LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A protest last week in Minnesota at an evangelical church has fueled two debates.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Who shut this down?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) We shut this down.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Who shut this down?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) We shut this down.
FADEL: Protesters marched into Cities Church because one of the pastors there is also an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. So one of the debates is about disrupting worship services, and the other, among some Christians, is about the morality of working for ICE. NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose reports.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: In an interview conducted during the protest and later posted online, Cities Church lead pastor Jonathan Parnell is clearly disturbed.
JONATHAN PARNELL: I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.
DEROSE: Activists have two complaints. They blame Cities Church for employing an ICE agent as a pastor, and they blame that pastor, Parnell's colleague David Easterwood, for working for ICE. Protest leader Nekima Levy Armstrong spoke outside the church following the action.
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NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG: How dare somebody claim to be a pastor while overseeing evil. Absolutely not.
DEROSE: Many progressive religious activists have disavowed this particular protest while also calling ICE's actions sinful. Speaking on Fox News, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said justice would be swift for the protesters.
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TODD BLANCHE: What you saw there was anti-Christian, anti-law-enforcement rioters storming a church in this country, and that's a violation of law, and we are investigating it aggressively.
DEROSE: Levy Armstrong was arrested last week and charged with depriving the church members of their First Amendment right to worship.
ED STETZER: The protesters were trying to make a point because they're concerned about how ICE is functioning and acting. I think that that has backfired spectacularly. At the end of the day, it's just egregious and inappropriate.
DEROSE: Ed Stetzer is a prominent evangelical and dean of the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.
STETZER: The bi-vocational pastor is an ICE agent. Does that disqualify him from faithful Christianity, is what the protesters were saying. Does it disqualify him from pastoral ministry? I'm not of the view that it does, and I think the vast majority of evangelicals are not of the view that it does.
DEROSE: Stetzer doesn't agree with ICE's aggressive tactics, but he says Christians necessarily bring their values to their work, especially in difficult jobs like law enforcement.
STETZER: If we're going to have an Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I think that we want them to do good and to do it well and to have people who are good people in that context.
ALEXIA SALVATIERRA: We pray for ICE every week. We pray for the soldiers.
DEROSE: Alexia Salvatierra is the dean at Fuller Seminary's Centro Latino, which prepares Latino evangelicals for ministry. She says her students and her community feel torn and abandoned by white evangelicals who continue to support ICE.
SALVATIERRA: We feel like we're family. And we're now invisible to you. You know, suddenly, you don't care about what's happening to your family members.
DEROSE: When many white evangelicals argue in support of ICE, they cite Romans 13 in the New Testament, which tells Christians to obey governing authorities. But Salvatierra thinks of a different passage from the Gospel of Luke.
SALVATIERRA: I have seen plenty of white Christians who feel like the elder son in the prodigal son story, like people are taking advantage of us. They're taking what is ours and is not theirs.
DEROSE: Taking jobs or benefits they've not earned.
SALVATIERRA: The older son has said to the father, your son is doing this and this and this. The father doesn't say to the older son, you're wrong, he's not taking advantage of us. The father says, your brother - we need to respond to your brother.
DEROSE: The Christian response, Salvatierra says, whether protesting or supporting ICE, must be grounded in grace.
Jason DeRose, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL VAN HORN'S "LOST MY MIND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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