Minnesota faith leaders offer comfort after Renee Nicole Good’s death

Minnesotans crowded into churches, mosques and synagogues last weekend after the Jan.7 ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good. Congregants and leaders alike sought understanding through the teachings of their faiths.

Nancy Beck, a parishioner at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis, said she hasn’t been going to church as often as she wished, but the recent events brought her back.

“At this moment, I really need to be in community,” Beck said.

In sermons, messages and songs, faith leaders reflected on Good’s life and death. Some evoked her by name. Others referred to her more obliquely.

Good was “an accidental martyr,” said the Rev. Jim DeBruycker of St. Joan. “She was shot and killed doing the right thing … doing what Jesus would have done.”

“We are a land of laws,” said Rev. Neal Rich, pastor at Cedar Valley Church in Bloomington, adding that believers should nonetheless mourn Good. “I am not promoting that we have open borders. I am just promoting that we stop and grieve.”

Good’s death, captured in videos that helped spark anti-ICE protests, underscored a climate of unease.

The last five years have been tough “for those of us who love this city,” Cieslik added.

Makram El-Amin, resident imam and prayer leader at the Masjid An-Nur mosque in Minneapolis, echoed that sentiment.

“What’s happening on our streets is a harm to us,” he warned members at Friday prayers. “Be intelligent. Be vigilant.”

For Christians, Sunday services were about the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the promise of renewal that it embodies.

At Annunciation Catholic Church in south Minneapolis — site of the tragic August 2025 school shooting that left two children dead — the Rev. Dennis Zehren pointed to the baptismal waters as symbols of the troubles people face in life, like the flood navigated by Noah.

The Rev. Megan Torgerson, lead pastor at Easter Lutheran Church in Eagan, reminded parishioners to live out the pledge of their own baptisms and steel themselves for challenges.

“Baptism doesn’t keep us safe, friends, baptism is dangerous,” Torgenson said. “It calls us outside ourselves [to] stand with those who are threatened and mistreated because that’s where Jesus stands.”

Ahead of the Shabbat service that began at sundown Friday, Jan. 9, Rabbi Joey Glick emailed congregants at Shir Tikvah synagogue in Minneapolis.

He invoked the book of Exodus, when Jews suffered under the yoke of Egypt’s Pharoah.

“Our crying out, whether in the streets, in the classroom or in our hearts this week, is filled with pain and fear,” he said. “Our crying out today ... is not just foreshadowing of a future liberation — it is liberation itself, a stirring of emotional honesty and care that allows for survival and solidarity.”

“River Valley loves in all directions,” he said. “I love the immigrant ― legal, not legal ― the police, our authorities.”

At Grace Church in Eden Prairie, pastor Jim Erickson comforted the congregation by reiterating that God is in control of everything.

“We ask that you would comfort those that are mourning, and that also you would provide peace and protection to our cities for those that perhaps would use this tragedy to incite unrest or chaos,” he prayed.

“We ask that you would release your divine wisdom to our leaders and our decision makers that they might lead well in this very difficult time.”

That sentiment was shared by many.

At St. Joan of Arc, Renee Armstrong, a 15-year member of the congregation, delivered a message about the hopes around belonging and agency that she and her husband have as they raise their four-year-old twins in the church.

“We model to all of our children what faith looks like, not just on Sundays or Christmastime,” Armstrong said. “We live our baptism when we stand up for the dignity and worth of our neighbors.”

At St. Paul Cathedral, parochial vicar Ryan Glaser urged the congregation to hew to the tenets of their faith.

“You turn on TV or radio or many social media outlets, do you see Christians acting as Christians? Unfortunately, not,” he said. “We see Christian after Christian shouting out, ‘I’m right, everyone’s wrong. Listen to me, don’t listen to them.’ You see people constantly, in press conference after press conference, presidents and governors and mayors, all pouring gasoline on a fire that divides us, not a fire burning in true Christian love.”

Rich, of Cedar Valley Church, said believers have a higher calling than the politics that divide us. Christians, he said, “not children of the right or the left” but of God.

Pharoah told his people that the Israelites were “an unwelcome infestation, pests rather than humans,” the rabbi said. But “each human is as unique as the snow that falls in Minneapolis on a winter’s night.”