No. of Recommendations: 6
Dear Pastor Lorenzo Sewell,
There is something almost impressive about walking into an American city council meeting to warn everyone that American government has collapsed, screaming at the elected officials sitting in front of you, demanding that they pass your personal religious loyalty test, answering your own questions before they can respond, and then declaring their city lost because they refuse to participate in the performance.
That is more or less what you did in Dearborn.
And unlike the short reel you later posted, the city council meeting gives us enough context to understand exactly what your argument is.
It also makes the argument worse.
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You Started With Something That Was Actually True
You began your remarks by invoking Dearborn’s history of racism.
You said the “spirit of Hubbard” still exists in the city and accused Dearborn of carrying “three generations of racism.”
There really is an ugly history there.
Former Dearborn mayor Orville Hubbard was not some fictional villain invented by activists. He was an unapologetic segregationist who campaigned against Black residents, distributed material urging voters to “KEEP NEGROES OUT OF DEARBORN,” and declared himself in favor of complete segregation “one million percent.” Dearborn’s own historical museum acknowledges his long record of race-baiting politics.
So you had something worth talking about.
Then you drove the argument directly into a ditch.
You told the council that Dearborn had prospered through its mosques and call to prayer, but that this prosperity existed “on the back of my people.” You repeatedly emphasized that Black people had “funded everything you do,” before accusing the people sitting in front of you of looking down on Black Americans.
That is an extraordinary pivot.
You took a genuine history of white racism against Black people in Dearborn and somehow converted it into an indictment of the Arab and Muslim population that largely came to political prominence after that history was created.
Orville Hubbard was not running Dearborn as an Islamic caliphate.
Muslims did not create Dearborn’s segregation.
Arab convenience-store owners did not invent redlining.
The call to prayer did not keep Black families out of Dearborn.
There is a serious conversation to be had about relationships between Black and Arab communities in metropolitan Detroit, including prejudice and economic tension in both directions. But if you want to have that conversation, have it.
What you cannot do is invoke Orville Hubbard’s racism and then use it as a launching pad for a new religious out-group.
You found a real historical wound and used it to justify a different form of exclusion.
That should trouble a pastor.
Then You Announced That Dearborn Is Under Sharia Law
This was the central accusation of your speech.
You told the council:
“You are not up under American law. You are up under Sharia law.”
Then you declared:
“We are not a nation of Muslims. We are a nation of Christians.”
There are two different claims buried in there, and both deserve attention.
First, Dearborn is not governed by Sharia law.
You offered no ordinance, statute, court ruling, police policy or municipal code establishing Sharia as civil law.
Instead, your proof was essentially this: Muslims live here, Muslims hold political power here, something happened that you believe was handled unfairly, therefore Sharia.
That is not evidence.
That is Mad Libs for Christian nationalists.
Something happens in a Muslim-majority community that you dislike, fill in the blank with SHARIA LAW, yell loudly enough, and apparently the burden of proof transfers to everybody else.
Second, America is not constitutionally “a nation of Christians” in the sense you were clearly claiming.
Christians make up a major religious tradition in this country. Christianity profoundly influenced American culture and history. Christians have every right to participate in public life as Christians.
But the Constitution does not establish Christianity as the national religion.
The First Amendment prohibits establishment of religion and protects its free exercise. Article VI goes even further by explicitly prohibiting a religious test for public office.
That means the Muslim sitting on the Dearborn City Council does not hold office at Christian sufferance.
He does not owe you a theological disclaimer.
He does not have to prove that he is sufficiently non-Muslim for you to recognize the legitimacy of his office.
And this is where your performance became especially revealing.
“Will You Renounce Sharia Law?”
You turned toward individual council members and began demanding answers.
“Will you denounce Sharia law?”
Then again.
“Will you denounce Sharia law?”
Then, before anyone could meaningfully respond:
“I know you won’t.”
Then you singled out another member.
“Abraham, you went to Hillsdale. Will you renounce Sharia law?”
Again and again.
Lorenzo, that was not a question.
A question is something you ask because you are interested in the answer.
You had already written the answer for them.
You walked into their public meeting, treated elected officials like defendants in your personal courtroom, demanded that they repeat the religious-political formula you had selected for them, and then interpreted their refusal to jump when commanded as proof of guilt.
