World Cup fans who crowd into Seattle from around the world this month will find new self-cleaning public toilets and a floating watch party on Elliott Bay — and men in black telling them, at earsplitting volume, that they’re going to hell if they don’t repent.
Evangelical Christian street preachers have become a fixture at Seattle’s biggest public events, drawing angry complaints from sports teams, arts organizations and neighborhood leaders who say the ministry’s powerful portable speakers can overwhelm concerts, festivals and ballgames. Efforts to curb them have been no match for the preachers’ savvy approach to avoiding legal trouble, coupled with Seattle’s commitment to free speech.
Now the ministers are preparing for the prospect of 750,000 soccer fans descending on the city, many of them to cheer on Iran, Egypt, Qatar, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all Muslim-majority countries with games scheduled in the city.
“It’s an incredible opportunity,” said Justin Symons, a preacher with Gospel Invasion Ministries, whose volunteers sermonize outside sporting events, on college campuses and at major cultural gatherings through speakers tucked into shoulder bags. “God puts us where we’re supposed to be.”
God’s plans aside, Seattle’s communal headache is about to go global.
“We’re about to welcome the world, and this is what they’ll see?” demanded Rob Saka, the Seattle City Council member who represents the stadium district.
Christian Halliburton, a lawyer for the Seattle Mariners, said team staff had measured the preachers’ volume on the sidewalks outside T-Mobile Park at more than 110 decibels — equivalent to a chain saw three feet away.
That’s no joke. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health have found that prolonged exposure to noise above about 85 decibels can cause permanent hearing damage. At 100 decibels, potentially damaging exposure can occur in as little as 15 minutes.
And, “if you’re waiting to get into one of our public stadiums, you have to be in line” for awhile, Mr. Halliburton said. “You are trapped.”
Joshua Curtis, executive director of the public agency that owns T-Mobile Park and leases it to the Mariners, has an office by the home plate entrance. During afternoon home games, he works remotely.
“If I’m sitting behind a double-paned window and having an issue, imagine somebody standing in line a couple of feet from one of those speakers,” he said.
Another preacher, Ron Cardiel, calls it a “no-escape mentality to hearing the word of God” — all in one of the least religious regions in the country. Though he receives some fist bumps and thank-yous, many others wince or clutch their ears. Mr. Cardiel is unapologetic because they “have never heard this message,” he said.
Mr. Cardiel and his colleagues, all men, gather before events to plan which routes each will take. Because they’re always on the move, Seattle police and team security are stymied. A city noise ordinance limits environmental sound levels, but it was largely designed for fixed sources of noise, not people carrying amplifiers through a crowd.
The preachers “are well aware of the restrictions and when we can and can’t step in,” said Sgt. Patrick Michaud of the Seattle Police.
Last year, as the Mariners slugged toward the American League Championship Series and the Seahawks mounted a Super Bowl run, momentum in Seattle’s city government built for a fix, Mr. Halliburton said.
Then last fall, voters replaced their business-friendly mayor, Bruce Harrell, who received $150,000 in campaign help from the Mariners owners, and their tough-on-crime city attorney with more progressive challengers. The effort seems to have gone back to square one.
Mr. Saka and several colleagues directed the incoming mayor in mid-November to conduct a review of noise enforcement, citing disruptive noise on sidewalks and rights of way in the stadium district. But nothing has changed in time for the World Cup and the six games planned for Seattle Stadium, starting with Belgium versus Egypt on June 15, and then the United States versus Australia on June 19.
Safety and visitor comfort around the stadium district have been a hot topic. Mayor Katie Wilson initially declined to turn on new city security cameras in the area over privacy and civil rights concerns, though she reversed that decision on Friday, citing law enforcement briefings that suggested “we should be operating at a heightened risk level.” And some in the international soccer world have questioned Seattle’s decision to designate the June 26 game — which by the luck of the tournament draw will feature Egypt and Iran — as the city’s “Pride Match.”
Seattle also has struggled to police speech-related disturbances. Two years ago, city leaders agreed to pay damages and attorneys’ fees to a street preacher named Matthew Meinecke, who was arrested twice in 2022 after police ordered him to move from an abortion-rights rally and a Pride event.
That case differed in some important ways. Mr. Meinecke was not accused of violating noise limits or using amplified sound. Instead, police arrested him after determining that the crowd’s reaction to his preaching posed a public safety risk. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit later ruled that was an unconstitutional infringement on religious and political expression.
Seattle’s dispute with the stadium-district preachers centers on volume rather than religious content. But even that feels “tricky,” Mayor Wilson said, given that other entities, including a drummer who sets up shop outside Mariners games and the teams themselves, also regularly breach healthy decibel levels.
“We can’t really pick and choose which loud thing is allowed,” she said.
Keith Kemper, one of Mr. Meinecke’s attorneys in the 2022 case and a Mariners season-ticket holder, conceded that the noise from preachers outside games was “loud, annoying, amplified speech.” He hopes the city finds a way to crack down, he said.
“You have a right to free speech,” he said. “You don’t have a right to be heard.”
Anna Griffin is the Pacific Northwest bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Oregon.
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