Two days after left-wing “agitators jarringly disrupted [their] worship gathering,” the elders of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn. issued a statement addressing the incident. “Jesus is real,” they began. Thus, from the outset, they framed the issue as a clash of worldviews, correctly implying that those who would break up Christian worship do believe the truth that Jesus is God the Son Incarnate, the Savior and Lord of all. That true belief is protected in America, although some extremists choose to act and pretend as if it were not.

Such hostility towards Christian teaching is a great loss to American society because it drives Christian living to the margins. “When we gather on Sunday mornings to worship him, we are gladly giving ourselves to what is most central and sacred in our life together,” the elders continued. “‘We worship Jesus’ stretches as the main banner of our church, alongside two other pursuits that flow from it: loving one another and seeking the good of the Twin Cities.”

And yet, for a reason that had nothing to do with the church (a lay elder’s day-job with ICE), left-wing agitators invaded its gathering and brought worship to a halt — at the very moment the pastor was going to read Jesus’s command to love. “They accosted members of our congregation, frightened children, and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat,” the elders recalled. “Such conduct is shameful, unlawful, and will not be tolerated. Invading a church service to disrupt the worship of Jesus — or any other act of worship — is protected by neither the Christian Scriptures nor the laws of this nation.”

The elders called on “local, state, and national leaders to protect this fundamental right” to worship freely and said they were “evaluating next steps with our legal counsel.”

Not everyone agreed with the church’s interpretation of the law, or even the circumstances of the protest. Ex-CNN host Don Lemon joined the left-wing demonstrators who entered the church building, offering sympathetic commentary during a lengthy livestream. “This is what the First Amendment is about, the freedom to protest. I’m sure people here don’t like it, but protests are not comfortable.” Lemon sharpened his rhetoric on Monday, claiming that the church members were “entitled, and that entitlement comes from a supremacy — a white supremacy.”

But Lemon’s interpretation was a minority view. “Don Lemon has an issue with God,” countered FRC President Tony Perkins. “He has an issue with what God has to say about marriage and about human sexuality. And, therefore, he feels that he has this right to charge into a church and attack.” But, Perkins added, “since when do you have the right to break the law?”

Lemon is “not making the important distinction here,” countered attorney and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) on “Washington Watch.” “It’s one thing to stand on the on the edge of a street in a lawfully designated area. And it’s another thing to actually deceive people and go in and ambush churchgoers, sit there quietly and wait till you have your moment.”

Compared to other political attacks on churches, this was an “escalation,” agreed David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview. Many other demonstrations have been vile, but at least they were staged “outside the church,” he said on “Washington Watch.” “This was inside the church. This is, I think, in part the fruit of years of cultural messaging that says Christians are not just dangerous or bigoted, but immoral and subversive, and that in some way we deserve this.”

Within hours of the disruption, Trump administration officials in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced plans to investigate the incident for violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law used by the Biden administration to target peaceful pro-life protestors at abortion centers.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) criticized this plan on Lemon’s YouTube show. “The FACE Act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking reproductive rights … so that people, for a religious reason, cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers,” he claimed. “How they are stretching either of these laws [the FACE Act or the Ku Klux Klan Act] to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior of a religious leader is beyond me.”

Ellison’s response shows that his knowledge of the FACE Act is informed by pro-abortion lore rather than by an actual reading of the bill’s text. “The late Orrin Hatch, senator from Utah, added at the very end [of the legislative process] a provision that says … it applies to religious institutions and to disrupting a worship service, and it’s never been used for that,” Perkins clarified. “Conservatives don’t like this law. But, I tell you, one way to make it go away is to apply it to the Left that is … disrupting church services.”

Ellison is likely only familiar with the provision of the FACE Act announcing penalties for “Whoever”:

“(1) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;” (emphasis added)

However — the “(1)” should be a clue — this is not the only category of behavior prohibited under the FACE Act. It also announces penalties for whoever:

“(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or

“(3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship” [emphasis added].

Violations of the FACE Act “involving exclusively a nonviolent physical obstruction” face a fine of up to $10,000 and six months’ imprisonment, and criminal penalties increase from there. “The question is, how severe was this? How much did they obstruct their ability to worship? And that would be determine really the severity of this crime,” Tenney analyzed. “I think the really deceitful nature of this is what makes it so offensive — is that they snuck into the church as if they were worshipers, but really they were going in really to attack people who believe in Christ.”

“This is not really even an overtly political church,” Closson reiterated. “This is a church that gathers every Sunday on the Lord’s Day. It’s just a normal, faithful, Southern Baptist church. But it was targeted just simply because of this alleged connection to ICE.”

“We welcome respectful dialogue about present issues, and about how the realness of Jesus, as revealed in the Bible, provides the only final answers to the world’s most complex and intractable problems,” continued the Cities Church eldership.

“Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, lived, died, and rose again for the rescue of all who put their faith in him,” they proclaimed. “He offers a love that transcends cultures, borders, policies, and politics. As those who have been loved and rescued by him, we will not shrink from worshiping Jesus, nor will we stop ‘teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah’ (Acts 5:42).”