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Minnesota bishop calls for nonviolence in response to Saturday’s shootings of state Democratic lawmakers, spouses

June 16, 2025

[Episcopal News Service] Following a deadly incident early Saturday where a now-captured suspected gunman impersonating a law enforcement officer shot and killed one state Democratic legislator and her husband and injured another lawmaker and his wife, Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya asked Episcopalians not to respond to violence with violence.  The June 14 shootings occurred just hours before nationwide anti-Trump “No Kings” protests were scheduled to take place in opposition to a parade commemorating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday. The American Civil Liberties Union, who co-sponsored the “No Kings” protests with Indivisible and other human rights organizations, estimates that 5 million protesters rallied at more than 2,100 events nationwide. “As followers of the Lord of immovable love, his posture in the face of the empire of his day must be ours today. We, like Jesus, cannot remain silent in the face of the multivalent attacks on basic human dignity and society we are experiencing,” Loya said in a June 14 statement. “We must continue to show up, speak up, and witness to a better way than what the American empire offers in this moment. “ In the early hours of Saturday, June 14, the suspect, Vance Boelter, allegedly shot state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, in their home in Champlin, a Minneapolis suburb, leaving them injured, before he then allegedly shot and killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home in nearby Brooklyn Park. Authorities arrested Boelter on June 15 following a two-day manhunt. Federal officials said he will face federal murder charges, and Minnesota officials are expected to add state murder charges as well.  The shootings followed a tense week of protests in Los Angeles, California, where demonstrators marched against Trump administration immigration policies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on agricultural operations, restaurants and hotels. Trump called in the National Guard and the U.S. Marine Corps to silence protesters against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  On June 11, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe issued a letter to the church responding to a series of Trump administration policies on migration and immigration, including the use of the military for crowd control at protests. Also, last week, ICE agents raided a meat-processing facility in Omaha, Nebraska. The administration later abruptly paused some of its raids on workers in the food and hospitality industries.  “This news comes against the backdrop in recent weeks of immigration raids being carried out by militarized law enforcement, and celebrated with cruel delight by government officials, the military being deployed in Los Angeles against U.S. citizens, to stop protests in that city, and on a day when the President of the United States has threatened to meet any protestors present at a military parade in the capitol with ‘heavy force,’” Loya said in the statement. “The tensions we have lived with for many years now are boiling over to new levels.  Those inclined to the kind of murderous violence that occurred in Minnesota today are surrounded by a national climate that encourages those impulses.” The shootings also came in the backdrop of the House’s vote in favor of and Americans’ concerns over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which reduces taxes for the rich and cuts benefits, including Medicaid and food stamps, for the poor, and stands to increase the federal deficit by $3 trillion. (The June 14 parade cost taxpayers an estimated $45 million).  “Human communities, from congregations to countries, always take on the energy of their leaders,” Loya said. “That’s true regardless of how popular the leader might be. The President of the United States, and the senior members of his administration, have, for nearly six months now, led with a chaotic, intentionally provocative, and vindictive energy against perceived critics and enemies, and that is eroding the foundations of our common life and order, and empowering anyone inclined to that same vindictive violence.” Thousands of people protested peacefully in St. Paul after the shootings.  Boelter, according to friends, is a religious conservative who supports Trump and opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.  Law enforcement found a stack of “No Kings” flyers, AK-47 assault-style weapons, a manifesto and a list of some 70 other potential targets, including “abortion providers, pro-abortion rights advocates and lawmakers in Minnesota and other states,” in Boelter’s vehicle. Other Democratic lawmakers’ names on the list included Gov. Tim Walz, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and others. The shootings are the latest act of political violence, which is increasingly common in the U.S.  “We must also, like so many disciples before us, refuse to meet violence with violence, dehumanizing rhetoric with dehumanizing rhetoric,” Loya said. “In the months and years to come, we must stand in the face of every threat, every act of violence, every cruel or threatening word, with Jesus’ immovable love, clinging to love’s power, which raised Jesus from the death empire subjected him to, until God’s full reign of peace is fully and gloriously done, on earth as it is in heaven.”