Pastor Clashes with Abortion Protestors at Iowa State Capitol

Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, with a special guest today.

First time on the Conversations That Matter podcast, we have Pastor Michael Shover. Pastor Shover, how you doing?

I'm doing well. How are you? Good, good. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you sharing about your experience.

Why don't we play the clip and then I'll get you to comment on it and introduce you more so people know who you are.

But this is the infamous clip that people are talking about right now online. Here we go.

Okay, so we start the podcast with a bang. You know, the clip that was most viral,

I played one that had a fuller context, just cut off with you saying, what's wrong with pedophilia? And then that was it.

And then people screaming and it gives you some PTSD. So, especially the expression of that one woman, that could be a meme.

You know, it's just get out of my face and she's clearly in your face. So what was going on there?

You're a pastor, Christ the Redeemer Church in Pella, Iowa, and you decided to go to the

Capitol, why? Yeah, so a few years ago, the governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, signed into law what's called the heartbeat bill, which prevents abortion from happening after six weeks, right, once a heartbeat is detected at six weeks.

And it was overturned by, you know, some judges or whatever.

Well, now that Roe versus Wade has been overturned, she pushed it back again. It was signed back into law on Friday at the

Family Leadership Summit, where Tucker Carlson was at and everything. But she signed the...

So on Tuesday, the House and the Senate of Iowa both passed it again. And so there were protesters there, you know, pro -abortion advocates who were simply screeching about how they, you know, can no longer murder babies whenever they want.

So I went there with another family from church and I got there and I had been there maybe,

I don't know, maybe five minutes. And the time that I walked in and looked around,

I saw a fellow minister who I'm friends with, Ray Simmons, who just wrote a really decent book recently called

The Confessional County. He's a minister in Southwest Iowa.

I saw him, grabbed his arm and said, hey, Ray, look at everything that's going on. And then

I just kind of looked out and just everybody's screaming and shouting and chanting, you know, and trying to disrupt what's going on in the

House of Representatives where they're, you know, talking about the bill and everything like that.

And there was just kind of a lull in the screaming for about two seconds.

And I didn't come there thinking that I was gonna do this. I had no idea what I was gonna do when

I was there, other than just be a presence. But it was like the spirit of God just rushed upon me and I just yelled out, stop murdering babies.

And it boomed throughout the whole rotunda of the Capitol building, such that everybody just like got really quiet.

And they all did like an about face and like turned to me and I shouted it again, stop murdering babies.

And that's when, you know, the demon starts screeching and they all just gathered around me into that crazy horde that you saw.

And I was, you know, preaching at them, telling them to stop murdering babies, believe in Jesus Christ, repent of their sins and all of that.

And it was almost like a concentrated effort. I don't know if, you know, if it was just like one person said it and the rest of them started picking it up, but I was wearing,

I was wearing, you know, my clerical uniform. I had my clerical collar on.

And so they started calling me a pedophile because I guess the associations with, you know,

Catholic priests, yeah. Right, and I'm as Protestant as can be. And so they were screaming it and screaming it and screaming it.

And then eventually I just asked, you know, this one,

I guess it's, I don't wanna say lady. She wasn't very ladylike, but she was definitely a female. And, you know, she said,

I think there's another clip where you can see it kind of more from her angle where she says, get your hands off me or don't touch me.

And I wasn't, I'll lock your pedophile ass up. And I just kind of chuckled at her.

And then I, you know, tried to do a kind of a Vantillian, you know, kind of run on them.

And, you know, obviously don't try to use logic with a raging mob, you know, but I just asked them, you know, well, you keep calling me a pedophile.

What is even wrong with pedophilia, right? All of you, and that's the point where they all started screeching, but I was trying to say all of you support

LGBTQ+. The plus does refer to pedophilia. You all are actually in support of pedophiles.

You know, this is your whole thing. This is where it's all going. So why are you acting like you're against it when you actually are in support of it?

So that was the one thing I was trying to say is to show their inconsistency, but also, you know, just follow the logic out a little bit further.

You know, what is wrong with pedophilia? Okay, well, it hurts and destroys children.

Ah, much like, I don't know, abortion, which murders the smallest and the littlest among us.

The people who God has put to protect and defend the innocent are the ones who are murdering them, you know?

And so I was trying to also make them see that correlation, but, you know, again, you can't reason with a raging, angry mob.

So that was kind of what happened. And then, you know, you saw some more pushing with the crazy pink haired lady, almost hitting me with her sign, and I was trying to get it away until she whacked my arm and the state trooper had to come and, you know, kind of break things up.

