Far-left agitators harassed families at Christ Church D.C., then took the same intimidation playbook into a Southern Baptist service in St. Paul, targeting worship itself.
This editorial ran in the Tuesday 27 January 2026 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
A familiar activist playbook is everywhere: disrupt worship in the name of “justice.” One heckler hounding Christ Church D.C., a Moscow-linked church plant, also helped disrupt Cities Church in St. Paul last week.
On Sunday, January 18, anti-ICE activists pushed into Cities Church mid-service, chanting in the sanctuary. Pastor Jonathan Parnell tried to speak with them but ended the service when frightened children cried and families fled. That wasn’t a protest. It was trespass, an invasion of worship.
Moscow pastor Joe Rigney connects the two churches. He helped plant Cities Church and served there for over eight years. He is a pastor at Christ Church Moscow and helped plant Christ Church D.C. on Capitol Hill, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth worships. That D.C. church faces harassment every Sunday, with psalm singing and sermons drowned out and vile profanities hurled at families coming and going. One observer watched a protester scream, “F-ck Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” in a “gravely, demonic-sounding tone.”
One agitator, William Kelly (who posts as “DaWokeFarmer”) has turned these confrontations into content and cash. Videos show him screaming the vilest profanities at families and children. Kelly has raised over $113,000 on GoFundMe for a campaign titled “help me to continue agitating the Nazis,” money to “travel the Nation” and clash with law enforcement. That isn’t spontaneous outrage. That is crowdfunded agitation, backed by money.
Rigney warned that the St. Paul disruption landed at a moment when churches already worry about violence, especially after the Aug. 27, 2025 shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during Mass that killed two children. When a crowd rushes a sanctuary, you can’t know whether it’s “protest” or whether an active shooter is moving with the crowd.
The First Amendment restrains government. It does not grant a right to commandeer private property. Protest outside on public sidewalks. Once you enter a sanctuary uninvited and disrupt worship, you cross from speech into trespass and terrorization.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act of 1994, written to curb abortion-clinic blockades and aimed squarely at pro-life protesters, also covers interference with religious worship by “threat of force” or “physical obstruction.” A mob does not get veto power over a worship service. If the Left cheered prosecutions under that law, it cannot suddenly call it “authoritarian” when used to protect Christians.
This is where the media becomes an accomplice. Vice President J.D. Vance said the press has become “agents of propaganda” for a radical fringe that makes law enforcement harder, and he called the Minneapolis situation “engineered chaos,” the direct result of far-left agitators working with local authorities. That critique lands when outlets treat mobbing churches as “noble resistance,” even when children are crying and families are fleeing into freezing weather.
Don Lemon’s “just journalism” alibi fits that pattern. Lemon livestreamed the disruption and teased an “Operation Pull Up” meant to “surprise” targets and “catch them off guard.” That is embedding with a crew on a mission, then pretending you merely observed. If a reporter knew a bank robbery would happen, rode along, and filmed the getaway, no one would accept “First Amendment” as a shield. Jan. 6 defendants who styled themselves “journalists” still got charged when “documenting” meant crossing barriers and entering restricted areas. If the law has teeth for that, it has teeth here, too.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s posture highlights the double standard. Ellison shrugged off the mob shutting down Cities Church, saying people are “getting tender about a church service now” and that “none of us are immune from the voice of the public.” When activists are politically favored, they get soft language. That is partisan theater.
That theater also shows up in immigration politics. Barack Obama removed or returned about 5.3 million illegal immigrants over eight years and even honored ICE official Tom Homan in 2015 with a Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive, the federal government’s top honor for career senior executives.
Now Democrats treat Homan as the devil for saying felons, rapists, and child predators should not get protected status here. The outrage has an incentive: the census counts noncitizens, and House seats track headcount. Roughly 55 million noncitizens are in the U.S., about 72 House seats’ worth of population for the places that give them sanctuary. This is all about power.
This wasn’t a one-off. It was a rehearsal, paid for, filmed, and excused by people who call intimidation “justice.” St. Paul and Christ Church D.C. sit on different maps, but the same paid agitators hit both sanctuaries, using fear to push a far-left agenda and ruin families’ Sunday worship. Law still matters. Protect worship. Protect it before the next mob decides its cause outranks the safety of people gathered on Sunday morning.