How does the Left justify political violence?
Americans got a revealing clue earlier this year when agitators disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul. The church invasion proved distrubing enough—but the aftermath has proven quite revealing, as agitators and their allies defend the attack by reframing it as an act of peaceful protest.
On Sunday, Jan. 18, agitators entered the church in the middle of service, stationed themselves in the center of the sanctuary, and got up and started chanting. They refused to leave when asked. They shouted “ICE out!” They chanted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”
One of the agitators filmed himself screaming at young children. According to the Justice Department’s indictment, agitators told kids that their parents were “Nazis” and “going to hell.” Agitators allegedly blocked parents from getting to their children in Sunday school.
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Churchgoers reported fearing that they were witnessing an active-shooter event, a fear that is unfortunately not irrational in America today.
Cities Church Pastor Jonathan Parnell, recalling the event, said the agitators “had stormed into the house of God, a place of peace and refuge, and they defiled it with rage.”
Of former CNN host Don Lemon, who had confronted Parnell at the pulpit, the pastor said he was “in on the terror.”
“They were here to incite violence,” the pastor added.
Was this a protest, or was it closer to an act of terrorism?
Regardless of whether the invasion qualifies as terrorism under the law, it terrified churchgoers for the sin of worshipping God on a Sunday morning.
What had the members of Cities Church ostensibly done to deserve this harassment? The agitators justified their actions by noting that one of the church’s pastors works for Immigration and Custom's Enforcement.
The Justifications
Most Americans are horrified by the idea of political protesters trespassing in the sacred space of a church and derailing the service with divisive political chants. It’s one thing for protesters to stand outside on the sidewalk and shout at churchgoers—it’s something else entirely for them to not only set foot in the church but commandeer a service, terrifying congregants.
Yet Democrats have not only failed to condemn the church invasion, but defended the agitators as if they had engaged in free speech.
When asked about the church invasion, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said, “People have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace, and none of us are immune from the voice of the public.”
“Chanting cannot be a crime—it’s freedom of expression,” he added.
When Lemon faced charges for allegedly taking part in the deprivation of churchgoers’ rights, Democrats defended the former CNN anchor, saying he had been “doing his job.” I reached out to ask them if they would condemn the invasion, and they did not respond.
The most egregious justifications came from the agitators themselves.
A few days after the invasion, Lemon spoke of an “entitlement” among Cities Church’s congregation.
“I think people who are in religious groups like that—it’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled, and that entitlement comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy,” he said.
In a recent motion to dismiss the charges against them, 31 of the 38 defendants claimed that the Justice Department was prosecuting them “to retaliate” against their speech and for choosing “a venue for their message at a church that is politically aligned with the government.”
Does the fact that one of the church’s pastors works with ICE make the church “politically aligned with the government” such that it is justified to deprive churchgoers of their First Amendment right to worship God?
This logic is revealing. The worshippers hadn’t done anything to deserve this. They were targeted because activists associated the church with a government policy they opposed. In those activists’ minds, this somehow made targeting innocents acceptable.
The defendants claim that their actions were “limited to pure speech and assembly.” They further state, "There are no allegations supporting a conclusion that Defendants' actions were intended to interfere with freedom of worship."
Such a claim would be hard to take seriously if the consequences weren’t so significant.
To state the obvious, there’s no way you’re not interfering with the freedom of worship when you invade private property and take over a church service. Perhaps these people meant to deliver a political message, but they have no excuse if they claim they didn’t intend to violate churchgoers’ rights. They celebrating having “shut” the church service “down.” It doesn’t get clearer than that.
What This Means
The defense of the Cities Church invasion follows a familiar pattern.
Americans witnessed the same rhetorical maneuver during the riots of 2020. The Left’s defenders minimized real harm because it came in pursuit of ostensibly noble aims. In some cases, they suggested the innocents who suffered actually deserved it. Most alarmingly, critics were told what they witnessed with their own eyes wasn’t even violence at all.
Those riots claimed the lives of at least 26 people and resulted in more than $2 billion in paid insurance claims, becoming the most destructive riots in U.S. history. Yet Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan compared them to the “summer of love.”
Time and time again, those on the Left insisted that the riots only destroyed property, not people—but the destruction of property is a real crime, it can devastate livelihoods, and some of those fires also killed people.
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Politics does not justify wanton destruction, and it certainly doesn’t justify acts of orchestrated harassment that verge on terrorism.
Democrats wouldn’t hesitate to condemn the invasion of a mosque in the middle of daily prayers, but they can’t seem to bring themselves to say Christians have the same First Amendment rights as Muslims.
Worse, the agitators seek to redefine their acts as a form of free speech.
If destructive and deadly riots are a summer of love, if terrorizing churchgoers in their own building on a Sunday morning is an act of protest, where is the limiting principle?
It terrifies me to think that my fellow Americans think innocent Christians in church on a Sunday morning do not deserve the ordinary protections of civil society, just because agitators think their political message is more important.
That’s why the Cities Church case matters.
The question isn’t merely whether the agitators broke the law—they’ll have their day in court.
The deeper question is whether Americans think that some people no longer deserve the ordinary protections of civil society because they’re perceived to be on the “wrong” side.
When agitators terrorize worshippers in a church and half the country rushes to explain why they had it coming, we’re no longer debating immigration policy. We’re debating whether political fanaticism has become more important than liberty itself.
This article is a commentary on analysis initially published on The Daily Signal.
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