So the whole thing maybe lasted a minute and a half. I mean, and it was like the longest minute and a half of my life.

It was extremely intense. And I actually got like a kind of a high off the whole thing.

I had never done anything like that. I, you know, I preach to Christians every Sunday. So it was very interesting to just to see the evil and kind of the demonic hatred for Christ, for life.

And, you know, Jesus called the people of his day, you know, the

Pharisees. He says, you are of your father, the devil, who was a murderer and a liar from the beginning.

And that's what these people are. They follow in the same train as him, so. So did you think after that minute and a half was up that you would be online and in the news, people calling you a pedophile pastor?

Because it's all over Twitter. Right, right. Yeah, no, I hadn't even thought about it.

I mean, I kind of guessed, you know, once the whole thing started happening and everybody started gathering around and cameras were pulled out and phones were pulled out and everything,

I kind of figured that, you know, people were recording. But yeah,

I wasn't really thinking about, you know, what are the potential consequences of me asking a rhetorical question.

So I, yeah. Yeah, they took it as you're supportive when really you were trying to challenge them because they're supportive.

And that's what you kept saying afterward. But when you cut the clip off at the point that a lot of the viral videos have cut it off, you don't know that that's what you followed it up with.

So, I mean, it's extremely dishonest, but you know, this is something that I've focused on this podcast on a number of times.

Obviously there's unequal weights and measures that get applied, even from, I think sometimes our Christian brothers and sisters, they can even be lulled into accepting these unequal weights and measures where anything on the left is kind of nuanced or looked at in a understandable light, even if we disagree.

And then things on the right, even if it's slightly to the right, is seen in the worst possible light. It's must be proto -Nazism or something.

And this is like, I don't know, a circumstance where, like what you said, which was very understandable, has been twisted.

It has been, people have run with it. I don't know if you've received, have you received encouragement from Christians as far as this goes, or has it been silence?

No, no, I have. I have. Many, many people in my denomination, in the

CREC, have reached out to me, have been encouraging, have been an encouragement to me.

I actually have, tomorrow, I have an interview with CrossPolitik, with Gabe Wrench.

And so we'll be talking about it there. And I have some other positive interviews lined up too with people on our side.

And yeah, people have reached out to me. My church family has been real supportive. They're real proud of me for standing up and saying these things.

And the whole, if anybody who knows me and who knows what

I've been up to the last couple years in my town would know that the claim that I'm a pedophile is so overly the top ridiculous.

I have been on the front lines in my town fighting against transgenderism.

We had a public pool issue where a female who was quote unquote transitioning showed up at the pool and came topless.

But I think she put like duct tape or something on her breasts to cover her nipples.

And it was just like over the top. It scandalized a lot of people.

I don't live in a totally degenerate town. I live in a very predominantly conservative

Christian town which still very much exudes a lot of the old America like what

America used to be. Leftists are trying really hard to take over. But I was there,

I spoke against the city council for doing nothing about it. I've confronted the city council again about the public library where the librarians are trying to bring in all those pornography books essentially and grooming our children with transgenderism and all this stuff.

I've recently just as two weeks ago now, I think three weeks ago, the

ACLU of Iowa has issued kind of a statement to multiple towns in Iowa trying to get the towns to reverse or change zoning ordinance in order to allow drag shows to happen.

I've met with the mayor. I personally spoke with him about these things. I am 100 % against like grooming children, allowing anything to ever happen to our children.

Our church, in fact, preempting much of this stuff five years ago when

I first came on board, we wrote a children's ministry policy.

And if you don't mind, I would like to just read the introduction to it. And I wrote this and just,

I think it's really important, but it says, Christ the Redeemer Church believes that God created man in his image and likeness.

As an image bearer, one of mankind's fundamental duties in life is to serve and protect the world that God made and all who are in it.

We also believe that this calling to serve and protect has been made more urgent and necessary for us since the entrance of sin into the world.

One of the worst sins that has plagued humanity has been the proclivity of some to prey upon young children and sexually abuse them.

It is the intention of Christ the Redeemer Church to ensure that that never happens to any of the children in our church.

At Christ the Redeemer Church, we take our responsibility to care for children very seriously because we take the words of our

Lord Jesus Christ very seriously. When he said, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

Our Lord and Savior highly prizes and favors children and he threatens great punishments for those who would seek to do them harm.

Therefore, in seeking to please the Lord and to protect Christ's littlest ones and to ensure that none of them will ever have caused a stumble as a result of the negligence of those who have been entrusted to serve and protect them,

Christ the Redeemer Church has adopted the following children's ministry policy. These guidelines are intended to facilitate a safe and nurturing environment in which children can grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.

