Young Man Arrested for Preaching in Waterloo Wisconsin Speaks Out

Persecution for Preaching in Public and the Arrest Video

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Today, we have a special guest with us who's going to talk a little bit about what I've seen an uptick in in the last few years, which is being arrested for preaching the truth, preaching the gospel, preaching the Bible in public areas in certain places.

And the guest we have today, Marcus Schroeder, in fact, was arrested for preaching the truth in a public area. And is this persecution? I mean, that's one of the questions I think many are asking is, especially in the wake of covid related issues in 2020, is the church experiencing soft persecution?

And I would contend in multiple ways. Yes. But but this is just one example that I wanted to highlight for you before I play the clip in question. I want to I want to play the clip of Marcus getting arrested and then let him comment on it.

I should let everyone know if you want after this video is complete to communicate with Marcus or just look at the material that he has out there, go to Warriors for Christ Studios, Warriors for Christ Studios on YouTube.

They also have a podcast, Warriors for Christ. Marcus is a student at the Institute of Public Theology. He's a young man, wants to be a pastor, and he's got a boldness for Christ, which is why I want to interview him.

So without further ado, here is the video of Marcus being arrested for preaching the gospel. And then we'll talk to Marcus.

Through love, serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another.

Hey, what are you doing? What is the problem?

What's wrong? What are you doing? You didn't give any warning. You scrapped the money. This is the same one that we had. Yeah, that was in there. It was not out here. What are the.

Rules? What are you doing? Let it go. You guys. They say we can have because they say we can speak out here on the sidewalk freely. You can speak, but there's nobody told us that. What are you doing? How come there's no amplification?

You guys are acting like thugs, man. You're like straight up thugs. Hey, you're taking away my property. He has every right to be out here engaging in speech. He has every right to be out here engaging in speech.

There's cars driving by with their radios playing. That's amplified sound. People are standing out here with radios. That's amplified sound. The ordinance has to do with a decibel gauge.

What Happened During the Arrest in Watertown

All right, well, we'll cut it there. So how are you doing? You were arrested.

I'm doing good. I was a bit surprised by it. I was not expecting to be arrested as you saw in the video. So the beginning of the video is the beginning of me using amplification. And so our entire the entire interaction with the police, my entire few seconds there that I was actually able to say anything over the amplification is all right there on the video.

And so you see how quickly they just came over, started grabbing the mic for me. Like this moment I start using the amplification, which was interesting because that was our first time using amplification all day.

Our group has gone out and done lots of different ministry, things like that before. And so, you know, we're pretty familiar with interactions with the police. Typically, the police will come over and say, hey, look, it needs to be below a certain decibel level, or you can't have it here because technically this spot isn't public or, you know, they'll let us know the code and we'll have that conversation with the police.

But that didn't happen as you see in the video. And so I was quite a bit surprised that there wasn't there was no conversation. They didn't explain themselves. They just come up and start grabbing from me.

Where was this that this took place? Where did it happen?

It was outside a drag queen story hour in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, or sorry, not Wauwatosa, Watertown. Sorry, I get the two mixed up. Watertown, Wisconsin. And so this drag queen story hour was taking place.

And really, it was it was more of a drag queen dance hour. They had a story time in the morning that probably lasted about 20 minutes. But then they had two dance hours that afternoon, where it was like kids dancing with the drag queens hour.

And so that was what was going on right as I turn on my application. There's a whole field in between me and the dance hour. So it wasn't like I was seriously disturbing anything. You know, the amplification wasn't very loud.

But that's when I was outside their fenced in area on the.

Public sidewalk. And that's what that took place. And it sounded like so. This is a public library,.

I'm assuming. No, it was a park, actually. So they got a permit to do this. Yeah. Private or.

Public? Public Park. It was a public park. But they said that you could not be on the grass in the public park, you had to be on the sidewalk. That was the initial instruction. Right? Yes. Okay.

