March 22, 2021 Show with James Kitchen on “The Arrest, Incarceration, & Release of a Pastor Who Refused to Stop Holding Church”

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James Kitchen and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

And I am thrilled and honored to have on the program for the very first time, James Kitchen. He is a lawyer with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, and is actually the personal lawyer for James Coates, the pastor teacher at Grace Life Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

And we are addressing today the arrest, incarceration, and release of a pastor who refused to stop holding church. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, James Kitchen, attorney at law.

Thanks for having me.

Well, tell us, first of all, about the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

So the Justice Center is essentially a public interest law firm. Now, we don't function like a law firm financially, in the sense that all of our services are provided completely free to our clients. Our income comes from voluntary donations from all across Canada, from just mostly from regular people who don't work a year.

We're a non-profit charity, and that's how we function. And we've been around about 10 years exactly now. And our whole, you know, modus operandi is to defend the free society. And in Canada, we do that through rights and freedoms in the courts.

So before we get into Pastor James Coates' specific circumstances, tell us about some of the other cases that JCCF has been involved in, and folks that you've represented. So we get an idea of the range of kind of things JCCF would be defending people over in Canada.

It's a pretty wide range. You know, I've defended street preachers, which is a little bit different than defending, you know, a pastor. We've done all kinds of free speech. You know, sometimes it's, which oftentimes is Christian, but we've even, you know, when she was getting, you know, penalized for her advocacy against transgender in the city in B .C., they were not going to allow her to speak at a library there.

The views regarding transgenderism. So we got involved. The event went forward. We've actually done a number of library cases. Interesting enough, there's, you know, libraries have been disapproved of from holding events at the library.

We've done a number of campus free speech type things. So, you know, campus clubs, each club, you know, they often get their club status taken away or they're with arrest by campus security. So that sort of stuff we've done a lot of over the years.

We have done a lot of religion therapy, an attack on both free to even amongst, you know, so we're involved in that. We've been involved with nationalizing law euthanasia in Canada. We've been, we've been involved in, with attempts to any, any, any free speech battle in Canada.

We're probably involved in one way or another, whether it's, you know, sometimes we go to court, obviously, like I said earlier, but we also do, you know, oftentimes there's committees, of course, they're considering laws and they bring in, they bring in, you know, stakeholders.

And so we'll, we'll provide written and oral submissions to lawmakers as they consider what laws they're going to make, whether it's, you know, about euthanasia or, or censorship of Islam criticism or conversion therapy.

So we're involved in that. So, so a lot of free speech stuff we're at the center of in Canada. A lot of free religion stuff we're at the center of. And then, you know, various other things as they, as they relate to that.

Probably the last thing I'll say that we were heavily involved in is parental rights, which of course comes up in the transgender context, right? We had a big battle in Alberta a couple of years ago. We had sort of a left-wing government that nationalized gay-straight alliances in, in schools and kind of sort of keep them secret from parents.

And, you know, a large number of Christian schools in the province naturally objected to that. And so we had to defend their, you know, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, right?

Because ultimately if they're religious school, they have the constitutional right to say no to the government when the government tries to control ideology. So we were involved in that as well. So it's, it's, it's a broad range of very basic.

And even now with COVID, we've sort of expanded into things like the, the, you've right in Canada, constitutional right to leave and enter the country. We've done some of that. Some of the rights that are engaged by, you know, all this forced quarantine stuff.

So we're, that's just some of it. Those next back to defend.

Great.

And by the way, I want to let our listeners know, since you brought up the coronavirus that my guest today, James Kitchen could only be on with us for the first 90 minutes of the show. We are going to forego his personal salvation testimony for another interview as we traditionally do with first time guests.

We have them give their salvation testimony, but since he has to leave us early, we're going to be joined by my personal physician, Dr. Joel Yeager. And Dr. Joel Yeager is someone who is vehemently opposed to churches shutting down over the coronavirus hysteria.

And he is coauthor of the book, Coronavirus and the Leadership of the Christian Church, a Sacred Trust Broken. And I hope that you stay tuned for the last half hour for our discussion with Dr. Yeager.