That is a beautifully constructed trap because nothing can disprove it.
If a Muslim official answers your demand, you get to decide whether the answer was sincere.
If he refuses, that proves Sharia.
If he objects to the premise, that proves Sharia.
If he ignores you, that proves Sharia.
Congratulations. You have invented an accusation that survives every possible answer.
That is not investigation.
That is theater.
And it is particularly rich coming from someone supposedly defending American civic government.
American elected officials are not required to submit to theological interrogations from visiting pastors.
You were participating in public comment.
You were not conducting a congressional hearing.
Apparently Dearborn Owns a Microphone
By this point you were shouting loudly enough that the council president had to restore order.
His response may have been the funniest accidental rebuttal of the entire evening.
He reminded everyone that there was a microphone system in Dearborn.
Then added:
“We can afford one.”
He explained that speakers were free to raise their voices, but that the microphone already allowed everyone to hear them, and asked people to remain respectful so others could speak.
Lorenzo, when the city council has to interrupt your defense of Western civilization to explain how microphones work, perhaps the problem is not that Sharia has conquered Michigan.
You were standing in somebody else’s civic meeting.
These were elected officials conducting public business.
Other citizens were waiting for their opportunity to speak.
You had every right to criticize them. You had every right to accuse them of bad policy, hypocrisy, religious favoritism or anything else you could substantiate.
But there is a difference between speaking passionately and treating public officials like extras in your revival meeting.
You are a pastor.
They are not your congregation.
They do not owe you an “Amen.”
Your Biggest Piece of Evidence Was False
Then there was Jake Lang.
You told the council that Lang had been assaulted after talking about Jesus and claimed:
“That is the reason why you have made no arrest.”
From this, you concluded that Dearborn must be operating under Sharia rather than American law.
There is one rather substantial problem with this argument.
Dearborn police did make arrests.
Three men were charged in connection with the earlier assault on Lang. Reporting on the council meeting also records Police Chief Issa Shahin directly disputing your claim, saying officers arrived within approximately 30 seconds and arrests were made.
So your argument was:
Jake Lang was attacked.
Nobody was arrested.
Therefore Sharia law.
Except people were arrested.
That is not a minor detail.
That was the factual bridge you used to get from an assault to the claim that an American municipality had abandoned American law.
And the bridge was not there.
The assault itself should be condemned. Nobody gets a free pass to assault Lang because he is obnoxious, anti-Muslim or deliberately provocative. If someone attacks him, arrest them.
Dearborn did.
That is what American law looks like.
You Actually Rewrote the Pledge While Defending America
Then came perhaps my favorite theological flourish.
You shouted:
“We are one nation under God, indivisible.”
And then immediately specified:
“The God of the Bible. The God of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
That last part is not in the Pledge of Allegiance, Lorenzo.
You apparently started reciting the Pledge and then decided the United States needed a quick doctrinal amendment.
The actual Pledge says “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The words “under God” were themselves added by Congress in 1954.
And I could not help noticing the words you did not emphasize.
“Liberty and justice for all.”
That would have been a useful part to remember while announcing that America belongs to one religious community.
Because the constitutional genius of America is not that government finally figured out which Christian theology is correct.
It is that you do not have to settle that question before becoming an equal citizen.
Christian.
Muslim.
Jew.
Hindu.
Buddhist.
Atheist.
Your rights do not rise and fall based on whether Pastor Lorenzo recognizes your God.
Then Someone Calmly Answered the Question You Had Been Screaming
And here is the most delicious part of the entire transcript.
After you finished declaring that Dearborn had been lost to Sharia, the council restored order and another speaker, Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun, stepped up.
He did not scream.
He did not demand that everyone confess Islam.
He did not announce the arrival of the caliphate.
He simply said:
“Dearborn is America. The Constitution of the United States is the highest law of the land, not the law of any religion.”
Remember your challenge?
“Prove to me we’re not under Sharia law.”
There was your answer.
Baydoun pointed to Christians, Muslims and others worshipping openly. He mentioned businesses selling pork products. He described people working as doctors, teachers, judges, lawyers, police officers, first responders and members of the United States armed forces. Then he affirmed that those who came to protest possessed the constitutional right to disagree, protest peacefully and speak their minds, and that Muslims possessed those same rights to worship, speak and assemble.
