When Protest Enters the Sanctuary
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Over the weekend, protesters interrupted a church service in Minnesota connected to an ICE field office director who also serves as a pastor. That disruption set off a familiar Christian argument almost immediately: some pointing to Romans 13 and the obligation to obey governing authorities, others pointing to Jesus overturning tables in the temple. What followed between us wasn’t a neat debate, but a real disagreement about protest, power, and what faith looks like when it collides with state violence.
From the beginning, we were clear about one thing: this wasn’t about opposing protest itself. It was about the space where it happened. As Melissa put it, the issue wasn’t whether ICE should be criticized, but whether interrupting a church service was the right way to do it. Matthew agreed it was a slippery slope, especially when churches are supposed to be places of safety, even while acknowledging that legality and morality don’t always line up.
That tension—between what is legal and what is right—kept surfacing.
While researching the church, Matthew pulled the actual sermon transcript from that Sunday. The sermon focused on “Love Thy Neighbor” from John 13, but what stood out was how narrowly that love was framed. The pastor distinguished between “neighborly love” and “familial love,” emphasizing love within the Christian community rather than outward toward everyone. That distinction mattered, especially given the role some church leaders play outside the pulpit.
As Melissa noted, “Everyone is a neighbor,” even when sermons quietly redefine who counts.
The conversation widened when we talked about the legal response to the protest. Three people were charged under the FACE Act—a law originally designed to protect access to abortion clinics but also extended to places of worship. What struck both of us was the irony: peaceful protesters facing civil rights charges while state violence, including officer-involved shootings, often goes uninvestigated.
Melissa read directly from the FACE Act language, noting that the key issue wasn’t force or violence, but “interfere.” And yet, by many accounts, worship eventually continued, people engaged with the protesters, and no one appeared physically threatened. That raised an uncomfortable question: when does disruption become necessary, and who gets to decide?
History kept answering that question for us, whether we wanted it to or not.
Matthew brought up Robert P. Jones’s account of the 1899 lynching of Samuel Thomas Wilkes, where white congregants left Easter worship and boarded trains to witness a public killing. He talked about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and about civil rights activists being pulled out of churches or denied entry while trying to worship. Churches, he reminded us, have never been neutral spaces. They’ve been sites of both sanctuary and violence.
That history complicated the idea that churches should always be shielded from protest.
The conversation shifted again when Matthew read a prayer offered by a Minnesota pastor urging God to empower ICE, calling officers “heroic servants” and asking God to “break the teeth of the wicked.” This prayer, published by the Center for Baptist Leadership, was presented as a model for other churches to follow.
Melissa responded by naming what that prayer erased: refugees, asylum seekers, families with active legal cases, and children— including a five-year-old used as bait in an ICE operation. “That should not be allowed,” she said plainly.
For Melissa, the hypocrisy was hard to ignore. Romans 13 gets invoked to demand obedience from ordinary people, while government agencies quietly violate constitutional protections, including the Fourth Amendment. “Why is it okay,” she asked, “when our own government is not following the law?”
That question lingered.
By the end of the episode, we still didn’t agree on tactics. Melissa maintained that interrupting a church service wasn’t the right way to protest. Matthew admitted he didn’t love it either. But both of us kept returning to the same uneasy truth: change rarely comes without disruption, and people in power almost always tell the oppressed they’re doing it wrong.
As Matthew said near the end, “You can hold two things in your head at the same time.” You can disagree with how something was done and still understand why it happened. You can reject violence and still recognize that protest often makes people uncomfortable on purpose.
We didn’t resolve the tension. We sat in it.
And maybe that’s the most honest place for Christians to be right now—asking who gets to claim God, who gets protected by the law, and what faith looks like when it refuses to stay convenient.