Agitators opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement made quite a ruckus when they invaded a Minnesota church in the middle of a service last month, but they weren’t the first to disrupt Americans during worship.

The Justice Department has charged nine people in connection with the interruption of a service at Cities Church in St. Paul last month, notably including former CNN host Don Lemon. According to the indictment, the agitators coopted the service, chanting activist slogans and preventing worshippers from leaving the church building.

The agitators said they targeted Cities Church because one of the church’s pastors works with ICE. Now, they face charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (which also protects houses of worship) and the Ku Klux Klan Act (which criminalizes attempts to interfere with Americans’ constitutional rights).

The Cities Church invasion drew nationwide attention, yet this did not represent the first time agitators disrupted a church service.

Church disruptions trace back to colonial America, when Quakers disrupted the services of churches they considered illegitimate, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

The Reporter cites examples of black Christians protesting segregation and asserting their equal humanity by staging “kneel-ins” at segregated churches in the 1960s. These “kneel-ins,” however, arguably represent a different kind of disruption from the shouting and blocking at Cities Church.

In 1969, James Forman delivered his “Black Manifesto” at Riverside Church in New York, demanding racial reparations from white people and causing an uproar. Even this disruption does not quite echo Cities Church, because........

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