When I watched a video of Nekima Levy Armstrong walk into Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, a week ago, I knew she was a prophet. She was not attacking the church, as Attorney General Pam Bondi would later claim. As a local pastor myself, I believe Armstrong was attempting to repair, to restore sanctuary and holiness to a congregation that needed to be reminded of a Jesus who calls us to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free.
When I watched a video of Nekima Levy Armstrong walk into Cities Church in St. Paul,I knew she was a prophet
Levy Armstrong and her fellow protesters were invited into the church for worship. They joined in praise and worship. Then, as the pastor offered a prayer that included a petition to get order in their church, Armstrong responded with a potent witness:
“David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul.”
Levy Armstrong listed some of the recent outrages that ICE has committed in the Twin Cities, including killing Renee Good. And though Easterwood reportedly wasn’t present, she proclaimed:
“How dare you claim to be a pastor of God and you are involved in evil in our community?”
Easterwood is listed as one of the pastors of the church on its website. While standing alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at an October news conference he identified himself as “the acting field office director for enforcement and removal operations, ERO St. Paul.” He is named as a defendant in a lawsuit the ACLU filed this month that it says “seeks to end a startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota.”
Levy Armstrong did not stutter or falter when she called out Easterwood and his church. And despite a doctored image of her Thursday arrest that was released by White House and falsely shows her crying, we have seen no indication that she, an ordained minister herself, is at all sorry for the protest she led.
And she shouldn’t be.
The federal government’s allegation that she and others violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 (which covered access to abortion clinics and places of worship) is a farce. Bondi’s claim on social media Thursday that “WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” not only wrongly characterizes the protest Armstrong led as an attack, but it is shockingly hypocritical given the Trump administration’s position that it has the authority to invade a church, against the will of its leadership, to grab someone the government wants to deport.
This is where I should tell you that in September, I was invited to speak about Christian nationalism (the subject of my two books) to a local congregation whose neighborhood had just been papered with Neo-Nazi propaganda.
On X, the harassment from the right grew so intense that I decided to cancel the account I’d had since the early 2000s. My crime? Teaching people about how right-wing radicalization is driving many young, white Christian men and boys into violence and despair. This all occurred, of course, in the wake of the political assassination of Minnesota House Speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the school shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in South Minneapolis, a community close to my family and neighborhood.
Churches that affirm LGBTQ marriage and the full inclusion of LGBTQ people have long been subject to threats and protests in our churches.
My family filed police reports and added extra home security because of threats pouring in on my personal account and on my church’s accounts. When I showed up to speak at that church and others that had invited me, because of the violent threats I continued to receive, those pastors brought in extra security. Despite these threats, I never received any update from law enforcement, and not one person who threatened or harassed me was prosecuted or, to my knowledge, even contacted by law enforcement, even though they too polluted and interrupted the churches where I held events.
Even if you take the responses to those speaking engagements out of it, anyone who thinks our sanctuaries were safe and sacred before Levy Armstrong and her fellow protesters entered Cities Church, is gravely mistaken. Churches that affirm LGBTQ marriage and the full inclusion of LGBTQ people, as mine does, have long been subject to threats and protests in our churches. In fact, it has been a long time since I have prepared a sermon without considering the fact that some angry right-winger might bring a gun to church and shoot me in the face.
Too many people decrying the “interruption of worship” at Cities Church and calling it unprecedented are ignoring the long American history of violence toward Black Churches. During the height of the Civil Rights movement, Black churches across the South were attacked. Plymouth Rock Baptist Church in Plaquemine, Louisiana, was known to host civil rights meetings, and during one such meeting in August 1963, local police there entered the church on horseback and used cattle prods to drive the people out. The most infamous attack during that time, though, is the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four Black girls.
Levy Armstrong must know this history. I believe when she walked into Cities Church, she knew she’d be arrested. In fact, after her protest, when angry social media commenters told her she should be in jail, she responded that she’d be in good company if she were thrown in jail. There’s Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I would add the Apostle Paul and Jesus himself.
I have plenty of pastoral colleagues who didn’t like Levy Armstrong’s actions. Many of them, echoing the white moderate King criticizes in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” claim they agreed with her aims but not her tactics or her timing.
But we shouldn’t see Levy Armstrong as someone who violated the sanctuary of a church or blocked people from worshiping there, but as a prophet speaking truth to a church that includes a leader who is helping make captives of people instead of setting them free.