This will be his third time joining us as a guest on this program. And if anybody wants to find out more information about the legal ministry, where my guest serves as an attorney, go to jccf .ca, jccf .ca.

And hopefully I'll remember to repeat that again later on in the program. So as most of our listeners should know, there is a pastor in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada named James Coates, who is now in jail and I believe being released today.

I don't know if it's happened yet, but he was arrested and incarcerated because he refused to shut down Gracelife Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada over coronavirus mandates. Now, can you tell us how long ago this occurred with Pastor Coates?

So he, following Valentine's Day on the 14th, the police contacted him and permitted him to wait until that evening to be released. And what we call them in Canada, the crown, it's essentially because of safety.

He disagreed with that, ordered his release. Initially was that he refused to sign that condition of release, which of course is very rare. Most people are so dead to the side. And so they just agree to whatever terms so they can be let out.

And that's somebody who's a violent criminal. They're often let out. And that's what would have happened with Pastor Coates, but he refused to sign the condition. That's how we got here. And the condition itself was essentially that he stop holding church unless he did so in strict compliance restrictions.

Now, of course, the restrictions at that time in Alberta, and are still in place actually now, even over a month later, is that he can only have, Pastor Coates and his church, can only have 15 of what their building's capacity is in the building during a Sunday morning worship service.

So their building can hold about 600. Their sanctuary can hold about 400. So they can only have about 90 in the building and about 65 or so in the sanctuary in order to comply with the law. And if they had any more than that, then according to the law, they'd be acting illegally.

And he said, well, no, obviously, I can't do that to the full body of Christ. And that if we're ever going to not do that, it's going to be for reasons that are consistent with scripture, not just because the government arbiter always says so.

So we can't do that. And there were various other restrictions too that obviously he wasn't following and he wasn't intending to follow because they violated scripture, right? They interfered with the worship, with referring to each other, with everybody hearing the sermon, using God all at once, the whole gamut, right?

Everything that would happen on a normal Sunday morning worship service, these numbers would interfere with that. You know, he couldn't in good conscience do that, right? He would be amounting to fearing man instead of God, right?

Obeying government over God when the two come into conflict. So it was very clear for him that he couldn't do that.

Now is Pastor Coates the first and or the only pastor who's been in prison for this reason?

In Alberta, for sure. I believe he's the only... I can't say that with complete certainty.

That's actually what I meant in Canada.

Yeah, to my knowledge, he's almost certainly, I can say, the only one that's been arrested and actually he's actually arrested on February 7th. Now he was immediately released. The police that were dealing with him because he thought they actually, they came to the church, they met with him in his office on the set, arrested him or at least they...

And they presented him with... We didn't sign the undertaking and that was actually one of the charges he got in the past actually twice, but it was only the second time that he was actually taken in and then ultimately detained.

And to my knowledge, no other pastor has been detained like that and actually ended up in jail.

Well, how did the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms get involved?

Well, I mean, this goes to the core, of course, of what we do because it engages religious liberty. It obviously engages freedom of a peaceful assembly and freedom of association, freedom of expression too, but especially freedom of religion and all those things go to the core of what we do.

So it's sort of a natural case for us. However, one of the things that we started doing back in the, I guess, late spring of 2020 is advising and representing many churches across Canada, particularly in Alberta.

We're a little more well-known here, especially amongst the churches. So we started doing that and then of course now, unfortunately most churches stay closed, but there was a few that started to open up.

And in particular, when things eased off last summer, there was a few churches that didn't just open, but opened all the way because staying closed even partially wasn't warranted or congruent with scripture.

So they decided to open fully. Pastor James' code, Pastor James was one of those churches that opened fully last July. And then at some point in the fall, I'm going to say October, November, he got in touch with me at the Justice Center who were potentially facing consequences for what they were doing, reached out to us.

