A pastor on Monday was escorted out of a room after interrupting Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s speech with a Bible verse, while calling on the Trump administration official to repent.
“I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me. I was naked and you did not clothe me. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,” the pastor said, quoting a Bible verse while Sessions was giving a speech in Boston on religious liberty.
“Brother Jeff, as a fellow United Methodist I call upon you to repent, to care for those in need, to remember that when you do not care for others, you are wounding the body of Christ,” the pastor added, according to video published by CNN and ABC News.
The pastor was then escorted out of the room. Sessions called the pastor’s interruptions an “attack.”
“Thank you for those remarks and attack, but I would just tell you we do our best every day to fulfill my responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States,” Sessions said.
Another person was also removed from the room after standing up and defending the pastor, saying that he was “exercising his free exercise of religion.”
As that protester was also being escorted out of the room, he called it “hypocritical” given that Sessions was there for a speech on religious liberty.
“You are escorting me out for exercising my religious freedoms. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s very hypocritical for this group of people to be wanting to protect religious freedoms while you are escorting me out,” the person said.
Sessions defended himself against the protesters, saying that there is nothing “immoral” about enforcing a country’s laws.
“I don’t believe there’s anything in my theology that says a secular nation-state cannot have lawful laws to control immigration in this country. That’s what we’re talking about,” he said.
“It’s not immoral, not indecent and not unkind to state what your laws are and then set about to enforce them, in my view. I feel like that’s my responsibility and that’s what I intend to do,” Sessions added.