What’s Behind Don Lemon Accusing a Minnesota Church of White Supremacy?

Is your faith downstream from the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy?

That’s what former CNN anchor Don Lemon and podcast host Jennifer Welch said of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Agitators who claim that one of the church’s pastors also works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement stormed the church last week, separating the pastor from his congregation, chanting, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!” and terrifying children.

Lemon filmed the church invasion and got in the pastor’s face mid-service, asking him why he wasn’t engaging in dialogue with the people who derailed his church service.

The leftist commentator claimed he was only reporting on the church invasion as a journalist, but Cities Church’s lawyers said, “There is no ‘press pass’ to invade a sanctuary or to conspire to interrupt religious services.”

Lemon later betrayed an animus against Cities Church and the evangelical Christianity the church preaches.

White Supremacy?

On Monday, he filmed a video with Welch, co-host of the “I’ve Had It” podcast.

During the video, Welch said of Cities Church, “that sect of evangelical Christianity has its rooting in the KKK because the KKK was a religious movement for white nationalists.”

Lemon did not disagree, and he went on to accuse Cities Church of racism. He accused ICE of “detaining people on the streets because of accents and the color of their skin,” and he went on to suggest Cities Church is rooted in “white supremacy.”

“There is a certain degree of racism there and there’s a certain degree of entitlement,” he said. “I think people who are, you know, in religious groups like that—it’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy, and they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom.”

“It’s religious freedom, but only if you’re a Christian and only if you’re a white male, pretty much,” he added.

Not a Whiff of White Supremacy

Cities Church isn’t exactly secretive about its key beliefs. Its website delves into the gospel, the word of God, the Trinity, the human condition, marriage and sexuality, and more. It speaks in terms of humanity, not white or black. It focuses on God, not racial divisions.

In normal English, the term “white supremacy” is a deadly serious claim. It refers to a system of racial hierarchy, where “white” people are considered superior to those of other skin colors. It traces back to America’s history of race-based slavery and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, our country’s most notorious hate group.

Yet Cities Church doesn’t present any such racial hierarchy, and it has no connection to the Klan.

The Weaponization of ‘White Supremacy’

Absurd as it is to compare conservative Christians preaching the gospel to the Ku Klux Klan, Jennifer Welch wasn’t the first to do it, and Don Lemon wasn’t the first to nod along.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been putting mainstream conservative Christian groups—such as the law firm Alliance Defending Freedom and the think tank Family Research Council—on a “hate map” with Klan chapters for over a decade. The SPLC claims these groups are part of the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy” because they support traditional Christian doctrine in opposition to the SPLC’s radical LGBTQ+ agenda.

How can they justify this? The SPLC also champions critical race theory—the notion that America is systemically racist and therefore a hidden “white supremacy” lies underneath our daily interactions in society. This belief justifies radical changes to society in order to root out a “racism” that often merely involves laws and policies that treat people according to the condition of their character, rather than the color of their skin. Some have condemned “colorblindness” itself as inherently racist.

Yet activists describe themselves as “anti-racist,” suggesting that any opposition to their radical agenda is ipso facto racist.

Critical race theory also drives the demonization of ICE and leads some on the Left to effectively nullify federal immigration law. Activists claim that any deportation of illegal aliens is racist, even though the federal government is deporting the person for violating the law, not because of his or her skin color.

Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch haven’t discovered some secret cabal of Klan members inside Cities Church—they’re merely playing the same old tired race card.

Why Is This Relevant?

If there’s nothing to Lemon’s claim, why is it worth highlighting?

Don Lemon’s extreme condemnation of Cities Church may speak to his motive in joining the anti-ICE agitators who invaded the church service. Lemon claims he was merely a journalistic observer, not a member of the crowd.

Yet, if one of his first acts after “covering” the church is to spread baseless accusations of “white supremacy” and to claim that the church’s complaints about the invasion of its sacred space was merely “entitlement,” that suggests more than a desire to report the news.

If Don Lemon entered that church with the intention of confronting “white supremacy” and hounding the pastor, and he contributed to a climate of fear that prevented American citizens from exercising their First Amendment right to worship God, shouldn’t he face charges alongside the ringleaders of the church invasion?

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