Calvinist pastor prays for God to smite the people of Minneapolis

A professor at John Piper’s Bethlehem Seminary prayed on Sunday not for God to protect the terrified people of Minneapolis, but for God to protect ICE from the violent people of Minneapolis.

“I’m a pastor in Minnesota. Here’s how I prayed for ICE yesterday,” the headline announced in a piece published by the Center for Baptist Leadership on Monday. “Please protect the ICE officers from wicked men and women who are violent lawbreakers,” prayed Andy Naselli, lead pastor of Christ the King Church in Stillwater, Minn., and professor of systematic theology and New Testament at Bethlehem.

In the introduction to his prayer, Naselli lamented Minnesota magistrates “acting unjustly … as anti-ICE protesters swarm into Minneapolis.”

Then he prayed: “Father, please enable the government authorities who work for ICE to accomplish their lawful and moral mission: to ‘protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.’”

Naselli described the ICE officials as brave and honorable, while calling Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey “wicked,” and accused them of “inciting lawbreaking.”

He went on to quote Psalm 58, asking God to break Walz and Frey’s teeth, to tear out their fangs, to make them vanish, to cause them to fail, to melt away like a slug, and to become like stillborn children.

Then Naselli gave five examples of Walz’s and Frey’s “sin”:

• “They have empowered people to murder babies in the wombs of their mothers.”
• “They have enforced policies that encourage transgenderism and that punish those who respect your good design for men and women.”
• “They have granted sanctuary to citizens of other countries who are trespassing, and they have stolen billions of tax dollars from hardworking citizens.”
• “They have encouraged protesters to obstruct the good and responsible work of law enforcement and to riot when they don’t get their way.”
• “They have used rhetoric and empowered policies that endanger honorable law enforcement, such as our fellow member who serves as an officer.”

His prayer concluded by asking for God’s mercy and grace, by praying the ICE officers would be skilled and just faithful servants who could be “a terror to bad conduct” and “righteous avengers who carry out your wrath on wrongdoers.”

And he topped it all off by closing with, “We ask all this so that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. And we ask all this in the name of Christ the King. Amen.”

A peaceful and quiet friendship

For full disclosure, I’ve personally known Andy Naselli for many years and would’ve considered him a friend prior to my deconstruction. We both went to Bob Jones University more than 20 years ago. We also attended the same church for a couple months at one point, until I left after the lead pastor asked me over coffee about the quality of my sex life and said it was his pastoral responsibility to know about the sex lives of every married couple in the church. Our next church occasionally invited Naselli to preach and dreamed of him possibly coming on staff someday.

I really liked Naselli a lot. Coming from the isolated culture of fundamentalism, his willingness to work alongside mainstream conservative evangelicals like DA Carson or John Piper was refreshing. Since I’m a Denver Broncos fan, we also connected a lot based on our common appreciation for Tim Tebow.

Naselli always was very calm and kind with me. When he asked me to breakfast, he affirmed what he appreciated about me, encouraged me to attend Bethlehem Seminary and asked for my thoughts on his own career decisions. At one point during our breakfast, he asked with a smile on his face if I had heard of this really hilarious and intelligent writer named Doug Wilson. As a conservative at the time, I thought nothing of it. But looking back in light of Naselli’s prayer for ICE, it’s notable.

I share this to name how odd this entire story is for me.

When I hung out with Naselli, he had the presence of a healing father figure and a growing friend to me. I couldn’t come up with a single negative experience of him to share if I tried. In fact, I watched a really fun conversation about reading and writing between Naselli and Doug Wilson last night where you can get a sense for how relaxed I felt around him.

That’s right: A Doug Wilson conversation that didn’t cause my heart rate to race. When you’re one of the guys in that world, it can feel really chill and peaceful.

So how do I make sense of someone who was so nice to me supporting violent, authoritarian ICE agents without mentioning the woman they murdered during a Sunday morning prayer?

Demonizing empathy and domineering members

Shortly after our breakfast, Naselli accepted a teaching position at Bethlehem Seminary and eventually became an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church, where he served alongside Joe Rigney, who took over for Piper as president of Bethlehem College and Seminary before eventually joining Wilson in Moscow, Idaho.

