Joe Rigney, a pastor who helped to launch Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, warned the nation that the protests at the congregation were a harbinger of a spiritual crisis for America as a whole.
Rigney, who now serves as an associate pastor for Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, used to live in the Minneapolis area and was part of the team that planted Cities Church.
Earlier in January, the church gained nationwide attention after a left-wing mob — accusing one of the pastors of working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — disrupted Sunday morning worship.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Rigney cautioned that there is “escalating violence on the left of normal Christian people, and I just want to underscore that piece of it,” per a transcript from The Christian Post.
According to Rigney, who was serving at Cities Church as recently as 2023, the congregation is not even marked by being overtly political.
“This is not a political church. These are normal, Bible-believing evangelicals,” he said.
“And instead, this political chaos intrudes in the middle of a worship service and disrupted.”
Rigney identified the issue as a cultural rot that can only be fixed with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“They’re terrorizing normal, law-abiding citizens, and then they’re encouraging the lawless and the lawbreakers,” Rigney said about government authorities failing to punish evil.
“When you think about the last 20 years and the escalating collisions we’ve seen in our country — about, say, sex, sexuality, and people being harassed just because they won’t make a cake or because they won’t do flowers for a gay wedding — and you see that kind of escalating collision as Christians just try to live faithful lives,” Rigney said.
The two options for America, according to Rigney, are indeed “Christ or chaos.”
“And because of that, it’s bubbling up. It’s bubbling over, and it’s tragic. It really is tragic. And the only way out is for people to turn from their sins and to turn back to Christ. That’s the only hope this nation has. That’s the only hope for any of us.”
Rigney made note of the ways in which secular leftism are on a collision course with Christianity.
“When you think about the last 20 years and the escalating collisions we’ve seen in our country — about, say, sex, sexuality, and people being harassed just because they won’t make a cake or because they won’t do flowers for a gay wedding — and you see that kind of escalating collision as Christians just try to live faithful lives,” he added.
Justice Department officials have vowed to charge protesters who disrupted Cities Church services with violations of the FACE Act and federal civil rights laws.
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