And so I had been in discussions with him and advising him for several months in the lead up to this. So he was preparing and we were preparing all along for this to eventually happen. So it was, I mean, we had been involved since the beginning and it was just a natural progression in our representation.

Well, I thank God that he definitely was able to get in, not only in contact with you, but also to have you represent him. During this occasion and this very unfortunate occasion. Can you tell us something about Pastor Coates' demeanor and the way he's responding to all this?

Obviously, if we were in some third world country or something, it'd be a far worse situation, infinitely worse. And of course, the incarceration length would no doubt be much longer. Tell us about his spirits at this point.

They're very high. They're very good. He's a very, very courageous man. I've met a few men are so principled, not just on their own, but relying on that and trusting on that, right? I mean, we spoke every few days while he was in jail.

Pick up the phone. Hey, how you doing? And he sounded really no different than he did when we would talk before he went into jail. And I mean, you know, obviously he was candid with me, you know, he wasn't eating as well.

He wasn't sleeping as well. You know, it's jail, right? I mean, it's not just circumstances. And yet he was undaunted. You know, he understood with clarity why he was in there, what he was doing and what it, you know, obviously the whole thing, you know, something he told me that really struck me towards the end of it.

He said, you know, ultimately, I wasn't much more free outside than I now am inside. Because every time I held and every time I did a lot of things in my life as far as pastoral duties, I was doing so knowing that it was, you know, according to the government to do so, you know, and always under the threat being $5 ,000 or being thrown in jail or what have you.

So I was always living under that. And so I wasn't ultimately free. I was, you know, I was, I was, I was living out my constitutional rights and exercise. I was kind of living in a constraint as it was.

And so now in jail, it really isn't a whole lot worse. It's, you know, whether, whether I'm in or out, I'm not free until these, these laws and this governmental oppression is thrown off. And that really struck me.

And I, and I believe he's right. You know, it's hard to live. You can, I mean, you could, you could still do it, but it's hard to live truly free when you're always looking over your shoulder and thinking, what's the government going to do next?

And make sure I can't continue to exercise my liberty.

Now, what's the update on his release? I was, I was informed. In fact, I believe the public was informed that it was supposed to be today that he was released. Is that still happening?

Yes. In fact, he may already be out now. I haven't spoken with him since we had court this morning. So we just got out of court here two, three hours ago. It was decided that he, prosecution and the defense had made joint submission, certain charges to plea to a certain charge.

And that ultimately, if that was accepted, he would be released. And the court did accept most of what we presented to it one point because it increased the fine for, for the, for the, essentially the court agreed.

And so he is ultimately out now and there's no conditions of release. And he has one remaining, which is actually a good thing, because that allows us to proceed to trial and to challenge the constitutionality of the charge under.

Let us know, what did he actually agree to under the terms of his release as far as a charge?

So ultimately, so he was charged with several public health charges and all but one of them were withdrawn. He was also charged with a criminal offense. A criminal offense was that he briefed an undertaking.

So I'll take you back to February 7th. I mentioned that he was arrested and basically it's a piece of paper that we're not going to release you from this arrest to do this and this and this. We're going to, you know, impose conditions.

So commonly it would be, you know, don't drink alcohol and, you know, don't visit the house with a girlfriend that you beat up and, you know, don't go to the bar and don't do hard drugs and, you know, those sorts of things we do with criminals, right?

Don't go to the 7-Eleven that you robbed last week, those sorts of things, right? So that's, you know, So in this place, the condition was, don't hold church unless you follow the Public Health Act. Well, sorry guys, I can't have an interrogation and it would violate my conscience to adhere to them.

So he said no. And I get the sense the police didn't quite know what they were doing and I can understand why this is rather unusual circumstances because normally if you don't agree to a condition of release from an arrest, you were to be released right away.

Well, they didn't do that with Baxter Coates. They just let him go anyways. And is that you're still not going to agree to it and contrary to it. So, you know, of course, the next Sunday he went ahead and he held church like a condition that he never agreed to.

So he's actually charged with a criminal offense for that, which so what happened is that the prosecution agreed to accept a plea to a non-criminal is in essence the same, but now it's not a criminal offense that he's pleading to.