So we go through every year ministry.

SAFE is an organization that provides training to protect children, to provide training for how you can be on the lookout for groomers, we undergo this ministry

SAFE training every year. I get a background check every year. Everybody who's in staff or a volunteer at children's ministry in our church gets one every year, right?

So it's like, it's so utterly ridiculous. They picked like the worst possible guy to label as a pedophile.

There is absolutely no chance that anything could ever be put on me. And so I just praise the

Lord that all these things have been in place since the moment I got here. This is what we've been doing.

Everybody knows this. It's people who have no idea who we are who want to slander us because they know

Christ. That's right, yeah. It's not about you ultimately, but of course this is something that when you start, and I think it's probably necessary that you, or at least it's helpful that you revealed some of this and let us into the inner workings of your church to say, hey,

I have a long track record here. I care about kids. Everyone knows it. There's so many questions

I have, but I think maybe first I just have an observation based on what you're saying.

So you're saying that you've done all these things. You've taken all these measures.

There's a long track record of proof. Yet what I've often found, and I haven't seen it in your case yet, I suppose if I went on Twitter, I would, is people will look at that pile of evidence and they'll say, if they're on the left, that that's further proof, right?

So if you're, I mean, it's like the people that are in the interracial marriages are the worst racists, right?

The people who are against homosexuality must be closet homosexuals.

They always twist it to say that that's actually an overcompensation because it's trying to, it shows an obsession that you have, but really they're obsessed.

They're projecting, but. The people who adopt children from Africa are actually white supremacists.

Right, the white supremacists who care for these children, right? Yeah, I mean, I've said before, I have like four friends.

I could probably name them off of it, but I'm not going to, who have been accused of kinism publicly.

And every single one of them is in an interracial marriage. And I just think it's the funniest thing to me because I'm just like, like you really picked the wrong guy to go after, but it doesn't seem to matter, right?

Because it's all ideological. It doesn't, your actions in the real world don't seem to actually matter in these kinds of scenarios.

And so I guess the question, I'm obviously making an observation, but here's the question for you leading up to this.

So if that happens, if, I mean, if people's minds aren't changed, if you still have, I mean,

I think this will blow over, but let's say that in some people's minds, you're permanently labeled this way, probably people you don't care about.

Like as far as like, you don't care what they think of you, but it's in the water and it'll come up every time you probably try to, as you just said, you're publicly involved.

What do you think the right approach is to that? Because we have to think through this, the cancel culture stuff, it's in the water, it never goes away.

People always bring up this charge. Like, how do you feel about that? What do you think should be done about that?

Should you have to explain yourself every time this comes up? Like, what do you think Christians should do in a similar spot to the one you're in?

Yeah, that's good, John. No, I do not think that it's necessary to address this issue every single time that it's gonna be brought up.

Jesus was accused of being a

Samaritan and being born of inappropriate marriage and inappropriate sexual relations, right?

He was accused of having a demon and most of the time he never even really addressed the people's insults that they threw at him.

He just moved on to the substance of the issue. So, I don't find it necessary to have to engage with these people who are not arguing in good faith, right?

Their whole point is just to malign, to falsify, to lie, steal, kill, destroy like their father, the devil.

There's no reason to argue with these people about those points. Let's talk about the substance of the issue.

And that's how I think we need to move forward because the people who will really hear it, right?

Who Jesus called like sons of peace, when he told his disciples, go out to the villages and start preaching the gospel.

And if you were received, if there's a son of peace there, they will receive you. But if you are not received, then let your peace, let your blessing come back to you.

If there's sons of peace out there, if there's people who really wanna know the truth, they will receive it.

They will be willing to listen. They will be concerned about the truth. But those who are not of the truth are not of Jesus Christ.

And I have no concern to try to justify myself or vindicate myself to those types of people.

They're gonna believe whatever they're gonna believe no matter what's said. So let's just laugh about their nonsense.

Psalm 2, right? God's in the heaven and he laughs at them. We can laugh along with God and we can trust in Jesus Christ, our

King. I think that's good advice to go back to the rhetoric that Jesus used. That's really good.

So you're gonna be the cheerful warrior kind of moving forward. Do you think Christians are at a point now where they're starting,

I hesitate to say wake up, but they're starting to push back. They're starting to realize, we just experienced

BLM, we experienced COVID, we've experienced Me Too. And on all those issues, I think it's fair to say my initial assessment that they tend to nuance left, punch right is true on those issues.

In general, Christian leaders I'm talking about here. But do you think on this issue, there's a change in the water?

