A brazen invasion of Christian worship

At most churches in America, you don’t need a police escort to get to church. But for the last few months, parishioners at Christ Church DC have had to pass through a police barricade in order to attend worship service. That’s because paid professional protestors have targeted the church each week with bullhorns, chants, and harassment that runs before, during, and after the service. (Full disclosure: I’m a pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, which established Christ Church DC at a worship service in July 2025.)

The protests have particularly targeted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who attends the church with his family. Since the protests began in October, attendees have been treated to profanity laden harassment as they enter and exit, as men and women with bullhorns scream the most vile accusations at families (including those with young children). One member went to the hospital after a protester let loose with the full force of a bullhorn in his ear. The protests continue during the worship service, as the agitators attempt to drown out the psalm singing and sermon with noise and sound amplification.

But over the weekend in Minnesota, left-wing activists took things to a whole new level, storming the worship gathering of Cities Church in St. Paul and disrupting the service to such a degree that the pastors were forced to cancel the service. (Full disclosure: I was a founding pastor of Cities Church and served there for eight years.) The activists targeted Cities after they discovered that one of their pastors worked for the ICE office in St. Paul.

The disruption was planned and coordinated, as agitators sat through the first part of the service before standing and chanting accusations at the pastors and members. The agitators proudly filmed and posted themselves screaming at children, harassing churchgoers, and demanding that they denounce ICE and accusing them of being “fake Christians” for not “standing with their Latino and Somali neighbors.”

The effort was coordinated with Don Lemon, former anchor at CNN, who livestreamed the entire disruption, comparing it to the Civil Rights Movement and justifying it on the grounds that “people are angry” and the Constitution allows them to disrupt and make people uncomfortable. Lemon reiterated this justification in an interview with lead pastor Jonathan Parnell, after the pastor said, “It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship."

This brazen invasion of a Christian worship gathering demonstrates the lawlessness of the modern left. Not content to disrupt lawful law enforcement activity, they have now resorted to targeting law enforcement officers, their families, and anyone connected to them, even in a house of worship. And they are breaking the law by invading a church in order to defend those who broke the law by invading our country.

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.

So how should American Christians respond to the arrival of chaos and disorder in our own cities and churches?

First, we ought to pray that our government officials would uphold law and order, fulfilling their God-given mandate to punish evildoers (Romans 13:1-4). We should pray and demand that they be a terror to evil conduct, and that they bear the sword righteously and purposefully, carrying out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. This includes praying for ICE as they carry out their lawful mission “to protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.” It also means praying and demanding that local and federal officials prosecute those who invade worship gatherings to intimidate parishioners.

Second, we ought to grow in our ability to resist such intimidation. We must recognize the schemes of the devil at play. That includes appeals to Christian kindness and love to justify lawbreaking. It includes twisting Scripture so that the biblical call to care for foreigners and sojourners means that you can’t regulate who enters your country or deport those here illegally. It includes assaults on Christian reputation, claiming that you’re a bad Christian if you don’t submit to the left’s ideology of decay, disorder, and death. Christians must learn the tactics of God’s enemies and resist them with fortitude and joy, refusing to appease and placate the lawless mob.

Finally, we ought to take comfort from the Scriptures. The book of Acts is filled with the kind of situations that we are seeing in America today, whether in Washington, D.C., or St. Paul, Minn. Mobs and rioters shouting slanders and threatening Christian leaders. Government officials who are either complicit in the lawlessness or feckless in the face of mobs. The early Christians responded to that chaos with joyful and gladhearted courage. They recognized the sovereign hand of God in the chaos, and they prayed to Him, saying, “Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). And the living God answered that prayer.

May He do the same in our day.