(WND)—Christian ministers do Christian ministry, and that’s what a number of volunteers from several churches in Northglenn, Colorado, were doing just days ago.
They were setting up tables in a public park preparing to distribute hot meals to the homeless, as they have done every Tuesday and Thursday for more than four years.
However, on this day, the churches’ ministers had to leave early, because they had court dates on city-issued tickets for violating a city rule, according to a new report from the American Center for Law and Justice, which is defending them.
Among the church volunteers at the park that day, a week before Christmas, “were the pastors we’ve been representing at the ACLJ – faithful men driven by a deep conviction to live out their calling,” the legal team reported.
They simply were following the biblical instructions, from Matthew 25:35: “for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. … inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”
The ministers, the ACLJ said, had to report for “their scheduled first court date on the criminal citations issued by the City of Northglenn for simply gathering in a public park to exercise their faith.”
It was officials in the city just north of Denver who “passed a targeted ordinance prohibiting recurring gatherings of five or more in public parks, leading to criminal citations against these faithful pastors,” the team said.
“In the courtroom, the city begged the judge to delay the proceedings. Their hope? That future amendments to their unconstitutional ordinance might somehow save their law. This wasn’t just a tactical delay – it was a clear violation of our clients’ constitutional right to a speedy trial, a foundational protection meant to prevent exactly this kind of prolonged government harassment,” the ACLJ report explained.
“These pastors had done nothing wrong. For years, their gatherings caused no complaints, no disruptions, despite attempts from the city to pin unrelated 911 calls on the outreach. They used the park on a first-come, first-served basis, just like countless secular groups – pickleball clubs, fitness classes, walking groups – that continue meeting without interference. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that public parks ‘have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public,’ and later called parks ‘quintessential public forums,'” the report said.
Still, the city targeted the pastors and their churches, “enacting a resolution seemingly designed to shut them down, and then issuing criminal citations that carry the threat of conviction for following Christ’s command.”
The ACLJ already has filed a separate federal lawsuit against the city to strike the “discriminatory ordinance and hold officials accountable for their hostility toward religious expression.”
WorldNetDaily previously has reported on the long history of outrageous discrimination and extremism generated by the leftist state of Colorado.
One of its counties, Gilpin, a few years back paid out $700,000 after officials in government documents repeatedly referred to a black resident as “N—– Roy.”
A pending lawsuit claims the leftist state – it’s run by Democrats in the governor’s office, legislature and state Supreme Court – is continuing “slavery” in its work programs for prison inmates.
State officials are demanding that taxpayers nationwide fund the lucrative abortion industry, and it long has pushed the radicalism of having boys who say they are girls in girls’ showers with the females.
It has had more school shootings that just about anywhere else, the latest just weeks ago in Evergreen.
It also has a long history of attacking Christians. Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop has been in the courts for a decade for refusing to submit his Christian faith to the progressive LGBT agenda in which state officials believe.
That’s despite the state losing at the U.S. Supreme Court in the fight.
Same thing happened with the state’s demand a web designer give up her Christian faith in order to operate her business. It lost again at the Supreme Court, and taxpayers there were billed millions for state officials to waste in their legal fight.
Right now the Supreme Court is considering whether the allow the state to censor pro-Christian comments by counselors, who are urged to deliver pro-LGBT ideologies to young clients.
The Northglenn fight so far involves pastors Brent Denney and David McCamish, of Brave church, and pastor Dustin Mackintosh of Next Step Christian Church, who have been holding weekly ministry gatherings at E.B. Rains Jr. Memorial Park for years.
Then the “chief of police informed the pastors he had been ‘tasked with shutting down’ their weekly gatherings,” the ACLJ said.
‘Peaceful religious gatherings’: Colorado’s anti-Christian ideology spreads, city harasses pastors
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The degeneracy of the leaders in Colorado, and my state NJ, requires them to hate Christianity. They believe if they rid the world of Christ they will rid themselves of guilt. What a state of affairs. Thank God you are not one of them.