leave.
Lemon’s a showboating charlatan who’s either too incompetent to understand basic constitutional rights—the First Amendment protects churchgoers, not the activists who disrupted a service in a private building—or, which seems far more likely, is hiding more sinister motives. Lemon’s “playing-dumb” routine was punctured when he admitted to knowing about this “secret operation” beforehand.
The Trump administration quickly highlighted the attack on Cities Church after the events transpired. President Trump called the protestors “agitators and insurrectionists,” and said that they were “professional…troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.”
From a quick glance at the law, the case against them looks to be extremely solid. After perusing the Left’s favorite online hangout, Blusky, Samuel James discovered that the organizers used the platform “to target the specific pastors and mobilize people to the church.” And to no one’s surprise, “99.9% of the posts that come up are mocking the church and hoping bad things happen to its members.” Leftist empathy in action.
The Trump Department of Justice is working to file charges, including violations of the FACE Act—the same law the Biden administration wielded against anti-abortion advocates—and the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the “KKK Act.” The public’s belief in the rule of law will be strengthened if Trump’s DOJ prosecutes each and every perpetrator of the coordinated attack on Cities Church.
Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, stated,
Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this. Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.
Pushing back on those who wanted a slew of pre-dawn arrests on Monday morning, Kurt Schlichter contended that the DOJ needs time to build a proper case and file charges. Though wariness about the DOJ is certainly warranted, the only way the professional agitators can be brought to justice is through careful, methodical work rather than trying to fulfill the impractical timeline set by social media commentators.
Arrests are already being made. As of this writing, Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a St. Paul School Board member, and William Kelly, a notorious professional protestor, have all been put into custody.
The anti-ICE protest at Cities, termed “Operation Pull Up,” was co-organized by the aforementioned Armstrong, a Black Lives Matter activist who calls herself a priest. Armstrong formerly served as the president of the NAACP in Minneapolis, where she seems to be right at home when it comes to separating people from their money. She reportedly received more than $1 million in salary and benefits when she headed an antipoverty nonprofit—which was more money than the nonprofit disbursed in grants during that same span of time.
Kelly is a well-known activist who regularly targets Christian churches. He has been part of a group of protestors who have been harassing congregants of Christ Church in D.C., a plant of the CREC, due to the attendance of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
As Joe Rigney told The Daily Wire, Kelly and his fellow agitators “play music or yell and scream and use bullhorns and loud sound amplification to try to prevent us from singing psalms and hearing the Word preached.” In one case, a church member was sent to the hospital because of a shattered eardrum. Tactics have also included “screaming obscenities at minors as families are entering the sanctuary, forcing a need for police escorts.”
As you would imagine, storming a house of God is not going to help Democrats in the eyes of voters. Political scientist Ryan Burge noted that most Americans, even church-going Democrats, will likely recoil against the protestors’ actions. After all, “70% of Americans are religiously affiliated. 63% are Christians,” Burge pointed out.
While some evangelical elites immediately denounced protestors’ desecration of a house of God, other notable voices have remained silent. Russell Moore has yet to post anything about the incident on his X account. Even though his usage of social media has declined in recent years, Moore never misses an opportunity to issue strong moral denunciations of President Trump and his evangelical supporters.
Christianity Today didn’t mention the event until publishing a preposterous both-sides op-ed on Tuesday by Bonnie Kristian titled, “Protesting in Churches Is Wrong. So Is Immigration Theatre.” (Australian theologian Michael Bird similarly used what happened at Cities Church to talk about extremists on both the Left and Right.) Mike Cosper, who regularly lambastes evangelical Trump voters, laughed off criticism that he wasn’t talking about the event online. When your frame of reference is through the lens provided by the Left, these are the kind of evangelical elites that are produced: people who will thunder about their pet issues but will leave Christians high and dry who are not their kind of evangelicals.
This is yet another reason why rising organizations like the Center for Baptist Leadership are needed: most of the current crop of Protestant elites are not actually elite in any discernible way. At best, they mostly follow the regnant cultural consensus and occasionally issue a bland statement after any hint of danger has passed. Or at worst, they work directly against the interests of most evangelicals. Instead, a healthy, flourishing Protestant elite is needed today to, per Aaron Renn, “lead the regeneration that our nation and our institution so obviously require.”
In the wake of what happened at Cities Church, churches must understand our political and cultural moment. Every church should have a security team that can spot various threats and properly defuse them, preferably before anything takes place. Against the pacifists, Andrew Walker provides the theological grounding for why security teams do not violate Scripture, while Dusty Deevers gives practical advice on tactics, training, and protocol. Churches should consider and follow through on the wisdom presented in both pieces.
Christians overall must be aware of the Left’s history of inciting chaos among the unfavored middle, which has been part of its modus operandi going back decades. The modern Left is essentially a McGovernite-era oddball coalition of the perpetually aggrieved that’s backed by the force of an extensive network of radical groups that are willing to commit wanton acts of violence and mayhem against normal, law-abiding Americans. From bombings to kidnappings to regularly targeting law enforcement officers—the Left aims to upend the very foundations of civil society. Pastors and congregations must understand the threat leftist radicals pose and be ready to counter such actions.