It's just a regulatory. What do you put guilty to? Because I mean, you know, at least for Baxter Coates, and that obviously is important because he's a man of conscience, you know, he was, he was basically admitting that, yes, I didn't agree to it.

And I did act contrary to it because I didn't agree to it. But I'd never go back on my word. I'd never agree to something and not do it or do it, you know, contrary to what I agreed to. But he didn't agree with, but he, but he, but he breached it.

And, you know, like I said, according to the law that you're at least potentially still going to be found guilty of that. So he decided to plead guilty to that because that charge, provided it wasn't criminal, is essentially neither here nor there.

The public health act, well, no, of course he's not, right? There's really no dispute about that, right? The real dispute is remaining public health charge and, and, and to get rid of the criminal charge and, and, and to get out of jail until that's what he entered a plea to.

So that was, that was the essence of the arrangement is, you know, get rid of the criminal charge, get rid of all the frivolous public health charges. Let's focus on the one that really matters. Let's get him out of jail.

And then let's, let's proceed to a trial and get down to the essence of whether this stuff is actually scientific and constitutional.

Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If you have a question for James Kitchen, the lawyer for pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, send it to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com.

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Grace Life Church During Coates’s Incarceration

Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in our guests for the first 90 minutes of the show until 5 30 pm is James Kitchen a lawyer with the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and a personal lawyer for James Coates pastor and teacher at Grace Life Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

And we have been addressing the arrest, incarceration and release of a pastor who refused to stop holding church. And we do have a listener in South Central Pennsylvania Joseph who wants to know was Grace Life Church of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada continuing to have their in-person public worship while Pastor Coates was in jail.

And has anybody else had legal issues over it?

Well, that's a good question. Yes, it is interesting in so far as my guess law enforcement approach this is they actually expect it and you know as I told so I was on another Christian program and I told the host that you know that way of thinking actually makes sense wouldn't it.

It doesn't surprise me to have been throughout this whole thing. That would be a reasonable expectation. It's you know okay well there's this church just happened to have a jury convicted on this you know we'll just we'll deal with him and then continue on and there's preaching and nothing changed except for because of the notoriety of the case the church was actually inundated by people for the next three or four Sundays while Pastor Coates was in jail with people wanting to come to the church 600 people and they were even getting seven or eight hundred people so they would fill up the church with the full 600 and then have another one or two hundred out of the parking lot or either people that hadn't been for years and they were just so that they wanted to be there which which really strikes me right because it's you know if you're if you're truly living in truth and if you're you know you're going to do you're going to do really courageous principled things and people are going to be attracted to that and a number of people expressed to the church that of course with a number of people expressed like we are here and we wanted to be here because we're just we're drawn here we're putting you down that was really interesting to watch that that the the numbers of the church actually increased.

It was interesting to see nobody at the church got arrested or ticketed or anything like that the church itself was issued with a summons which basically just means they you know somebody from the church will have to show up or or the church's lawyer will have to show up at the day set they were charged under so you know that the the local law enforcement you know did did issue a court summons to the church but other than that there was no no legal enforcement to the church or anything anything really aggressive like that none of that happened.

The services just went ahead and of course you know nobody that we know of contracted COVID or or you know otherwise ended up in the the hospital or anything.

And we have an anonymous listener who says I also host a radio program and podcast and I'm remaining anonymous because I don't want to unnecessarily offend some of the Canadians I've had as guests. The thing that puzzles me is that I've had guests on this program from Canada who have given me different stories on how strict it has become in Canada in regard to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Some have told me that it is very dangerous to speak out publicly against homosexuality and other things like that from your own pulpit or on billboards on church signs etc. And others have told me they've never even heard of anybody being penalized for these things.

What is the true story on this?

Well that's a hard question to answer. The first thing to say in America it really does depend on what part of the country you're from. Right. As I would imagine it would depend on California. Right. It's depending on Canada.

