A couple of weeks after a group of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters in St. Paul, Minn., unexpectedly interrupted Sunday worship to the point that the Southern Baptist-affiliated Cities Church called off the remainder of its service, and with at least seven people facing federal charges as of Friday for “conspiracy to deprive rights” of religious believers, the debate continues to be contentious.

Like much of the tension over immigration policies, procedures and enforcement, whether such behavior is ungodly or righteous depends on who you ask.

On Jan. 18, a group of between 30 and 40 protesters stormed Cities Church, which owns a Gothic-style 1912 building. Protesters told authorities they targeted the conservative congregation because one of its pastors works as an acting field officer director for ICE.

President Donald Trump denounced the activity, calling the interrupters “agitators” and “insurrectionists,” who are seen on online videos angrily approaching the pulpit and “violating the sanctuary,” according to the Southern Baptist Convention.

They engaged in loud, disruptive behavior, such as blowing whistles, yelling foul language and taunting congregants. Some videos show children looking scared by the chaos.

The Department of Homeland Security, which joined the Department of Justice in making the arrests, which included terminated CNN anchor Don Lemon, who said he was covering the protest as a journalist, said the event constituted “a planned riot.”

Minnesota has become ground zero for anti-ICE demonstrations following two separate, recent fatal shootings of civilian protesters by ICE officers, who have been conducting a concentrated deportation enforcement. The shootings are under investigation.

What happened at the church was clearly illegal, said University of Colorado Professor Jeffrey Scholes. He teaches at the Colorado Springs campus and also is chair of the department of philosophy, co-director of the Center for the Study of Evangelicalism and director of the Center for Religious Diversity and Public Life.

“Church property is private property, and disrupting a service is not protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “As with most places of worship, there is no ticket or official membership card needed to enter. However, this does not grant one the right to do or say whatever one wants once inside the property.”

The First Amendment prevents the state from impinging on rights to speech, but “your freedom to exercise that right stops at the doors of private establishments — churches, McDonald’s or college classrooms,” Scholes said. Other houses of worship, including mosques and synagogues, also would be included.

He guesses Cities Church protesters knew that and decided to make a statement anyway, while understanding they were risking arrest.

“The right of free speech wasn’t their goal,” he said. “That’s not the whole story; this specific context is symbolically important.”

Another consideration is that the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act also protects places of religious worship, said Andrew Nussbaum, a Colorado Springs attorney who specializes in cases involving religious rights.

In addition to protecting places such as Planned Parenthood clinics, it also “protects churches and other places of religious worship from physical disruption,” he said.

While churches are known to be welcoming to anyone who wants to participate in services, programs or activities, many Christian denominations consider church property to be holy ground and believe what the protesters did was not only illegal but also sacrilegious.

In denouncing the event, the head of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention, Trey Turner, called the surprise attack “an unacceptable trauma,” notes Paul Batura, vice president of communications for Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian ministry based in Colorado Springs that produces books, video, audio and radio programs and other materials to support Christian family life and pastors.

“I believe we must be resolute in two areas,” Turner said in a statement. “Encouraging our churches to provide compassionate pastoral care to these (migrant) families and standing firm for the sanctity of our houses of worship.”

The people who participated in the incursion at Cities Church “appear to be angry that a minister of the congregation has taken a sworn oath to uphold the immigration laws of the United States,” Batura wrote on Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen.

Batura added that as they pray for fellow Christians in Minnesota, Christians also “prepare for persecution.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that “Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law.” 

Whether what the church protesters did differs from staging a noisy sit-in at a Target store, like some ICE demonstrators have done while calling for the Minneapolis-based chain to resist ICE enforcement, also is a topic of debate.

The Rev. Lee Ann Bryce, lead minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ, said she sees value in the protest at Cities Church.

“When real harm is being done, especially to vulnerable communities, the faithful response involves listening and action even when it’s uncomfortable,” she said.

Churches should be places of safety, she said, and protest is “a moral language used when people feel unheard.”

If something like the Cities Church incident were to occur at her church, Bryce said the first priority would be safety and de-escalation, followed by pastoral care.

“Then we’d ask deeper questions: Why did this happen? What pain showed up at our door?”

Bryce said she hasn’t addressed the issue from the pulpit, but if she did, her message would be: “The gospel calls us to courage over comfort. Protests signal moral urgency. The faithful response isn’t panic or condemnation, but discernment, compassion and courage.”

In the arrest affidavit, a special agent said that the agitators “intimidated, harassed, oppressed and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short and forced parishioners to flee the church out of a side door, which resulted in one female victim falling and suffering an injury.”

In some cases, protesters prevented church-goers from leaving the building, according to the affidavit.

Scholes likens the action at Cities Church to that of the nearly 100 clergy and faith leaders, some wearing clerical stoles and collars, who were arrested on Jan. 23 while protesting ICE deportations at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The clerics, who sang, prayed and waved signs at the local airport, were cited for misdemeanor trespassing and violating terms of their demonstration permit, which included blocking a road at the airport and ignoring law enforcement commands to disperse.

Cities Church is “well within its rights” to claim the protesters had trespassed, Scholes said.

In the biblical book of Matthew, Jesus is described as overturning the tables of moneychangers and benches of dove sellers in Jerusalem, known to be tied to practices of extortion. “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a ‘den of robbers,’” Jesus told the people.

But Jesus did so outside – not inside – the walls of the temple, Scholes noted.

The nation has logged close to 400 church shootings since 2000, according to The Violence Project – including when a gunman killed two students and injured another 17 people during a mass last August at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.

The 2007 shooting at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, when two teenage sisters were killed before an armed church security guard confronted the shooter and shot him several times, though his death was ruled a suicide, led more churches to hire armed security guards or train parishioners to be on alert.

It is unclear what kind of security measures Cities Church had, though local police said they had increased patrols after last year’s shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church.

“No cause – political or otherwise – justifies the desecration of a sacred space or the intimidation and trauma inflicted on families gathered peacefully in the house of God. What occurred was not protest; it was lawless harassment,” Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, posted on Facebook regarding the disruption of worship at Cities Church.