And so then you moved? Yes. So well, so originally, so that was our first time using amplification that day. Earlier in the day, one of our guys was walking with the amplification in his hand inside their fenced in area on the grassy area where they had gotten their permit for this story and dance hour.

And so that one of the officers came up and said, Hey, look, they have a permit for this area, you can't have amplification inside the fence, you have to take it outside the fence. And then a few hours later, because it was it was an all day event.

So a few hours later, I take the amplification, I was outside the fence on the public sidewalk. So the only instructions that I had known of that we have received about amplification before that was take it outside the fence.

And so that was the only so when the officer in the video is like, Oh, this is the same speaker as before he was referring to when he said take it outside the fence. And that's when that was my pastor recording.

He was that's his voice in the video. He he said, you guys said we could be on the public sidewalk. And they said, well, no amplification, but they hadn't told us that they just said take the amplification.

Outside of the fence. That's the surprising thing. For me, I mean, do they had a desk? Did they even have a decibel meter there to say, hey, you're in violation of an ordinance?

No, no, they didn't use any decibel meter or anything like that.

The Amplification Ordinance and Free Speech

So okay, so, so there's no way to prove that you're in violation of a public ordinance. Then without that evidence, which is very strange to me that they would, that seems risky to arrest someone just because we don't, you know, I mean, what's the law that they're appealing to?

Is there.

A lot that says you can't use any amplification in public? Yeah, the Watertown code on amplification is actually pretty strict, which I didn't know beforehand. But it's actually, you know, I've talked to a couple different lawyers now since this, this has gotten some attention.

And that code that they're specifically charged me with is about music. Like if you actually look on the the citation they gave me, it says amplification of music violation, which you know, it wasn't music.

But but essentially, the code is very strict, you can't use any amplification, unless you have a permit given to you by I think the chief of police a week beforehand. The problem with that, though, is, again, it's for music.

So like, if I wanted to have a concert at the park, I would have a week beforehand, I'd have to get that permit. That's what it's referring to, because the Supreme Court has made decisions that essentially those those codes on music can't apply to two protected classes of speech, political speech, and religious speech, because that would be an undue burden upon our right to free speech to have a permit a week beforehand.

Because if we just hear of an event that day, we have also the right to spontaneous speech, we have the right to go out there and voice our opinion. And the Supreme Court actually ruled that the right to free speech also implies the right to be heard, which means that we have the right to amplification.

So those that code that they're trying to charge me with, doesn't apply, because I mean, political and religious speech, my, my speech could technically classify as both. And so it, you know, they're, they're trying to use a music, a music amplification.

Code against me. Yeah, we've come from a time not so long in the in the past, where, in general, at least in the United States, religious people, Christians in particular, were viewed with some level of respect, even if people weren't Christians.

And there was an understanding that religious speech was important, and that it was protected. And now it seems like, especially since 2020. But before that, things like this are being stretched to apply to religious speech to quiet it to make it go away.

I did the officer. I mean, this is kind of a if you can't answer it, that's fine. I'm just kind of curious, though, if there was previous interaction with this officer, and if he just had it out for you, because it's just, I can't conceive of an officer just grabbing it out of your hand.

There's no warning, no just arresting.

You. That's just so weird to me. Yeah, there was previous interaction with both the officer who took the mic from me, and then the one who grabbed my arm from behind and handcuffed me. So the one who grabbed my arm, he was, you know, clearly out to get us all day.

He had some beef with us. He had started arguing with some of the people in our group, the one with the mic, who tried grabbing the mic from me. You know, he claimed to us that he was also a Christian and believer, but he was, he was very, very antagonistic to us all day, which was interesting, because there were dozens of police officers out that day.

What I heard somewhere, I'm not sure exactly, you know, if this is correct, but what I had heard, rumored was that 70 of the police force was there that day. It's a small town. They had dozens upon dozens of police officers that day.

