In battle between Lutherans and evangelicals over a South Dakota church and cemetery, armed guards show up

This story by Jeremy Fugleberg appeared in the Mitchell Republic under the headline, "A cemetery fight was roiling this South Dakota church. Then came the armed guards."  The church and cemetery at issue are in Astoria, South Dakota, population 132, right on the Minnesota state line.  Here's an excerpt:   

Rollie Trooien stood outside the plain white church on a hot Sunday afternoon, June 12, determined to attend the annual meeting of the cemetery association.

He was eager to vote on the association’s new leadership.

After all, generations of his ancestors were buried here, in the cemetery by Singsaas Church , a rural house of worship on the South Dakota side of the Minnesota state line.

Yet in front of him, on the church's front steps, were guards — armed guards. Their untucked shirts showed the lines of hip-holstered handguns.

Then there was the AR-15. Someone had reported seeing an assault rifle, a weapon built for a war zone, not a house of worship.

Trooien, 82, wryly admitted later he was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of attending this meeting.

"I got second thoughts about wanting to go in the church, because if I'm the one they're after and they have an AR-15, I wouldn't have much chance — it would be kind of a shooting gallery," he said. "You hear about these shootings and that, and you say, 'I don't want to get shot — not today anyway,' so you put up your guard a little bit."

The AR-15 sighting was the last straw from someone in the crowd. They called the sheriff.

The armed guards at the Singsaas Church cemetery association's annual meeting was the latest escalation in the battle over the soul of the prairie church, founded by Norwegian Lutheran pioneers in 1874 among farm fields in east central South Dakota.

Don't miss the rest of the story in the Mitchell Republic.