Matt, I am writing to express what a joy it was to hear you preach on Easter Sunday.
I had the remarkable experience of waking up on Easter morning with the sure knowledge that I needed to attend Christ Church in Portola Valley, even though I had never been there before. So to walk through those doors and find you there was a beautiful affirmation of faith.
Matt, I need to tell you that the FBI is currently assailing houses of worship within the United States through various means. Among those harmful stratagems is the defamation of ministers who refuse to identify certain parishioners as "suspicious" or "dangerous" people on a quota system for the agency. The intent ultimately is to prejudicially target all people of faith within the United States in an effort to ensure that all of America's religious communities perish.
I must express that this agenda originates with Russia, not with our own leadership. It is Russia's compromise of the FBI that has led to this terrible state of affairs for us domestically, while our own leaders oppose its implementation.
The Supreme Court has upheld the separation of Church and State when it comes to the FBI's challenges to the sovereignty of communities of faith within the United States. Astonishingly, the FBI has ignored those rulings and proceeded to prey upon congregations without limitation.
Those faith leaders who refuse to defame their own congregants are typically accused of child abuse by the FBI, with the agency coercing the children of ministers, rabbis and imams to denounce them through concealed witness statements provided to law enforcement authorities.
From that point, church administrators and congregants selectively receive copies of those false statements, and sometimes audio testaments of abuse that never occurred, and the church community is well on its way to conflict and ruin.
If the FBI can make congregants doubt their leaders, they can certainly make them doubt one another. And so our houses of worship are being destroyed, one after another.
The agency typically utilizes AI-generated audio and video to add to the evidence of supposedly scurrilous conduct of America's ministers, rabbis and imams. So, if any person was in doubt before, this highly believable "evidence" removes that uncertainty.
What type of coercion does the FBI employ to compel false witness statements from the children of our faith leaders? Unfortunately, there are no limits to the harms they employ. Threats of arrest. Coerced human trafficking. Threatened harm toward loved ones. Separation from medical care in the face of illnesses the FBI has caused. This list goes on and on, and it represents a lamentable litany of predation from the very men who have promised to protect us from harm.
Our children are not to blame for the false denunciations coerced from them. The fault rests with the FBI entirely. On this point, we must be clear.
The question is, what do we now do about it?
Our own nation's leaders know that America needs our communities of faith in order to weather challenges with resilience, address crises with fortitude, insist on compassionate conduct among American citizens, and thrive through the expression of our Constitutional right to worship in freedom and peace.
So, the FBI's destruction of our faith communities must be halted, but that cessation must come from church leaders and congregants themselves, many of whom have signed informant and secrecy agreements forbidding disclosures of the FBI's conduct, along with its "sources and methods."
Is it possible for our religious communities to declare themselves "sanctuaries," separate and apart from the informant and secrecy demands of the FBI or any other agency?
Because this is what is required.
The churches need to declare themselves safe spaces that are protected from unconstitutional informant and secrecy demands.
And then American church leaders and congregants alike need to start speaking the truth out loud about this profoundly damaging FBI program, intended ultimately to extinguish houses of worship within the United States as a whole.
American faith communities need to reject CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) funds from the FBI in recognizing that these are a lure intended to secure silence from church leaders and prevent their effective protest over the FBI-dictated harm that is to follow.
The FBI is relying on the hope that Americans as a whole will forget the fourth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." With this one failing, an entire country, founded as "one nation under God," can be undone.
On Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, you included Psalm 118 in the liturgy: "The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone."
So I extend this exhortation to the leadership of the Episcopal Church, in the hope that their decisions will lead other communities of faith within the United States to follow: establish the Episcopal Church as a sanctuary in which the informant and secrecy agreements of the FBI hold no validity. Then allow all Episcopal ministers and parishioners to speak the truth about what has transpired through the false denunciations coerced by this corrupt agency.
I will offer to stand with courage to bear witness to the FBI's crimes within communities of faith in the United States.
Perhaps, in so doing, I can offer courage to the Church as a whole to establish itself as a much-needed sanctuary for those who seek to worship with trust, in safety, free from false denunciations and all their associated harm.
Each one of us who speaks with faith and truth and integrity and fortitude has the possibility of becoming the "chief cornerstone" America's communities of faith now require.
This is what we must now understand.
When each one of us is asked where our greatest loyalties reside, I hope we will answer that they cannot be separated from our faith which sustains us.
No matter the plans of America's foreign adversaries, there is a Higher Authority. This intangible hierarchy may be inconvenient for the FBI, but it is nonetheless true.
Are America's communities of faith worth saving?
I know they are.
Matt, our testimonies matter to many, so I invite Christ Church to become the "chief cornerstone" our nation now needs in preserving our freedom to worship.
Please reach out to me if I can express to Christ Church congregants how important its community is as a sanctuary from defamation and conflict.
Please know that I have asked for the restoration of your family's health and your own in the face of the FBI's predations. This letter will be provided to the Office of the Inspector General Hotline, as well as to Episcopal leadership, and you will be copied on all of those communications.
Christ Church is immensely blessed to have your leadership, and I would wish to tell them why.
In the meantime, I hold you, your family, and Christ Church in my prayers, Matt.
Yours in Christ,
Lane MacWilliams
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