I don’t expect much from the Episcopal Church, but it still speaks volumes when a bishop refuses to condemn the invasion of a church service.
Last weekend, a group of agitators invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, taking over the sanctuary, terrifying children, and chanting, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”
It wasn’t a peaceful protest. It wasn’t a demonstration. It was a horde of Vandals entering the sanctuary and coopting it for their political agenda.
Such an attack reminds me more of the sack of Rome than Martin Luther King, Jr.
It doesn’t matter that the agitators claimed one of the church’s pastors is the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in St. Paul. It doesn’t matter that they claimed to be opposing ICE. There isn’t even evidence of that particular pastor’s presence at this service—and that wouldn’t justify agitators harassing him there, anyway.
It certainly doesn’t justify them disrupting the First Amendment rights of others in the congregation.
Law enforcement has arrested at least three of the ringleaders behind this invasion, and I pray that more arrests are coming—because activists need to learn that this is unacceptable. You don’t bring your political demands into the sanctity of a church in the middle of worship. I can’t believe that message even needs to be said, but apparently, it does.
Sadly, they it seems won’t be hearing it from the leadership of the Episcopal Church.
Episcopal Bishop Carries Water for Church Invaders
On Friday, CNN’s Audie Cornish asked Craig Loya, the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, how he responded to concerns about the invasion of Cities Church.
“People are also looking at images of a protest in a church, people going in and saying look, the pastor’s affiliated with ICE or whatever they believe, and interrupting services,” Cornish noted. “Do you think that was the right thing to do?”
When presented with this question, the very least a commonsense American can say is, “No.”
I would argue that Americans, in the spirit of the First Amendment, are duty-bound to say more.
I would argue that American religious leaders should full-throatedly condemn the invasion of a church service in pursuit of a political agenda. This is a house of God, and the agitators sought to turn it into a raucous protest.
The “right reverend” Loya did none of that, however.
Instead, he carried water for the agitators, suggesting that the invasion might have been justified because ICE has been deporting illegal aliens in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
“I think part of what you’re seeing in that protest speaks to the depth of pain that people are experiencing right now in Minnesota,” the bishop said. “And the, really, desperation and longing to end what ICE is doing in our communities and to many of us and our neighbors.”
Episcopal ‘Logic’
Sure, these agitators harassed innocent Christians as they sought to worship God. Sure, they coopted a church service and bragged about shutting it down. Sure, they probably violated the law by depriving their fellow Americans of their First Amendment right to exercise their religion.
But, you’ve got to understand the deep trauma they experienced at the hands of ICE. They’ve been whipped up into a frenzy by the legacy media’s lies about ICE detaining a 5-year-old or any of the long list of false accusations.
They’ve been radicalized by Gov. Tim Walz’s suggestion that President Donald Trump is at war with Minnesota and that ICE is an “occupation.”
They just can’t stand the fact that we have laws in this country, and the horrible thought that illegal aliens who broke them—especially when those illegals have also committed other crimes—should be deported.
Never mind the pastor asking the agitators to leave, and facing a classic situation of trespass.
Never mind the congregants who gathered to worship, but found themselves surrounded by shouting activists.
Never mind the children who are holding close to their parents as radicals shout at them in the middle of a church service.
All that “pain” is apparently inconsequential to this church “leader” who does not deserve the title of “reverend.” There’s nothing “right” about his willingness to carry water for this atrocity.
I’ve said it before, and I expect I’ll be saying it again many times: Thank God I left the Episcopal Church.