State Patrol was there. And so most of them were, you know, they were fine. They were just cordial. They were there to do their job, make sure, you know, nobody got hurt. But then there were a handful who, who were pretty antagonistic to us throughout the day.

And those were the two.

Now, you might not be able to wear one of those. Maybe, maybe you don't feel comfortable, you're not able to do this. Can you reveal their names at all? The two or no?

Yeah, Sergeant Cockett is the, the, the one who grabbed the mic from me. I don't actually know.

The name of the one who grabbed me. Okay. So when you went to what happened after that, then they took you to jail, I suppose. And then did someone just bail you out immediately? I mean,.

I know you had to, there was a hearing that you went to. Well, they went to, I went to the police station and they booked me, but they didn't end up putting me in jail. Okay. But yeah, they probably detained me for maybe an hour in this, this police tent they had set up.

And then they took me over to the police station, booked me, took my mugshot, like got my information, stuff like that. And then they released me with those two citations, amplification without a permit and resisting arrest.

And then they also... Resisting arrest? Yeah. And I... It didn't look like you were resisting? No, I asked the officer who handcuffed me while I was being charged with resisting arrest. He told me because my muscles tensed up.

Oh my goodness. That's insane in my mind.

When you see it, I mean, I've talked to others too, who have been very active in the public square for many years. And they've told me that they have had officers they've had interactions with. You know, some officers are great.

Some aren't easy to get along with, but then they've also had officers who are very clearly biased and who have arrested them and then literally gone over the laws to see what laws they can try to charge them with.

Like they didn't have anything against them at the time, but they were looking for something. So when the officer was first... So in that video, he handcuffs me and then he starts walking me across that parking lot.

As he's doing that, I was talking to him asking what law have I broken? Why am I being arrested? I was trying to figure out, just ask him what's going on here? You know, there was no explanation of what you guys were doing.

And originally he said, well, you resisted arrest, but that's not the reason. You can't arrest someone for resisting arrest. That doesn't make sense. So I asked, what's the original reason? And he eventually said, you're being charged with amplification without a permit and resisting arrest, which I didn't know.

Amplification without a permit is you just come up and arrest someone on the spot, especially when it's on a public sidewalk. At the very least, that's or at the very most, that's a citation. Some sort of citation that they don't arrest you.

I've never seen that before.

City Council Testimony About the Nazi Group and the Meaning of Intolerance

Okay. So you go to a... We'll talk about what you're going to do if you're suing or what you're doing after this, but you go to a hearing and this is what you say, I guess, this is a hearing, right? That we're going to be watching here?

I hope you're all doing good.

This was actually a city council meeting. Oh, a city council meeting. Okay. Yes. So the city of Watertown had a city council meeting. I don't even think that they had this event talked about, but at this point, I think it had already garnered some national attention.

Even since then, it's exploded even more nationally. But because of that, all these people, I'd say probably 40 people in the room and the hallways filled up there in the back to the background of the video.

Probably I'd say 40 Christians slash conservatives on our side and maybe five to 10 LGBTQ activists. And they were all there to voice their opinions on Saturday. And so just like a typical city council meeting, three minutes per speaker kind of thing.

So I went up there to testify and a little context before playing it is the Nazi group that came. I assume that you've heard about that, probably read something about that?

I haven't read about it. I saw in your speech that you referenced them at the beginning of it.

Yeah. So there was a Nazi group that had showed up on Saturday during the protest. And they were dressed almost like Antifa. It was interesting. They were carrying assault rifles and things like that.

And they had flags with the swastika on it. And they came up to the fence and they did some chants like, pedophiles get the rope. There will be blood, blood, blood, you know, chants like that. And as they were doing that, by the way, police didn't have any issue with them.

They arrested me on the public sidewalk, reading from scripture. Isn't that interesting? The police all came over by them to make sure nothing went wrong, but the police didn't escort any of them off.

The police didn't do anything to them at all.

Were they on the sidewalk? Yeah, they were on the sidewalk.

