Agitators opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement made quite a ruckus when they invaded a Minnesota church in the middle of a service last month, but they weren’t the first to disrupt Americans during worship.
The Justice Department has charged nine people in connection with the interruption of a service at Cities Church in St. Paul last month, notably including former CNN host Don Lemon. According to the indictment, the agitators coopted the service, chanting activist slogans and preventing worshippers from leaving the church building.
The agitators said they targeted Cities Church because one of the church’s pastors works with ICE. Now, they face charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (which also protects houses of worship) and the Ku Klux Klan Act (which criminalizes attempts to interfere with Americans’ constitutional rights).
The Cities Church invasion drew nationwide attention, yet this did not represent the first time agitators disrupted a church service.
Examples in American History
Church disruptions trace back to colonial America, when Quakers disrupted the services of churches they considered illegitimate, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The Reporter cites examples of black Christians protesting segregation and asserting their equal humanity by staging “kneel-ins” at segregated churches in the 1960s. These “kneel-ins,” however, arguably represent a different kind of disruption from the shouting and blocking at Cities Church.
In 1969, James Forman delivered his “Black Manifesto” at Riverside Church in New York, demanding racial reparations from white people and causing an uproar. Even this disruption does not quite echo Cities Church, because Forman had secured the pastor’s approval before reading the manifesto.
Perhaps the most analogous historical example came in 1989, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, also known as ACT UP, disrupted Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Agitators shouted, lay down in the aisles, and desecrated a Communion host. They faced minor charges under state law.
The Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church has become infamous for protesting at various events, even at the funerals of fallen soldiers. Yet these protesters remained outside sanctuaries, and the Supreme Court has upheld their right to protest.
CatholicVote, an organization that tracks violence against churches, condemned church invasions.
“The right to protest is real, but so is the right to worship in peace,” Logan Church, the group’s director of political operations, told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday.
“Disrupting a Mass isn’t courageous activism, it’s intimidation,” he added. “Churches are sacred spaces, and targeting people in the middle of prayer crosses a basic moral line that no decent society should tolerate. We continue to work with state legislatures in support of their efforts to increase penalties against sacrilege like this.”
Here are seven examples of agitators disrupting church services in recent years. Most of the disruptions have involved left-leaning activists, particularly on abortion, but some on the conservative side have also disrupted services.
1. ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Invasion
On May 8, 2022, pro-abortion activists dressed as characters from the Hulu show “The Handmaid’s Tale” interrupted Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, Fox News reported.
The interruption came on the first Sunday following Politico’s publication of the leaked Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the court overturned the abortion precedent Roe v. Wade (1973).
The Hulu show, based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, presents a dystopia where conservative Christians take away women’s rights and systematically rape fertile women in order to produce children. Pro-abortion activists have suggested that if conservatives outlaw abortion, it will lead to more attacks on women’s rights.
2. Lakewood Church
Pro-abortion agitators interrupted Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on June 5, 2022, EWTN News reported. Police detained the agitators and warned that they would face charges if they returned to the church.
One of the agitators took off her shirt, and shouted expletives, saying, “It’s my body, my f—— choice,” video of the incident shows.
3. St. Veronica’s Church
A nearly naked female agitator and two others shouted pro-abortion slogans during Mass at St. Veronica’s Church in Eastpointe, Michigan, on June 12, 2022, The Christian Post reported. The woman had dark green leaves covering her private parts, and she chanted, “Abortion without apology.”
4. St. Joseph Parish, Chicago
Two days after the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs ruling, abortion agitators disrupted St. Joseph Parish in Chicago, the National Catholic Register reported.
An agitator interrupted the 11 a.m. Mass on June 26, 2022, reading a statement from the Archbishop of Chicago that celebrated Dobbs. One of the agitators held a sign reading, “The Catholic Church has blood on its hands.”
Two of the agitators who identified themselves as part of the disturbance wrote a follow-up post titled “No Peaceful Mass in the Anti-Abortion Church.” They condemned what they called the church’s “long-standing commitment to colonial and patriarchal power structures,” and its opposition to the LGBTQ+ agenda.
5. Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Pro-abortion protesters swarmed the streets around Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, physically blocking a planned pro-life march toward an abortion clinic in July 2022, EWTN News reported.
National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez reported that pro-abortion activists physically blocked the pro-life marchers inside the church. Lopez also filmed the Mass, during which protesters shouted over the priests.
6. Trinity Episcopal Church
A man reportedly attacked people with smoke bombs and pepper spray as they left a concert at Trinity Episcopal Church in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on Jan. 27, 2023. The man reportedly yelled, “White lives matter,” while attacking people as they left the concert, which had an anti-racism theme. The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office brought charges against the man, Nicholas G. Mucci.
Mucci pleaded guilty to aggravated arson and terroristic threats and received an eight-year sentence.
7. Joy Metropolitan Community Church
A group of agitators who support traditional Christian sexuality has also disrupted pro-LGBTQ+ churches. In March 2025, about six or seven men, with children, entered the sanctuary of Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando. WFTV-9 reported that this marked the fourth such disruption in a pattern targeting pro-LGBTQ+ churches.
The outlet reported that the agitators entered the sanctuary and stood up “to demonstrate midway through a sermon.”