Canada generally is less free. It generally does not harbor culturally and politically. However you know where there is any still strong desire to remain free that you'd find that more in Alberta than anywhere else.

So if you were in uh let's say like I talked about Vancouver if you're on if you're in the coastal urban areas of BC versus Columbia you know if you're out in Ontario southern Ontario area if you're out in the Atlantic provinces if you're in those if you're in Quebec if you're in those more I guess more leftist authoritarian areas of the country you're going to you're going to find more resistance you know amongst the people around you amongst law enforcement amongst just you're going to find that more.

Uh if you're in Alberta you're going to find it less Alberta maybe a little bit Saskatchewan as well so that matters. Um I think the other thing is it depends on how much you're paying attention right.

Um the new totalitarianism that's sweeping North America is a soft one. It's a velvet one. Right. It's it's it's like an iron uh fist with a velvet glove. It's not necessarily the government per se that will persecute you.

If you speak out you know it's often your employer which is which is private that's not government. Right. It's often your regulatory body which is sort of a branch of government. Um right if you're if you're a professional in Canada uh and you step out of line you start you start saying something that's different than the orthodoxy you know you're you're you're treated like a heretic and you are persecuted severely.

You know you will have your license threatened you will be put through all kinds of expensive and stressful investigations and and taken to hearings and severely punished. Uh so professionals are very cowed in Canada.

It's oftentimes not so much the overt penalties it's the threats and and and some people are more sensitive to that than others. Some people are paying attention to it and some people are more scared of it than others right.

So I've I've met some people that are more rural and so they don't really realize what happens in the cities and they would say well what are you worried about. Nothing to be worried about and I think that's partly why you will get these different stories.

You know what I'm going to tell people is is a little bit shocking. Uh I think whether I'm talking to to people in Canada or America because I see this on a daily basis as to what I do for a job right.

So I have all kinds of people that come through my door um that are facing all these these in pressure and paying attention really that we publicize as much as we can obviously but but but even then if you're not paying attention you might not understand just how authoritarian Canada has generally become and it's really sped up the last five or ten years too.

I mean I've talked to a lot of people and they say what what happened to the country I grew up in because Canada wasn't relatively free country you go back to the 70s and 80s maybe even the 90s. So I think that's partly why you you get these different stories.

Um is it really depends on how much the person's paying attention and what part of the country they're from. And and maybe whether or not um you know they're they're scared of stuff because a lot of it is that fear factor right.

Um some some I guess it's a professional. Some Christians are really scared of what could happen. Others say well you know come what may and I mean the power behind the social justice warrior elites really is a lot of threats and a lot of nasty words it's more you know their their their bite isn't nearly as bad as their bark but many people are scared by just the bark.

So I think that's some of why there is.

Now uh are some of these threats being made without constitutional basis. Like like for instance I don't know if you can clarify whether this happened but I have this vague memory our listener mentioned something that jogged a memory that I had of a pastor or an individual Christian being fined excessively for posting a bible verse on a billboard and it was a verse condemning homosexuality and he had no commentary on it or anything and he was still fine.

I don't know if you have heard whether that's true or not but was there legal basis for that. And other things that you are seeing in Canada or these. Are these just newly invented restrictions and mandates and laws.

For instance there are things I keep hearing over and over again from people who are very much aware of constitutional law here in the United States that governors in this country are are declaring mandates that they have no legal authority to do.

In fact I heard that the constitution of Pennsylvania restricts government interference in worship services at all and there were many pastors that I knew who were convinced that the governor was mandating that they shut down at least temporary their services.

So there's a lot of there's a lot of mystery about it seems or confusion about what things are just very strong suggestions being veiled as official mandates and what people are having the legal right to do in places of authority.

Well you know there is a lot of confusion about it. Um one because the law is in flux because Canada generally is is losing. Its we're in the process of losing our constitutional rights right now. We're in the process of losing our constitution because ultimately what.

There's two things that protects at least in Canada. There's two things that protects the constitution. One would be the will of the people and the other would be the courts. Right. Well I mean we're losing both of those.