So outside the fence, just like I was. And they showed up for about 20 to 30 minutes and then they left. And the protest was an all event. It was an all day event. It was from 10 a .m. to 6 p .m. We were there all day.

They show up 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes max, did some chants, got the attention of the news, took a couple of interviews and then left. And then the following day, I think our governor tweeted about it, tweeted about the Nazi presence there in support of the LGBTQ movement.

And so then with the city council meeting, there were quite a few speakers before me, some LGBTQ activists that were essentially trying to lump us in with this Nazi group, which, by the way, I'd never heard of before, never seen them before.

I had no idea where these people have even come from. And they were saying things like they were using different rhetoric like these. Let's not forget that these Christians were on the same side of the fence as these Nazis.

And so they were just trying to group us in that way. And so that's the context that I go up to give this this city council speech to correct some of that thinking instead of.

Yeah, look, even the neo-Nazi types see this as egregious. You must be doing something wrong if even they, you know, instead of viewing it that way, they're they're trying to paint it as just so interesting.

And I don't know. I don't want to get into like a conspiracy about things I don't understand or know much about. But that's so weird for them to come up for like 20, 30 minutes, get the attention of all the cameras, give the media the narrative they want.

And it's just and you guys are there, I'm assuming, for a longer period of time. There's probably more of you. Right. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So let's let's play this. This is you at the council meeting then or the town meeting and see what you said.

You guys, I hope you're all doing good tonight. I just wanted to ask a simple question. I know, you know, a Nazi group showed up at the event Saturday and people were talking about that. And I just wanted for all of us to really think about this.

What's wrong with Nazism? Like, seriously, what's wrong with Nazism? Because imagine for a moment that there is no God above us, no hub below us, no heaven to live for, as John Lennon wanted to imagine.

If we are truly the result of evolved stardust and our ancestors were fish and were the descendants of monkeys, then where do we find our value as human beings? What's wrong with Nazism? Unless if you understand that the God of scripture says that we are made in his image.

And so to murder innocent people is a violation to God's commands. As a Christian, I can say that Nazis, what the Nazis did in Nazi Germany was completely horrific and that they should have been resisted.

In fact, the number one people group that resisted the Nazis were Christians. And the reason why, the reason why was because they had a worldview that says that people are made in God's image and that they have worth and value.

That's why Nazism is wrong. But if we're going to reject the Christian worldview, then we can't hold on to the fruit that comes from the Christian worldview while denying the actual foundation. Intolerance is an interesting word.

Tolerance, intolerance, hatred, love, bigotry, things like that. Because really every culture has something that it's intolerant towards and something that it's tolerant of. I mean there are things like murder and rape and and you know stealing and and just crimes that we are intolerant towards as a society.

And so every society has something that's intolerant towards. The question is just what is our object of intolerance and what is our object of tolerance? When I showed up Saturday, all I did was read from scripture on the sidewalk.

I read from the Bible, Galatians. And by the way, I wasn't reading Romans 1. I wasn't reading any passage that spoke against homosexuality or anything like that. I was reading a passage from the Bible about love.

And I was arrested. No reason, not given any warning, not told anything about my amplification needed to be turning down. I was arrested and taken into custody simply for reading the Bible on the sidewalk.

You see, as we become more and more tolerant of sexual immorality in our culture, we become more and more intolerant towards Christian morality. And the more we become intolerant towards Christian morality, the more we're going to see lawlessness in our streets.

The more we become intolerant of Christian morality, the more we're going to see Nazis. The more we're going to see people who don't hold to a Christian worldview, who think that everybody is a result of animals.

And therefore, if we are animals, then why can't we just act like animals? We were called the hate group. We were told that we don't want to understand the other side. And I just want to set the record straight.

I am more than happy to have that conversation with the other side. I did speech and debate throughout high school. And one of the things that we were taught in debate is that you can't make an argument for your side until you're able to make the argument for the other side.