You may recall Mark Wingfield’s 2021 piece, which continues to be among BNG’s top news stories, about how Rigney went on Doug Wilson’s “Man Rampant” podcast to warn Christians about “the sin of empathy.” As Wingfield noted at the time, three pastors, a staff member, four seminary faculty staff members and hundreds of church members began leaving shortly thereafter. They alleged that “Piper, Rigney and others have created a toxic culture of abuse that is devoid of anything like empathy.”

Then a fourth pastor resigned — Jason Meyer, the preaching and vision pastor who took over for John Piper after Piper’s retirement.

One of the pastors who resigned was Bryan Pickering, who said during an interview: “At Bethlehem … there’s harm being done. There’s unethical behavior. There’s domineering. There’s bullying.,  … cultural, damaging behavior that’s being done, and has been done, for a long time.”

According to The Roys Report, Meyer’s resignation letter said Bethlehem was moving “more in the direction of neo-fundamentalism.”

And at the center of the controversy was my fellow Bob Jones University grad, Andy Naselli.

‘I will resign as an elder’

Steven and Janette Takata, two longtime members of Bethlehem Baptist Church, shared their story in two episodes of “The Roys Report” podcast in 2022. It began when a group of Bethlehem Baptist Church members asked the elders’ permission to form an “ethnic harmony task force” out of growing concerns regarding the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in church leadership. According to the Takatas, the elders gave permission for them to form the task force, but then ended it with no explanation.

Between their concerns about the ethnic harmony task force, the overwhelming absence of women in positions of leadership and Rigney’s demonization of empathy on Wilson’s “Man Rampant” podcast, Janette told Roys they began to sense: “Women are not regarded as credible. They’re emotionally manipulative. They might be telling the truth if they’re claiming abuse. They might.” She said women at Bethlehem began growing concerned and confused over where Bethlehem stood on empathy and abuse.

Despite Bethlehem having elders, they’re still a Baptist congregation. So the final word on matters lies with the members, who bring up motions and vote at quarterly strategic meetings. During one of these meetings, Steven proposed a motion that the elders “release the full unedited reports from the ethnic harmony task force.” Then Janette proposed a motion asking that “the elders of Bethlehem make a written public statement separating the views of Dr. Joe Rigney in ‘Man Rampant’ … from the views and teachings of Bethlehem Baptist Church.”

According to Janette, after she stated her motion, “Andy Naselli got up and essentially said three sentences and sat down and there was complete silence.” According to Roys, this was a big deal because students told her that after Piper stepped down, “Andy was … the one to sort of fill those shoes at the college and seminary.”

Janette told Roys Naselli’s comment to the congregation was: “I’m speaking against this motion. And if this motion passes, I will resign as an elder.”

“When an elder says, ‘I’m going to resign if this motion passes, who’s going to pass that motion?” Janette said. “Nobody wants to be responsible for his resignation.”

In a letter to the elders, Naselli said Janette’s motion was “disrespectful to the elders,” despite the fact that the Takatas met with multiple elders about it ahead of time.

A ‘peacemaker’s meeting’

A few months later, Naselli and the Takatas came together for a “peacemaker’s meeting” in an attempt to reconcile. But Naselli wouldn’t ask for forgiveness.

“We’ve got four kids,” Naselli began in the audio obtained by The Roys Report. “And we distinguish between when to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and when to say, ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me.’” He went on to suggest, “Intent matters.”

For example, he said, “Sometimes a sister will come to one of us complaining that they feel hurt by something one of their sisters did. And if they come to us with basically the logic, ‘I’m hurt, therefore she sinned against me,’ we say, ‘Well, maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t.”

Then he suggested, “My intent was not to harm anyone.” After receiving input from another professor, he said: “The Bible distinguishes unpremeditated accidental acts vs. unpremeditated spiteful acts. And whether you feel only sorrow or also seek forgiveness is fully contingent on your heart during the act.” Naselli concluded: “It would be so relieving to just say, ‘Please forgive me for XYZ’ and shake hands or hug and move on. But I’m afraid if I do that at this point, I would be lying to make peace. And I can’t do that. So I feel terribly that I hurt you, and I own that. And I regret it and I’m so sorry.” But he added, “I’m not convinced that I sinned against you because I have zero ill intent against you in what I’ve done.”

