Calling them “agitators and insurrectionists,” President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice have pledged to swiftly and fully investigate the mob that invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, this past Sunday.
Founded in January 2015, the congregation meets in a church building constructed back in 1912 on Summit Hill by an Episcopal body of believers. Visit the Cities Church website and you’ll see their declared goal:
Making joyful disciples of Jesus who remember His realness in all of life.
That joy was put to the test this past Sunday morning. Incensed that a bi-vocational pastor at Cities Church also serves as Acting Field Officer Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an angry mob stormed and disrupted Sunday’s service. Some of the agitators walked right up to the pulpit while others engaged in various combative and profane chants, even hurling insults at those worshipping — including children. There’s a video of a young child cowering during the onslaught.
Trey Turner, who serves as the executive director of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention, denounced the attack, calling it “an unacceptable trauma.” The service was halted and cancelled.
“I believe we must be resolute in two areas,” Turner said in a statement. “Encouraging our churches to provide compassionate pastoral care to these (migrant) families and standing firm for the sanctity of our houses of worship.”
Sunday in Minnesota wasn’t the first time angry mobs desecrated and disrupted a service of worship, of course.
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. Four young girls were killed. Nine parishioners of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, were murdered in 2015 by a white supremacist. The deadliest church shooting in American history took place in 2017 when 26 congregants were killed at Sutherland Springs church in Texas.
Pro-abortion and homosexual agitators and activists have been known to disrupt Catholic masses and other church services for decades.
Jesus warned, “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22). He also said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
Those attacking Cities Church appear to be angry that a minister of the congregation has taken a sworn oath to uphold the immigration laws of the United States. In response, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X, “Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law.”
ICE’s fatal confrontation with Renee Good has spiraled into ongoing protests in Minnesota, a state that seems to welcome its role as something of ground zero for cultural unrest. There is speculation that some of those demonstrating are being paid, the product of a concerted campaign to undermine United States immigration enforcement.
Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary, is urging Christians to not miss the larger ramifications of what’s going on in Minnesota.
“The left is protesting the tactics of ICE and in a larger general sense, the tactics of the federal government, but those activists are actually opposing much more than the tactics of ICE,” he said on Tuesday’s Briefing. “In many ways, they question the legitimacy of ICE itself and frankly, the legitimacy of the US federal government’s concern when it comes to policing its own borders and even maintaining a coherent understanding of citizenship.”
The Cities Church website includes some commentary on the historic building that the protestors stormed and invaded, specifically their stained-glass windows. For centuries, stained glass has served as visual Catechism, a way to teach the Bible in images. But they’ve also been used to symbolize the light that streams through them with being divinely derived.
We read on their site:
The sun filtered through their pigments, telling us a bit of the story of God and His great deeds for us and for our salvation. The things of earth are truly given for our good, not only to enjoy but to see anew once the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ shines in our hearts, taking away our blindness.
But the light of His glory also shines through the things of the world and its history because they all belong to and speak of the Triune God. From inside the church, from inside the gospel, the world is irradiated with the light of God who is light, and we see it more truly from inside than those do outside.
But these windows also serve that world outside. In the long darkness of our winters, in the evenings, this summit hill is lit with the glow of our windows from the inside out. The light from within the church — God, the gospel, we who are the “light of the world” — shines through these same windows telling a bit of the story of what God has given for the life of the world. They beckon people to come and see how the Light has shone and is shining in the darkness, and to know that the darkness has not and cannot overcome it.
Agitators can storm a building, protest its minister, and even stop a worship service, but nothing will stop the march of the Gospel or block out the Light of the World, Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, we prepare for persecution and pray for the peace and safety of our Christian brothers and sisters in Minnesota and beyond.