Because I sense that on the transgender stuff, at least. And I mean, abortion's always kind of been an issue, at least since I've been alive.

But with the transgender stuff, maybe even other issues are becoming, Christians are becoming more aggressive on those things.

Do you sense that at all? I do, I do. And it's not even just Christians, but it's, sorry, you mean in arguing against it,

Christians are more aggressive in - Right, well, you're getting all this encouragement from people, right?

And I don't think you would have, if you went, let's say, to a BLM march in 2020, and you said, you're the racist, or you're perverted, you're evil, you're whatever you wanted to say to oppose them.

Sure. You would not have the support, I don't think. I don't think people would come to your aid if you were accused of being a racist, and then say, no, we know

Pastor Michael Shover, let's have him on the show. Maybe they would, I don't know. But in this case, it seems like people are willing to fight back on the charge of pedophilia.

Like that's, it's like a bridge too far. Maybe I'm off on that. I'm just wanting to know what you think about that.

Well, yeah, I know. I guess I would say that I'm really blessed to be in the CREC. We have some really great pastors and churches in our denomination.

We've been, praise be to God that he raised up men like Doug Wilson to lead the way in much of this stuff.

Showing us how to fight with joy in our hearts and not being filled with anger and hatred towards our enemies, but loving the

Lord more and enabling, allowing us to really live in with the words of Jesus, where he says, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and slander you and say all things falsely on Christ's account, right?

We're blessed, so let's fight with joy. We belong in the long line of prophets, right?

And apostles and with Jesus himself when they do this, right? This is the only method that they have is to slander and lie.

So what I would say is that I think there are a lot more people who are standing up against these things.

Our eyes are being, everyone's eyes are being opened to this stuff. And what

I would say though is what I find, actually, I'm gonna say what I find discouraging is that most of the people who are doing the fighting are women.

The wives are the ones who are at the city council meetings. The wives are the ones who are protesting a lot of this stuff.

The women are the ones who are the most outspoken and praise be to God for faithful women, but where are the men at?

Where are the ministers? Why was there such a small amount of faithful, godly ministers at the

Capitol building this past Tuesday, right? I only saw two besides myself, whereas there was the whole like priests of Baal were out in droves promoting sacrificing children.

Where are the men at? And I think that things are turning,

John, things are turning. People are wanting to become more, are being emboldened to stand up.

And I think that that's kind of the importance of why, of something like what I did. I'm not, I really am a guy.

I just wanna be left alone. I think most conservatives just wanna be left alone, but we're at a point right now where it's like, they're never gonna leave us alone, right?

I mean, they're shouting in the streets, like we're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children. Like, let's see how long you keep on doing this before someone stands up and really puts a stop to it.

And then we gotta start talking about, why did the

Proud Boys rally turn into a violent clash, which is already happening, right?

Like violence is gonna come out of this and Christians need to not be anywhere near the violence at all.

We need to be speaking towards, speaking about these things and being outwardly joyful in the

Lord. And the joy of the Lord's our strength and we need to be against all of this nonsense and we need more people to do it.

Yeah. You live in Iowa, which is red, right? I mean, it's, I think the legislature and the governor.

Yeah, we have a very, very conservative governor in terms of the rest of the other governors of the nation.

It is a red state, but it's, you know. It's interesting to me that even in a red state though, the organization isn't there to get pastors and just conservatives in general to the

Capitol in large numbers enough to challenge. The left is so organized, it seems like even in conservative states to get their group to show up and to make chaos and to do what they'd done to you, which

I'm not trying to say that as a way to discourage people who are listening, but it is a problem that just seems to, like you didn't have like a political organization coming to you saying, show up at the

Capitol, right? You just, as a pastor, you knew this was going on and you decided to go of your own accord.

Maybe you, I don't know if you took some members of your church with you, but like, it's very organic, right? Right. And I don't know like what the solution there is for applying pressure, because that has to happen.

As conservative Christians, we have to, or Christian conservatives, I should say, we have to be able to apply pressure to the political office, to the magistrate to say, you're responsible before God and his law is important and you will be held accountable.

If we don't do that, then of course the mob is going to have an advantage, right? Yeah. So I don't know in Iowa what's around, but.

Yeah, so actually the family leader organization that is responsible for bringing together

Iowan pastors to come to the Capitol building and trying to partner them up with different legislators, representatives and senators in the state

Capitol. And it's, I'm not officially a part of it yet, but I've met people this past weekend or yeah, on Friday when

I was at the family leadership summit where Tucker Carlson was and a lot of presidential nominees were where Mike Pence just committed,

I think, career suicide by saying that American cities being destroyed from within is not his concern.

