RED DEER, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) –– Canadian Christian pastor James Coates, who made international headlines in 2021 after being jailed because he kept his church open contrary to COVID-19 health rules, has revealed new details of his arrest, including how at one point he was shackled in the dead of night.  

Coates, who served as pastor of GraceLife church in Edmonton, made the revelations last Friday during testimony before the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI), which was in Red Deer, Alberta this past week as part of its Canada-wide inquiry. The NCI is a citizen-led and citizen-funded independent initiative investigating the government’s response to the COVID so-called pandemic. 

Coates noted that all he was doing during the COVID shutdown, which the government deemed illegal, was “opening our doors” for worshippers as “Christ” commands.  

“We knew in our obedience to Christ that we could not capitulate,” he testified, adding that as “shepherds of Christ were not going to tell people they can’t come to a gathering, and we knew at that point in time that the virus was not nearly as serious as they were making it out to be.” 

“[The] measures that were in place were definitely government overreach,” he continued. 

During COVID, both Coates and his church GraceLife were charged with violating the Public Health Act because they kept holding normal church services from November 2020 to Easter Sunday, 2021, despite COVID health rules being in place. 

Coates ended up spending 35 days in jail for the alleged violation because he refused to sign a bail agreement to stop pastoring his church. His congregation holds the religious belief that it must gather as an entire corporate body for worship services.  

During the NCI testimony, Coates described how after he was arrested, he was woken up in the dead of night to be processed into jail. He was shackled and chained to have his mugshot taken.  

Avoiding placing blame directly on the police, Coates noted that the officers were ultimately just carrying out “orders” from above. 

“I may not have approached the situation the same way they [the officers] did. But these officers had to weigh the pros and cons of being the front men for these orders,” testified Coates. 

Coates said that when the Alberta government first introduced COVID restrictions in the spring of 2020, severely limiting the number of worshipers permitted into his church, he and his congregation complied. 

It was not until the Alberta government, under then-premier Jason Kenney, put in place COVID lockdowns for the second time in November of 2020, that he started to question what was going on. 

During this time, Coates said that he said his church were under “scrutiny,” as health officials began to visit the church.

Coates also revealed that during a service on December 13, 2020, police officers and Alberta Health Services (AHS) employees were in attendance.

He said that at future services, which AHS and police were also present, the congregation made sure they were respected.

“I was concerned at the time there could be repercussions for me should I be arrested,” said the pastor. 

In 2021, Grace Life Church was allowed to reopen after the Alberta provincial government lifted all COVID-19 restrictions. 

Coates walked out of the Edmonton Remand Centre a free man on March 22, 2021, after a $1,500 fine was paid “as time served.”  

After his release, he went straight back to preaching, only to have his church shortly thereafter shut down by AHS and barricaded. 

As a result, Coates and his GraceLife congregants began to worship at secret locations.   

Coates was not the only Albertan pastor to draw the ire of the government for flouting its COVID measures.

Under Kenney’s leadership, Christian pastors Artur Pawlowski and Tim Stephens were also jailed for similar reasons as Coates.