Hundreds attend Berea's No Kings protest at Union Church
BEREA — Nearly 400 citizens participated in Berea’s No Kings protest on Saturday, part of a nationwide show of displeasure with the Trump administration.
“We counted noses,” Lisa Abbott, a member of We Show Up, a local nonprofit that organized the Berea event, told The Edge. “We counted 375 people, but then there were others coming and going.”
At noon, protestors began gathering on the front lawn of Union Church on Prospect Street. The crowd faced the street where it intersects Scaffold Cane Road, singing protest songs, chanting, and showing their poster messages to passing traffic.
No Kings Day was coordinated nationally, with thousands of demonstrators reported in about 200 US cities. In addition to Berea, cities across Kentucky, including Bowling Green, Richmond and Frankfort, among several others, participated in the event.
“No Kings Day was organized because so many of use are really concerned that fundamental human rights and democratic rights are being trampled on by this administration,” Abbott said in an interview at the event. “No Kings Day is to remind us that in this country, we don’t have kings. That was decided long ago. We are a country of ‘for the people, by the people’.”
Saturday was also President Trump’s 79th birthday, which he celebrated by attending a military parade in the nation’s capitol. Because this Flag Day was also the 250th anniversary of the US Army, military festivities to be held across downtown Washington, had been scheduled for this June 14, years ago. A parade was added earlier this year, to Trump’s wide approbation.
Asked how Trump acts less of a president, more a king, Abbott said, “He is lawless, and is acting in ways that uses presidential powers that the Constitution doesn’t provide for. That the law doesn’t provide for.”
The Reverend Kent Gilbert, pastor of Union Church, told The Edge the event was not a political march.
“A lot of us are engaged in this not so much out of a sense of politics, right or left, but out of a sense of morality, out of a sense of ethical action ignored by current policies,” Gilbert said.
“Ethical treatment of others underpins civil society, and certainly America in particular, was built on the principle of equality under the law, which we are seeing just grievously abused in this current administration,” Gilbert said. “The illegal detentions, illegal deportations, illegal proceedings, masked ICE officers, abducting people from the streets and from schools and from hospitals, and now even from courts. This is not the stuff of which America is made, not when we are at our best.”
In the interview, Gilbert referenced Christian Nationalists, who comprise at least 10 percent of the US population, with 20 percent sympathizing with their cause, even if not identifying themselves directly as such. That’s according to the research nonprofit, PRRI, which is mainly focused on the intersection of religion, politics, and culture.
“There are a lot of Christians who think that they will come to power, and I think this is idolatry, and I think it is immoral, and I think it is anti-Christian,” Gilbert said.
He continued, “I think this is a narrative that we’ve seen carefully stewarded by those who do not have deep Christian principles in their heart, nor the well-being of a country at stake. They see this as a route to power. It’s very cynical.
“Christian Nationalism, this idea that will not die in this country—the idea that somehow Jesus was an American, born with an American flag, and was here to make Americans the only ones who get into heaven—that is simply not the case. It is absolutely contrary to scriptures, where Jesus says, ‘My house will be a house of prayer for all nations’,” Gilbert said.