I've sat down and had hours of discussions with LGBTQ activists. I completely understand the other side. I want to understand the other side. But drag queens twerking on kids in lingerie is unacceptable.

And that's something that we have to notice as a culture. We can have our disagreements, but there comes a time when we have to understand that we are all going to stand before God one day. And we're going to have to give an account for what we have done with the children in our society, the innocent minds and the children who deserve to be protected.

Thank you. Sorry, what's that? I can't hear you.

I had my mic muted. Sorry about that. I didn't want any. Yeah, I don't want any noise coming through during your recording. My bad. So that was excellent, first of all. And then what was going through your mind?

How did you feel when you gave that speech? Were you nervous?

No, I mean, I did speech, like, as I mentioned, I did speech and debate for four years and all through high school. And then since graduating, like a year and a half ago now, I've had multiple speech engagements.

And so now I'm pretty used to it. But yeah, I had quite a few notes that were written down that I wanted to get to add some other things I was going to try and hit on that I thought would be important to the conversation.

But, you know, my timer ran into three minutes. And so there's only so much you can fit into that.

Public Reaction, Legal Strategy, and Protecting Children

Well, that was really good. I mean, any feedback from any officials?

No feedback from officials. I have had some feedback from Watertown residents who have, you know, said that before that speech, because after getting some of the national attention of being arrested, that video, I think was estimated by some people to receive like about 80 million views now.

And so once that arrest video went viral, that city council speech also was being spread around quite a bit. And so what I heard from Watertown residents and some other protesters that were there that day were saying that before my speech, people were constantly trying to group us in with Nazis.

Since then, the argument has essentially been dropped. I haven't personally heard any and I've talked to others who said that argument's been dropped. Nobody's even mentioning the Nazi group that was there that day or trying to even group us in with them anymore.

So so hopefully I think it was it was pretty effective.

Yeah, it sounds like have you been accused of Christian nationalism or anything else other than not?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there have been articles written about me, Facebook posts, things like that before any of this happened, actually. And a lot of that stuff I've been accused of being a white supremacist, Christian nationalist, fascist, you know, just kind of line up the descriptors there.

But actually, since this, I haven't received I've received hundreds of private messages over social media and things like that. And not a single message has I haven't received a single hate message or anybody against me.

There have been some comments in the videos, obviously, of people, you know, saying some things. But but in regards to private messages, I've actually received dozens of messages from Watertown residents who weren't even there that day saying, let us know next time you come to our city, we'll be there to stand with you.

Thanks for being there. Stand strong. I've received an immense amount of support from the Watertown community.

That's great. No, that's really good to hear. Because I think this is the template for this is what needs to happen across the United States when these kinds of things take place. Christians do need to if they have the time and availability to do it, they need to go out there.

They need to do what you did. And they need to if they are suppressed for it, fight back. And that's really my next question is, what are you doing in response to this arrest? And these charges? You're fighting it, obviously.

What's the path forward?

Yeah. So in regards to the path forward, legally speaking, I've had probably eight law firms reach out to me all wanting to take the case, all very good law firms. And so I essentially have to pick pick one.

I'm leaning towards one right now. I just got to figure out some of those details. And then once I pick one, I'll talk to a lawyer more about the specific route we're going to go down. But my general thoughts right now without talking to any lawyers specifically about this yet is essentially that, well, first of all, I want my fines taken care of like revoked, I still have charged like they're still holding the charges against me.

So it's a $500 fine for resisting arrest and then about $200 for amplification. And so it'd be nice not to have to pay that. And then and then from there, I'm not sure. I mean, a lot of people have said you should sue those officers, sue the city.

And honestly, I could probably make some money from that. But that's not my main goal here. I'd say my main goal isn't to make sure that, you know, I'm vindicated in this situation. My main goal is to make sure that Watertown doesn't have a drag queen dance hour next year.

