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“ (Note that many churches in Minneapolis are having “trouble worshipping” because their congregants are getting snatched on Sunday mornings on their way to service.)”

This parenthetical is exactly why I was thinking this kerfuffle is extraordinarily ironic.

January 21 2026 Facebook post by: Matt Mikalatos 

What you have to understand is that the protest in the church in Minneapolis was wildly, more-than-expected, spectacularly successful.

Laying aside whether you agree with it or not, it over-achieved what the protesters set out to do, mostly because (a) Christians have gone wild making sure everyone knows it was not good and (b) the evangelical church’s complicity with government authorities caused immediate responses from the DOJ, which blew things up even bigger.

Let’s explore that a little. We’re going to need a little context. (And for strangers who see this post: I’m a devout Christian. I was a minister for many years, I have a degree from a conservative seminary, I’ve written and am still writing plenty of Christian books and content so if we could keep the “you’re the anti-Christ” comments to just one or two I’d appreciate it.)

So, context.

Things happening in Minneapolis right now include:

* A woman killed in an encounter with ICE

* ICE breaking into an elderly US citizen’s home and dragging him out in his underwear for hours before returning him home without apology or explanation

* Off-duty Minneapolis cops getting pulled over by ICE *because of the color of their skin*

* Peaceful protesters being assaulted; ICE using chemical weapons on peaceful protesters

* ICE illegally arresting and detaining people without warrants

* a whole lot of assaults and property damage by ICE against regular people, some of whom are undocumented, some of whom are legal immigrants, some of whom are US citizens

Meanwhile, what we have at this church is that one of the pastors is also a field director for ICE. Not only that, he’s been in the media saying “Hey, ICE is doing a good job here.” (And yes, it appears that this is correct, the protesters didn’t get the wrong guy or the wrong place.)

Which brings us to the protest. It wasn’t an anti-Christian protest. In fact, some of the organizers are Christians.

The point of the protest was, “Hey, your church is complicit in the injustice that is happening in our community.”

And the response of the Christian community nationally is what made the protest successful, because the *entire point of the protest was to draw attention to what is happening in Minneapolis and to say look some of the Christian churches are complicit in this*.

So as people are saying “It’s wrong to interrupt a worship service” the response, right, is basically Amos 5: God hates all the show and pretense, the hypocrisy of religious assemblies and empty hymns performed in the presence of injustice. He wants a “mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.”

When people are saying, “It was illegal to interrupt us because of the FACE act” the response is, oh, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act, which was written largely in response to Christian anti-abortion protest, which tells us that (a) Christians know how to protest and have used this technique in the past and (b) why are you upset when *you* are being illegally interrupted but your pastor is out there illegally breaking into people’s homes to detain and harass them and you are silent?

As people are saying, “Churches are houses of worship and should be holy and unviolated” the response is, “Right, so the current administration shouldn’t have done away with the norm that churches were a safe space from immigration enforcement and they shouldn’t be arresting people in church parking lots, right?” (Note that many churches in Minneapolis are having “trouble worshipping” because their congregants are getting snatched on Sunday mornings on their way to service.)

When people are saying — and I am disappointed to say that I have seen this MANY times this week — “In my church protesters would never get that far because we have armed security and (insert various threats of violence)” it’s 100% exactly what protesters would hope some folks would say because it reveals the hypocrisy of a community that follows Jesus and thinks he said “If someone strikes you on the cheek, make sure you’re packing heat.”

When people are saying “kids were there and they were scared” the response is: imagine how kids feel as your pastor’s employees snatch parents away after breaking through their car windows.

Then, when the church (nationally) cries out to the government for help and it immediately and loudly — in less than 24 hours — starts proclaiming that justice will be done and people arrested and etc etc this too is part of the protest: where is the government as we’re crying for justice as people are having their civil and human rights violated on the street and in their homes by ICE? That’s interesting that they are responding so quickly to a peaceful protest in a church where no one was hurt. It’s astonishing that more time and resources have been poured into this one event than into multiple human rights violations in the city.

Meanwhile, many of the pastors and pundits and pastor-pundits you know are weighing in with great seriousness about how evil and horrible the whole thing is and FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT ICE.

Not condemning it, maybe. But suddenly the national conversation in churches is turned toward Minneapolis. Are they talking about the *right* thing? Yeah, sorta: they’re talking about rights violations in Minneapolis, and it causes a lot of people to say hey wait a minute what is happening over there. It causes some people to wonder, hey, why exactly would people risk jail just to disrupt a church service?

Which is — again, whether you like it or not or think it’s wise or best or not — all evidence of a really well planned protest that is over-performing in effectiveness.

And yeah, it’s creating some real “oh this is what a mirror looks like” moments for some folks in the church. Recognizing that maybe we are wrapped in pretty deep with the government but we’re only using that to protect ourselves. Realizing that somehow we didn’t think to speak up for our neighbors. Recognizing that some people think worship only happens for sixty minutes on Sunday and that somehow they can’t worship if that got interrupted.

Meanwhile, a bunch of people are saying YOU SHOULD FOLLOW ROMANS 13, but what they mean is “capitulate to the government no matter what.” When you point out that Romans 13:10 makes it very clear that our obedience to authority must be done through the lens of loving our neighbors, and that if love and obedience to unjust authorities are in conflict we have a bigger decision to make, then they say “I’m talking about Romans 13:1-7” which is another way of saying “Actually, I’m trying to use the Bible to control your actions that I don’t like.”

Which again: this is what the protest was designed to do. It was supposed to be a jolt in the arm to the church to say, “Hey. Why are we not just complicit with the government but also actively involved with the injustices being perpetrated on our neighbors?“

It was supposed to be upsetting. It was supposed to get people talking about it. It was supposed to get media attention and launch a million social media posts. It was supposed to reveal our hypocrisy and our emphasis on Christian rights or religious rights rather than human rights.

And it did all those things and is still doing all those things. Pretty good for a short protest in a single location.

But just to say that even as people are lining up to say “it was wrong to do that protest” or “it was right to do that protest” that they are, in that moment, doing the *work* of that protest: causing us to examine the morality of the church’s actions (positive or negative) or lack of actions in the midst of the horrific human rights violations happening in the world around it.

At the end of the day, it’s the same as throwing a can of tomato soup at the Mona Lisa to protest climate change. If you’re talking about it — even to disapprove of it — the protest worked.

Which is only to say: if you’re talking about it, if you’re posting, if you’re commenting, then you are *doing the work of the protest*.