So apparently in Naselli’s theology of sin, sin and the need for forgiveness are dependent on the offender’s self-awareness of their intentions. If a pastor doesn’t know how he’s hurting the women in his church, then he has nothing to ask forgiveness for.

When Janette apologized to Naselli during the meeting, Naselli responded, “I don’t think you need to ask for forgiveness if you didn’t intend to harm me.” Naselli must think Jesus was wasting his breath when he said at the Cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The Takatas said two of the elders who eventually resigned, including teaching pastor Jason Meyer, “were not permitted to be there” at the meeting.

According to the Takatas, Bethlehem elders would not allow them to participate in the investigation and eventually shut it down. Two and a half months later, Naselli apologized for three occasions during which he was quick to speak and slow to listen.

Allegations at Bethlehem College and Seminary

But in addition to the allegations of abuse at the church, Naselli also was accused by a dozen former Bethlehem College and Seminary students who said he overreacted in anger by telling students to “shut up” and that he’d “destroy” them for countering his teaching.

Roys said Naselli also allegedly “roasted” students and said “he was concerned for their souls” over differences on infant baptism. Then during another argument with a student over women in ministry, Naselli allegedly told the student he was “sinful to the core” and got his wife on the phone to inform the class of how good of a husband and father he was.

According to Pickering, one of the elders who resigned, Naselli would call students heretics and created a “hyper-competitive environment” where “mocking one another’s positions … was encouraged.”

Doug Wilson would be proud.

Eventually Meyer stepped down as teaching pastor, becoming the fourth elder to resign in four months. But before he resigned, the elders called him for a meeting during which Roys says Bethlehem’s elders “accused Meyer and Tong (another elder) of ‘subordinating the gospel’ and embracing Marxism and Critical Race Theory.”

Meyer said, “It is hard to avoid seeing the charges as retribution.”

The parallels are undeniable

What does all this have to do with Naselli’s prayer for ICE? The parallels are undeniable.

As I demonstrated in Episode 91 of BNG’s “Highest Power: Church + State,”  ICE officers are overreacting in anger due to feeling disrespected. Similarly, Naselli claimed his sudden threat to resign after Janette’s motion was in part due to her motion being “disrespectful to the elders.”

Just as the Trump administration is referring to immigrants as “animals,” “vermin” and “swarms,” Naselli described protesters as “swarming.”

Just as ICE agents are reacting in violence through beating and murdering people, Naselli prayed a violent prayer that God would break the Democrats’ teeth and cause them to become like stillborn children.

Just as Pete Hegseth is using Bible verses and music to promote theologies of the U.S. government being God’s righteous avengers of wrath, Naselli buddies up to Hegseth’s mentor Doug Wilson and describes ICE with the same terms.

Just as the Bethlehem elders refused to allow the Takatas to participate in an investigation and eventually shut it down, so the Trump administration is refusing to allow Minnesota officials to participate in an investigation we all know they’re eventually going to shut down.

Just as the Trump administration rose to power by accusing the Democrats of being Marxists who embrace Critical Race Theory, so the Bethlehem elders accused Meyer of the same.

And just as Meyer said Naselli and the Bethlehem elders’ actions felt like retribution, so Trump declared on social media to Minneapolis that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

And now despite all the credible accusations of abuse, coverups, misogyny and violence against Doug Wilson, Naselli has been published by Wilson’s Canon Press and is inviting Wilson to his new church in Minnesota for a conference called “Christ the King of Your Home” with the tagline, “Rebuilding Christian culture one household at a time.”

Remember, to Naselli, God’s “good design for men and women” he prayed for requires men to be respected little kings in charge of their homes.

So maybe the “peaceful and quiet life” Naselli prayed God would grant him is parallel to the peaceful and quiet friendship we once had. As long as I liked Calvinism, complementarianism and Tim Tebow, we could be bros like he and Wilson are. Similarly, he says in a promo video the students he’s looking for are “a few good men” who humbly soak in everything he has to teach them. But that’s not true peace. It’s the peace offered by empire.

Naselli says he doesn’t want to lie to make peace. But apparently he’s willing to build empires to make peace. So it should serve as no surprise that Naselli stood in his pulpit to pray for the U.S. empire instead of crying out in the cold with the U.S. empire’s “least of these.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.