And so it might be I think it might be a better strategy move to go after the mayor who allowed the event to take place, go after the organizers of the event, the drag queens themselves, that kind of thing.

But that's something I still have to talk to a lawyer about, talk about some of the things that we can go to, like what specifically, but my main goal in all this legally speaking is, is protect the children in Watertown, make sure that, you know, grown men dressing lingerie aren't allowed to in a public park, be doing sexually suggestive dances and having children give them dollar bills and essentially running a strip club in public for children to make sure that that ends that that would be my main goal.

Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. That just you couldn't have told someone even 10 years ago, this was going to be like mainstreamed in in Heartland. I mean, I think a Watertown, I don't know, you know, maybe Watertown's more blue.

But, you know, I think of Watertown, Wisconsin, if you just told me like, you know, there's a drag queen story hour there, I'd have been like Watertown, Wisconsin. I mean, that's San Francisco, right?

That's but it's not anymore. It's all over the Heartland. So, yeah, I mean, you know, good job standing up. I mean, you set a good example. And we the courage that you have, I think we need more of it.

We need a lot of people who are willing to suffer deprivation if necessary and be called names for the right cause. And this certainly is a right cause to stand against this evil. And I'm assuming you're preaching the gospel and trying to persuade people who were interested in this event to come to Christ instead.

And, you know, that's that's just it's good to hear. So any final comments you have, anything you want to let listeners know about to encourage them,.

Anything you want to plug? Yeah, I just say be faithful in doing ministry. We've been doing things like this for four years. And a friend actually sent me a passage from scripture that was very encouraging to me from Luke five, where, you know, the disciples are fishing all night and they're not getting any fish.

And a lot of times that's what's doing a lot of this kind of ministry is like you'll go out there and you don't see a lot of fruit. A lot of times it's just, you know, people, you know, they want to go to the drag queen story hour and they have no problem with what the drag queens are doing.

The police have no problem. It's like a lot of times it's hard to see fruit from that. But there are other times, you know, like in that passage, Christ comes to them and says, cast your net on the other side of the boat.

And Peter's like, no, we've been doing this for however long and we've gotten no fruits. We've caught no fish. And Jesus says we'll cast on the other side. And so he casts on the other side of the net starts to break.

And Jesus ends that with saying, even so I will make you fishers of men. And so, you know, this is the kind of thing where we need more Christians speaking out against these issues. And this kind of ministry isn't, you know, it's very rare that you get national attention for this kind of thing.

A lot of times you're working in obscurity. You're working without getting attention for what you're doing. And we should be able to accept that as Christians and realize that we need to just be faithful in fishing for men in these public squares to bring the light of Christ into the darkest area in our culture.

And the more that we start to do this, the more that we're going to see a cultural impact. I mean, the kingdom of God is like planting mustard seeds that grow into large trees. You're not going to go there and all of a sudden have a revolution and the entire nation becomes Christian.

It's, you know, we plant those seeds and we've seen fruit, not only from this example, but also, you know, we used to go out to the abortion clinics when they were open in Wisconsin. And we've seen people who worked for the abortion clinic, clinic escorts who were transgender, who were on all these different drugs, were depressed, come to Christ and they will actually, like this one lady, her name is Maren.

She comes out with us now to preach the gospel at these events. So she was a transgender trying to, somewhere in there trying to become a man. And you will see fruit from that. But a lot of times you don't even know the impact you're having.

And we're not going to know until later, sometimes many years later and sometimes not even in this lifetime. And so that's why, you know, it's all tells us, I believe in Galatians, do not grow weary in doing good for in due season, you will reap the harvest if you do not lose heart.

So just, you know, go out there, do this ministry, be faithful. And that's the kind of faithfulness that God's going to bless. And so, and then also to reiterate our podcast, Warriors for Christ podcast and Warriors for Christ studios on YouTube.

Is the best way to stay in touch with us. Yeah, well, that is encouraging. Thank you, Marcus. I.

Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me. God bless you too.