Author, columnist, speaker
What's a Little Mob Attack on a Church Service?
By Robert Knight
If you’re a leftwing activist living in St. Paul, Minnesota, you now have official state sanction to invade a church, scream at parishioners, terrify children, and harass people on their way out of the worship service.
All of that happened at Cities Church on January 18, 2026, when a mob invaded the Southern Baptist church during a protest because one of its pastors is also an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Protesters reduced children to tears by screaming at them, “Do you know your parents are Nazis? They’re going to burn in hell.” Others accused the parishioners of being “rich” and “white.”
On June 3, because none of the 39 people arrested had committed physical violence or vandalism, St. Paul City Attorney Irene Kao dismissed all state charges.
“This decision should not be interpreted as an endorsement of unlawful behavior or public disorder,” Kao said. “The right to peacefully protest is protected, as is the right to exercise one’s religious beliefs. Balancing these equally important rights is paramount to our decision today.”
What part of shutting down a worship service and harassing worshippers constitutes “balancing?” The mob's getting away with it?
"They had stormed into the house of God, a place of peace and refuge, and they defiled it with rage," Lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell wrote in an op ed column, in which he offered an olive branch to the protesters, writing that the love of Jesus “is a joy that opens wide its arms to our cities, even to those who raised their fists against us.”
Although the defendants still face charges brought by a federal grand jury, the city attorney’s dismissal of the cases sends a loud signal to heavily subsidized and coordinated leftwing protest networks: “Don’t worry. We’ve got your back, especially here in one of the most progressive sanctuary cities in the nation.”
The church invasion came after days of protests against ICE roundups of thousands of illegal alien criminals in Minneapolis, during which two anti-ICE activists were killed.
One of those in the Cities Church mob in St. Paul was former CNN news anchor Don Lemon, who had conferred with the activists and handed out donuts to them before the church invasion. Although he insists that he was merely a journalist live-streaming the protest, he was arrested on charges of violating state and federal civil rights laws.
The federal charges include “acts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference and physical obstruction.”
But the church invasion was apparently no big deal to Ms. Kao, a longtime progressive activist who spearheaded diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Minnesota Bar Association.
DEI in practice means open discrimination against whites, males, Christians and conservatives. And, increasingly, against Jews.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote a letter on Thursday to Ms. Kao, asking her why the church invasion didn’t constitute a First Amendment violation.
“If someone organized a group of protesters to take over your office, would you find that acceptable?” he wrote. “There would be no violence—just in-your-face invective and intimidation. If this were to happen, you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, morally or legally.”
Mr. Donohue also wrote a letter on Thursday to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, asking him to make the Cities Church case a priority.
Noting that he himself had attended a rally the week before to protest hatred against Jews in New York City, Mr. Donohue wrote, “Today I am rallying to the side of our Protestant brothers in St. Paul who have been targeted by hate mongers. If people of faith cannot practice their religion without intimidation and interference, it means their First Amendment right to religious liberty means nothing.”
Anti-Semitic incidents are increasing in places like New York, London, Paris, and Sydney.
Mosques are not immune either.
In San Diego, two nutcase white supremacist would-be Nazi teenagers killed three people at an Islamic center on May 18. Evidence indicates the two shooters pretty much hate everyone, especially women and Jews, for which they blame even the rise of Islam.
After the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent retaliatory attacks in Gaza, Jewish students on U.S. college campuses feared for their lives as pro-Hamas protesters erected anti-Zionist tent cities and told Jews they were no longer welcome.
College administrators were so worried about not appearing woke that they failed to crack down on the harassers, leading to congressional hearings and several high-ranking college officials forced to step down.
It’s important to confront official indifference to attacks on religious liberty and law and order. Otherwise, it just metastasizes.
The same sort of mob that attacked Cities Church, led by paid agitators, has been rioting at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. They’re either confident that nothing will happen to them or hoping to trigger another fatality that they can exploit.
As of this writing, city, state and federal law enforcers under attack have managed to avoid such an outcome.
As for the St. Paul prosecutor, Mr. Donohue finished his letter to her this way: “I hasten to add that your workplace does not merit the special protections afforded a house of worship.
"But that wouldn’t stop you from screaming to high heaven if protesters invaded your space.”
Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 19, 2026. AP photo in The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
At the University of Texas on Feb. 6, Mr. Talarico said, “I’m a Christian progressive. I believe the Gospel is inherently radical—it challenges the powerful, lifts up the poor, and calls for justice in every sphere of life.”
When progressives talk about “justice” they mean “social justice.” This is envy, disguised as compassion and politicized to enable governments to redistribute income and rewrite society’s moral code.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.