Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was among those who entered the sanctuary that morning, federal prosecutors say, describing the demonstration as planned and coordinated in advance. In the months since, the U.S. Department of Justice has charged 39 people in connection with the protest — nine in an initial indictment and 30 more announced later by Attorney General Pam Bondi — with conspiracy against rights of religious freedom at a place of worship and with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law written to shield houses of worship as well as clinics from forcible obstruction. All of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.
A Cities Church congregant, Ann Doucette, has separately filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Minnesota against nine of the defendants, including Lemon and Levy Armstrong, alleging civil conspiracy, trespass and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her complaint says the protesters confronted congregants "in a menacing manner" and left children in the pews in terror, and it asks the court for damages and an order barring the defendants from entering the church again. The criminal case and the civil suit are now moving on separate tracks, with motions to dismiss the federal charges scheduled to be heard in late October.
Set aside, for a moment, which side of the immigration argument a man stands on, and look instead at what actually happened that Sunday morning. A room full of ordinary people — grandmothers, small children, a pastor partway through his sermon — had gathered to sing, to pray, to hear the word of God preached. And into that room came shouting, and the shouting was not aimed at a policy sitting on a desk somewhere in Washington. It was aimed at the worship itself.
A House Set Apart
There is an old and simple truth buried under all this litigation, and it is worth digging back out: a church at worship is not a stage for the nation's arguments. It is not a city council chamber, and it is not a cable news set. It is, however imperfectly, an attempt by broken people to come near to a holy God. Scripture never pretends worship happens in a vacuum, free of hard days and harder politics. But it insists that worship answers to a higher claim than the news cycle.
Jesus told the woman at the well that the hour was coming, and had already arrived, when true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth — not chained to a mountain, not chained to a temple, not chained to the old quarrel between Jew and Samaritan.
"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)
That verse cuts two ways, and both cuts matter here. It cuts against anyone who would turn worship into a weapon, a place to stage a confrontation rather than a place to bow the knee. And it cuts against anyone who imagines worship is only a private feeling, sealed off from how a man treats his neighbor the other six days of the week. Christ did not tell the woman at the well to set aside her convictions. He told her to bring them, honestly, before a God who sees.
My friend, whatever you believe about the enforcement of immigration law — and Christian people can and do disagree about the policies of a nation without disagreeing about the gospel — that argument belongs somewhere. It belongs in the public square, in the ballot box, in the halls where laws are written and amended. It does not belong at the altar. Scripture never counsels a congregation to stop gathering because the world outside has turned hostile. It counsels the opposite: "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching" (Hebrews 10:25). The pastors and congregants who sat in those pews on Jan. 18 did not choose the fight that came to them that morning. But they kept singing. That is the older and better witness — not the shouting in the aisle, but the steadfastness of people who came to meet with God and would not be moved from it. Whatever a court decides about the charges and the lawsuits in the weeks ahead, that witness stands on its own, and it will outlast every headline written about it.