And he's more concerned about the 33 Abrams tanks that are gonna go to Ukraine, whatever. So, but the family leader is very much involved, but it's involved in many ways in the behind the scenes sort of activity.

They hold prayer meetings there, Bible studies there at the Capitol building. They are involved in, if not overt evangelism, but kind of behind the scenes ministers encouraging and trying to provide godly, moral, spiritual guidance and counsel to representatives and senators.

And I'll tell you, it's working because we just passed the heartbeat bill for the second time, right?

So, whereas the outward manifestation of the left is screaming and screaming and screaming and organized and clanging bells and doing all their other stuff, they are organized in that way.

We have something great going on here in Iowa too, where we also are organized, but it's manifested chiefly in a different way.

And from what I can tell, we're being very successful. Good, well, that's good to hear.

I do wanna ask you, this is a little off topic, but the heartbeat bill there, I'm not in Iowa, but I know some people in Iowa and it seems to be like on conservative side, maybe more the abolitionist types are against it.

Sure. In a sense, I don't know if you're up on that debate, but I mean, is it a good bill?

It sounds like at least it saves some babies, right? Well, sure. I mean, I have great sympathy for the abolitionist guys.

I regularly in my YouTube feed, I see videos from, what's his name?

Gentleman who's kind of the main guy, Hunter. Oh, Russell Hunter. Yeah, yeah.

I have videos of him talking to people about abortion. And I have great sympathy for the abolitionists.

And on principle, like principally, yes. Like I agree that we should absolutely have...

Abortion should be made illegal from the moment of conception, right? Yes and amen. There shouldn't be any...

Any... Exceptions. Exceptions, you know. But I also do live in the real world and I try to understand that incrementalism is a real thing.

And in fact, at the Senate on Tuesday night, some of the people were decrying the fact that this heartbeat bill, that it's gonna lead to a slippery slope because now if abortion is restricted, because before it was restricted at 20 weeks, now it's restricted at six weeks.

What's gonna stop it from being restricted from the moment of conception? And what's gonna get in vitro fertilization taken away?

And what's gonna stop it from getting all the exceptions taken away? And it's like - Right. Exactly. Yes, that's the point.

We're moving the... I would say that I think the abortion Overton window is being shifted.

And I would say it's probably a lot of it's being shifted because of the abolitionist guys, because of the work they're doing, but it's manifesting itself incrementally.

So - Well, this is a bit of a white pill, meaning an encouraging word for people out there who see a lot of negativity around them, especially if they're in purple or blue areas, that there is some progress being made somewhere.

And I know that your church has become, for just even some people I know, somewhat of a refuge. I know a gentleman who just moved from across half the, maybe a third of the way across the country or so forth, to be at your church, to be living in your community.

And it's interesting, this is happening all over the place. I know of a church in Kentucky that's like this. I know several places where people are moving to be around like -minded people.

And so if people are interested in more of your work, they can go to RedeemerPella .org

or your blog, which is livinganddying .substack .com and check it out.

And yeah, any final words for us of encouragement or anything? Yeah, well, one, again,

I just wanted to thank you for having me on. My pleasure. I just want to encourage everybody that in times like this, what is needed is boldness.

Cowards will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, right? You read in Revelation 21 that cowards are among the first listed who are gonna be burning in the lake of fire.

We need to be bold and brave and have courage to stand up in the face of great evil.

And so I know that people can, will probably are saying like, oh, well,

I question, you know, Shover's tactics, maybe he shouldn't have said that. Maybe he shouldn't have done this.

Well, sure, maybe I shouldn't have. But the simple fact is

I did and people are attracted to that.

The reason, going back to the thing that you just previously said, the reason that people are fleeing churches and states and are willing to move halfway across the country to move to other places is because they're looking for leaders, ministers who are going to take a stand and who are going to be willing to fight and going to lead the charge.

That is what we've seen since COVID happened, since COVID happened, is that a large portion of my church we received during COVID time because they were fleeing from states where it was just getting crazy and people were banned and everything.

And the ordinary Christian desperately wants ministers who have a backbone.

And so I have a backbone. I'm gonna stand up. I'm gonna say things that are hard and difficult and that makes the left scream.

Because I want to be faithful to Jesus Christ. Find a church like that and find a minister who's gonna go to the fire for you and you and your family will be blessed.

Yeah, well, thank you for your courage. Thank you for that example and for just being willing to take some time out of your schedule to talk to us about it.

So again, people can go to RedeemerPella .org, livinganddying .substack .com. Thank you,