Lutheran Ladies and the fight for Democracy in Minnesota
Our national committee member, Rachel Burgin, writes about the role that churches and Christians are playing in the response to ICE in Minnesota.
“Never invade a winter people in winter.”
It’s a military saying that alludes to the failures of both Napoleon and Hitler to invade Russiaduring the winter months, when the Russian people were far more accustomed to frigidtemperatures than the invading troops.
On December 4 th 2025, President Trump launched Operation Metrosurge, deploying 2,000Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and StPaul with the arrest and detention of 3,000 people. The number of ICE agents dwarf localpolice forces, deploying brutal tactics and indiscriminately apprehending anyone whoappears “foreign,” regardless of citizenship. Their brutality has led to the shootings of two UScitizens, as well as international outcry.
I don’t know what made Donald Trump time this operation for the dead of winter. Perhaps itwas a coincidence in response to the Somali day-care centre fraud scandal. Or perhaps hethought that if he went in winter, no one would want to come out to protest in -30°C temperatures, let alone stand outside their neighbours’ homes to protect them.
Anyone with a passing knowledge of Minnesotans will know that this would be an absurd assumption to make. As I write this, Minneapolis is 10°C colder than Nuuk, Greenland. A few weeks back, it was 20°C colder. Today, Minneapolis is a city used to the cold, where eventhose on relatively modest incomes can go from their heated garage to their heated car,drive along immaculately gritted roads to their heated underground car parks at their heatedoffices. But the people who settled this state had no such luxuries and in order to succeed in this place, had to survive in literally sub-arctic temperatures. This spirit lives on in those who love nothing more than driving out onto a frozen lake for ice fishing.
Minnesota was the centre of Scandinavian settlement and their heritage impacts local culture far beyond the hardiness of its people. What has been remarkable about the turnout at the protests has not just been the sheer numbers out in -30°C temperatures, but the diversity of those protesters, going far beyond what Trump might call “radical leftists”. They include families turning out with their children who have seen classmates taken away by ICE in recent weeks. There have been veterans who feel this breaks every oath of allegiance they have ever sworn. There have been nice middle class “normies” from the upscale Edina, St Louis Park and Maple Grove suburbs. And there have been entire church congregations. In one startling story, almost 100 clergy were arrested at a protest at Minneapolis St Paul Airport. By any measure, that’s an significant number of faith leaders.
In Europe, we hear much of the “Religious Right” and how it shapes American politics. When we do think of progressive religion, our first thought might be of Martin Luther King and the impact of the black churches on the Civil Rights movement. But out on those sometimes frigid prairies, Scandinavians and also Germans brought their own, mainly Lutheran churches. They served as the centre of community life, where church ladies would knock up a “pot luck” for the whole congregation. When it’s -30°C and you’re stuck in 6 feet of snow, you rely on your neighbours to dig you out. You can’t rely on your own rugged individualism. Those communities survived because they stuck together and helped their neighbours.
It is this spirit I see live on in those Minnesotans who are putting themselves in harm’s way to protect their immigrant neighbours from ICE. They are rallying to collect food and hygiene goods, to feed their neighbours and raise money to cover rent for families who haven’t been able to go out to work for fear of ICE.
Way back in 1996, I completed an internship at Hennepin County Attorney - essentially the Crown Prosecution Service for Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. I joined a local Episcopal Church and, through that, helped at a local soup kitchen, on a team of Lutherans from another church. We sang grace together before serving and they welcomed me as their own. Even back then, Minneapolis churches were decades ahead of their peers in terms their progressive theology – particularly in terms welcoming those on the margins – whether LGBT, foreigners or the economically inactive. There were extensive networks of social action. It’s a Minnesotan instinct to help your neighbour - just like it was out on the Prairies for a Lutheran lady who might show up with a hot dish to someone in need.
But, as we’ve seen, this isn’t “snowflake” empathy overload. But rather hardy solidarity. A willingness to be out in subzero temperatures to protect everything that is precious about their state, and in the process, potentially save their Republic.
If Trump loses in Minnesota, this could well be his Stalingrad. Not defeated by the mighty Red Army, but instead by an army of normal people, from Lutheran ladies to veterans, who simply refuse to “walk by on the other side”.
Those Lutheran ladies offer a beacon of hope in an otherwise bleak situation. Because if democracy can be dismantled here, in this prosperous, economically advanced and socially sophisticated corner of the USA, with its Mall of America, Fortune 500 companies and its sprawling upscale suburbs, it can truly happen anywhere – and we must put structures in place to prevent that.