That is the part you seem unable to grasp.
Religious freedom is reciprocal.
It cannot mean maximum freedom for Lorenzo Sewell and conditional freedom for Muslims.
Baydoun even finished with a joke:
“We don’t have Sharia law in Dearborn. We have shawarma law.”
Frankly, after listening to several minutes of people screaming about civilization collapsing, somebody bringing shawarma into the conversation was a public service.
The Reel Makes Clear What the Council Speech Was Really About
If this city council performance existed by itself, perhaps someone could argue that you simply became overheated while raising concerns about policing and racism.
But then came your reel.
There you made the underlying worldview much harder to deny.
You complained that your entire life you had given money to Arabs, that buying gasoline or even a bottle of water somehow meant Black Americans were “funding Islam.” You complained about mosques being built and Muslim wealth accumulating.
Then you said the quiet part quite loudly:
“There are 57 countries where you can practice that. Go back there.”
And you explained why you believe Muslims do not leave.
Because, according to you, they did not come here to assimilate.
They came here to take over.
Suddenly the council performance makes perfect sense.
The mosque is not merely a mosque.
It becomes evidence.
The Arab-owned business becomes evidence.
The call to prayer becomes evidence.
A Muslim elected official becomes evidence.
A Muslim candidate becomes evidence.
Even Muslims successfully participating in American society becomes evidence.
You have constructed a worldview in which Muslim assimilation itself proves the Muslim takeover.
And that creates an impossible standard.
If Muslims remain culturally separate, they refuse to assimilate.
If they build successful businesses, they are gaining control.
If they build mosques, they are Islamifying America.
If they enter politics, they are infiltrating government.
If they win elections, the takeover has begun.
There is no winning that game.
There is no acceptable Muslim at the end of that logic except one who remains sufficiently invisible and powerless that you never have to notice him.
This Is Not About Sharia
That is why I no longer think your real argument is about Sharia law.
Sharia is the scary word you attach to something much simpler.
You are uncomfortable with Muslims possessing American power as equals.
Economic power.
Political power.
Cultural visibility.
Religious confidence.
You can tolerate Islam as a private belief practiced quietly by people who remember that Christianity owns the building.
What bothers you is Muslims behaving like they have an equal lease.
They build institutions.
They participate in government.
They raise money.
They establish businesses.
They vote.
They speak publicly about their faith.
They expect police protection.
They expect constitutional protection.
They expect to be treated as Americans.
And you interpret that expectation as conquest.
That is why your later statement that Muslims should “go back” to one of 57 countries matters so much.
It reveals the assumption underneath everything you said at the council meeting.
You believe America belongs to Christians first.
Everyone else is apparently negotiating residency.
Pastor, That Is Not the America You Claim to Be Defending
Preach Jesus.
Please do.
Tell people Christianity is true.
Defend the Trinity.
Challenge the Qur’an.
Argue with Muslims.
Evangelize Dearborn.
Build churches there.
Organize Christians.
Support Christian candidates.
Run for office yourself.
Exercise every inch of your First Amendment rights.
But when you walk into an American city council and demand that Muslim elected officials perform a religious loyalty test for you, remember something.
They hold their offices under the same Constitution protecting your pulpit.
They do not have to renounce their religious tradition to satisfy you.
They do not have to prove that their mosques are harmless.
They do not have to apologize for succeeding economically.
They do not have to become invisible so you can feel culturally secure.
And they most certainly do not have to relocate to one of your preferred “57 countries.”
America is already their country.
The irony of your performance in Dearborn is that you arrived claiming to defend American law from Islamic theocracy, and then proceeded to demand something profoundly un-American:
that elected officials prove their legitimacy by satisfying your religious test.
The Constitution answered that question before any of us were born.
No religious test.
Not yours.
Not mine.
Not theirs.
So perhaps the next time you address a city council, bring your Bible if the rules allow it. Bring your arguments. Bring your criticism. Bring every constitutional complaint you can substantiate.
But maybe leave the inquisitor costume at home.
And Lorenzo?
The microphone works.
Virgin Monk Boy
