Christians arrested in Dearborn for handing out copies of the Gospel of John on public street

AP — Police in the heavily Arab Detroit suburb of Dearborn say they arrested four Christian missionaries for disorderly conduct at an Arab cultural festival.

Police Chief Ron Haddad says his department made the arrests Friday. The four are free on bond.

Christian proselytizing at the festival has been a matter of dispute for several years.

Haddad tells the Detroit Free Press he isn’t taking sides in any dispute and says police have to keep peace at a festival that draws 300,000 over three days.

As you can see in the video posted at Powerline, the “disorderly conduct” consisted of standing on a public street outside an Arab festival and handing people copies of the Gospel as they walked toward the festival. Within three minutes of the missionaries stationing themselves on the street, about ten police officers show up and stop them. The police confiscate the camera that the leader of the four missionaries is using to film the event. After their arrest and release, the missionaries demonstrate how far away from the festival they have to go—several blocks—before they can hand out literature without being arrested.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 23, 2010 01:57 PM | Send