Chicago Pastors Speak Out First, and Best: A Joint World Call-To-Action For Unity and the Release of a 95-Year Old Pastor

Chicago Pastors Speak Out First, and Best:

A Joint World Call-To-Action For Unity and the Release of a 95-Year Old Pastor 

A gathering in Chicago placed the imprisonment of a South Korean Christian leader at the center of a broader, now urgent question: When government, politics and public opinion converge against an unpopular faith, who will defend the freedom of conscience?

By Ronald E. Childs

 

HAZEL CREST, Ill. — An unseasonably humid, gray Thursday morning on Chicago’s South Side was the setting for a unique gathering of faithful souls, and one deceptively simple proposition: Religious liberty is not what its name suggests if it applies only to the familiar, the favored or the faiths that enjoy widespread approval.

In late summer, pastors and religious advocates gathered at Hillcrest Christian Church in south suburban Chicago for the local convening of the 1st Joint Assembly of World Pastors. This local event was one part of a broader international assembly, with similar gatherings hosted simultaneously in multiple locations around the world—including New York and Los Angeles—and connected across borders by a shared program and purpose.

Their most immediate concern sits many thousands of miles away in a South Korean detention center: Lee Man-hee, the 95-year-old founder and chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, jailed since June while awaiting adjudication of allegations that he directed tens of thousands of church members to join South Korea’s conservative People Power Party to influence candidate-selection contests.

Lee denies any wrongdoing. South Korean authorities allege violations of the Political Parties Act and obstruction, and the court further cited concern about the possible destruction of evidence in issuing the arrest warrant. Those facts belong in any honest account, as does another: Pretrial detention is not a verdict, an accusation is not a conviction and neither controversy nor public pressure erases the presumption of innocence or the state’s responsibility to protect human dignity.

That was the moral center of the Chicago-area convening. The faith leaders were not challenged to adopt Shincheonji’s doctrine, or to share any aspects of it with their congregations. They were asked a more fundamental question: whether continued pretrial detention remains necessary and proportionate in this particular case, especially given Lee’s advanced age and health, and whether the principles of due process and human dignity are being adequately protected while the charges remain unresolved.

The panel’s makeup reflected a broad-based Midwestern pastoral outreach. It included Senior Pastor Anthony Covington of Mt. Joy Baptist Church; Senior Pastor William Ellis of Apostolic Pentecostal Church; Senior Pastor Raynald Williams of Sons of God Ministries International; Pastor Lucilla Seaton of 3Ps Ministry and Dr. Meddy Joe of Christian Hope Ministry in St. Louis, Missouri.

Longtime Chicago broadcaster and journalist Dr. Naima Latif served as moderator, while Dr. Meddy Joe of Christian Hope Global Ministries in St. Louis helped organize the gathering and coordinate pastoral participation. More than 20 pastors participated locally, both in person and online, alongside other religious and human-rights advocates. Organizers connected the Chicago-area meeting to the simultaneous assemblies globally; with their post-event reporting revealing some 3,000 pastors participated worldwide.

The assembly gave its concern, and the issue, a formal shape. Beyond just another mere meeting punctuated by preachers sermonizing, attendees endorsed a Joint Statement titled the “Declaration of 2,000 Global Church Leaders for Freedom of Religion and Human Dignity,” calling upon South Korea's government and political institutions to stop using religion as an instrument of political conflict. Additionally, it urged the judiciary to resist trial by public opinion, preserve the presumption of innocence and grant Lee release on bail in light of his advanced age and health.

Chicago attendees were also invited to sign a separate appeal addressed directly to the Republic of Korea's judiciary. These pastors committed themselves to moving beyond rhetoric—to sustained prayer, public advocacy, coalition-building and continued engagement with institutions capable of acting. A declaration can name an injustice, and a petition can place a demand before authority. But, the deeper commitment made in Hazel Crest, Illinois that foggy morning was to remain tethered after the room emptied and to convert believers’ shared concern into visible, disciplined action.

The numbers, however, were less important than the unusual architecture of the moment. Denominational lines did not disappear. Theological disagreements were not magically resolved. Even so, leaders who might never have otherwise shared a pulpit found common ground with each other around due process, humanity and freedom of conscience. It was not a call to temper or retreat from faith, but to gird themselves with the armor of it, moving beyond sanctuary walls to defend a principle—even when the person needing its protection belongs to another tradition.

The Chicago gathering came together through existing relationships rather than a formal nomination or selection process. Organizers shared that the receptive response suggested broader interest in the issue than initially expected. What began as concern over Lee’s detention developed into a wider effort to unite pastors around religious freedom, due process and human dignity.

International speakers developed the same argument. Rev. Vitaly Kirillovich Vlasenko of the Russian Evangelical Alliance warned that public opinion cannot substitute for judicial judgment. Bishop Elias Elijah Changa, a Zambian pastor with prison-ministry experience, urged South Korean authorities to consider lawful alternatives such as bail, residence restrictions or medical accommodation. The global assembly’s position was direct: Age places no one above the law, but neither should the law be administered without proportionality, care or humanity.

The coalition was also larger than Christianity. Brian Chitambira, who spoke in the event calling for solidarity amongst pastors, emphasized that while the pastors’ assembly was Christian-centered, the underlying claim is a human-rights claim. Buddhist monks, Muslim leaders, Hindu participants, secular scholars and more have all joined related efforts. Latif, who moderated the Chicago conversation, is Muslim. “The issue was his human rights,” Chitambira said. “This event happened to be centered on pastors, but actually, up until now, it’s just been global—different religious leaders.”

That interfaith reach matters. Freedom of religion is too often defended as a possession—my church, my doctrine, my right—rather than a covenant. Its real test arrives when the threatened belief is not ours. If Christians defend only Christians they recognize, Muslims only Muslims they recognize, and majorities only traditions they understand, the right itself becomes little more than a popularity contest with constitutional language wrapped around it.

The Chicago event therefore should not be remembered only as a sympathetic gathering for an elderly leader overseas. It was a rehearsal for the kind of moral coalition this fractured moment requires: local enough to confront concerns in our own communities, yet global enough to understand that repression travels, precedents migrate and silence is routinely interpreted as consent.

Organizers intend to continue. Chicago-area faith leaders were specifically invited to volunteer their churches as sites for follow-up religious-freedom awareness events, with collaborative hosting encouraged and no financial burden required of the participating pastors. Ideas under discussion also include a joint Chicago prayer night, and a “pastors’ circle” conceived to support the people who are constantly expected to support everyone else. The goal is not forced unanimity. It is a sustained relationship: A network capable of responding when civil rights, human rights or religious freedom come under pressure here or abroad.

“We can be so busy and occupied with our own Church needs, but taking that time and carving it out just to pray together as a community and as a city, I believe that is going to bring major changes to the community,” said Youth Pastor Javier Gonzalez. That call for collective action was echoed by Bishop Logan of Hazel Crest Christian Church: “First of all, we need to learn to unite. We’re all children of God, so we need to come together. And if we come together, we can get a lot more done.” That is the call to action reverberating from Hazel Crest outward to the world. At age 95, Lee Man-hee is not merely the subject of a distant legal dispute. His detention has become a barometer of whether freedom of conscience is robust enough to shelter the controversial, whether justice is disciplined enough to resist public pressure, and whether modern people of faith are courageous enough to defend a principle larger than themselves.

In a small church sitting at the top of a hill in Hazel Crest, voices began answering. Not with unanimity, and not with indifference, but with presence, signatures, testimony and the first faint outlines of a movement.


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