CV NEWS FEED // A video of a young man who was arrested for reading the Bible at a pride event in Wisconsin went viral last weekend.
In the video, Marcus Schroeder, 19, is arrested without warning or explanation. He had been reading a passage from the Bible into a microphone next to a “Pride in the Park” event in Watertown, Wisconsin.
According to Schroeder, the event lasted from 10 am to 6 pm and was attended by 100-200 Christian protesters. Schroeder attended the event with a ministry group called “Warriors for Christ.”
“We went out there and were preaching the Gospel, passing out tracts, holding some signs, and just kind of being a public witness against what was going on, talking to people at the event,” Schroeder said.
At around 3 pm, Schroeder said he began to use the group’s microphone and speaker to read Galatians 5, a passage about love, from the sidewalk outside the barrier that had been set up for the event.
“And as soon as I start reading from that passage, a bunch of officers come and surround me,” he said, noting that the officers gave him no warning and were hostile towards him.
“The officer in the video grabs my hand, grabs my arm and kind of twists it down, tries to pull the mic away from me, and then all of a sudden, an officer behind me grabs my other arm, and they handcuffed me, arrested me,” Schroeder said.
He was detained for about an hour and was given two citations—one for “unauthorized sound amplification,” and one for resisting arrest.
“When I asked the officer how I resisted the arrest, he essentially said it was because my muscles tensed up,” Schroeder recalled.
Watertown’s “Pride in the Park” event drew national attention, however, for the presence of an alleged Nazi group that showed up to protest.
Schroeder, who has attended almost every pride event that has occurred in Southeastern Wisconsin in the past several months with Warriors for Christ, said that even though the Nazi group is allegedly based in his hometown in Wonkasha, Wisconsin, he has never encountered them before.
“It’s very strange that I’ve never heard of them before,” he said. “And all of a sudden they show up, they’re dressed in all black, they’re carrying flags with the swastika on it.”
Schroeder said the Nazi group attended the event for approximately 20 minutes, giving a few interviews to news outlets, and delivering a series of chants, such as “Burn the faggots,” “Hang the pedophiles,” and “Blood, blood, blood.”
“A lot of red flags go up,” Schroeder said. “And I don’t claim to know what they are or where they’re from—but all I know is that it does not seem like any legitimate group.”
“It seems like it was stood up because you know it is very easy to then group us up and say ‘The Nazis and then also these Christians were out there to protest.’”
Schroeder also noted that the police were far less combative towards the Nazi group that came to protest than toward the Christians.
“The police went over when they showed up, but none of them were arrested, none of them were really shoved around by the police like our group was, the police were actually much more hostile to us than they were the Nazi group.”
Schroeder, who is currently enrolled in Florida’s Institute of Public Theology, claims that the rise of “lawlessness” and hate groups is proportionate to the decline in respect for Christian morality.
Without a Christian God, Schroeder said, “we’re just going to fill that void with some other God.” America has replaced the Christian God with the “god of the individual,” Schroeder says.
“That’s where we see increased lawlessness in our culture because you’re essentially worshiping an idol and worshiping the creature rather than the creator, and historically that’s always led to quite a few troubles.”
“I think it’s important for Christians to speak out on these issues. If we are not the ones who are going to take a stand on these issues in our culture, then nobody else is,” he concluded:
We are the ones with that worldview that has the foundation to give us an understanding of what is right and wrong, so I think it’s important for us to do that, and I plan to continue to do that.
Schroeder’s ministry, Warriors for Christ, has a Youtube channel, where they promote their message, and will be releasing a podcast in the next week.
