SARANAC LAKE – Two men from the strict, Texas-based Church of Wells were jailed twice in three days here for public disturbances – demonstrations of Christian zeal in which they castigated others as sinners.

Richard Trudeau, who grew up in Saranac Lake, drew attention Tuesday afternoon by preaching dramatically at Saranac Lake’s central downtown intersection in front of Berkeley Green. Multiple eyewitnesses said the man with him, Mark De Rouville, held a camera and apparently video-recorded the scene while Trudeau shouted, paced, kneeled and wept.

Village police arrived about 20 minutes into the demonstration, responding to multiple complaints. When they arrested the pair, De Rouville resisted being ushered into a patrol vehicle, according to witnesses and police. Sgt. Peter Gladd put him into the vehicle by force.

Two days earlier, at the end of the Sunday service at Saranac Lake Baptist Church, Trudeau and De Rouville had stood up and told the congregation their pastor was leading them to hell, according to the pastor, Ryan Schneider. Church members carried the men out of the building and off the property, where they continued to yell until police arrived and took them away.

That was not Schneider’s first encounter with them.

“They did come to my house last year and do the same thing, shouting and screaming at me at my own property,” he said.

Village police arrested Trudeau, 33, and De Rouville, 26, both of Wells, Texas, at 1:25 p.m. Sunday and charged them with disrupting a religious service, a class A misdemeanor under New York law. They were arraigned before town of Harrietstown Justice Michael “Beef” Bevilacqua and remanded to the Franklin County Jail in Malone in lieu of $1,500 cash bail.

After they were bailed out, police arrested them again at 2:10 p.m. Tuesday, charging both men with disorderly conduct, a violation, and De Rouville with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. They were again arraigned in Harrietstown court, this time before Justice Ken McLaughlin, and sent back to jail in lieu of cash bail: $500 for Trudeau and $2,500 for De Rouville. Both posted bail, jail staff said.

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Street preaching

Enterprise Publisher Catherine Moore saw part of the scene that afternoon at the corner of Main Street and Broadway. She said she was driving by when she saw Trudeau kneeling with shoulders shaking, apparently sobbing. She stopped her minivan, lowered a window and asked him what was wrong. He looked up and asked loudly, “Where are the Christians?”

Moore said Trudeau then pointed to upstairs apartments nearby and said they were full of people doing drugs and “fornicating.” Again he asked, “Where are the Christians?” Moore responded that she is a Christian, and he challenged her, “Why aren’t you weeping?” At that point she drove away.

Michael Wallace, 29, was working at Blue Line Sports across the street and recognized Trudeau, although he didn’t know De Rouville. Wallace said he’s known Trudeau for years and knows he “found God” several years ago.

“When he came back three or four years ago, he was really preaching God to me hard, but he was real calm about it,” Wallace said. “It seems like he’s stepped it up a notch.

“He was pointing at cars and chanting as they were going by and stuff, and I could see he was making a commotion.”

Trudeau was saying things like, “‘Jesus Christ our savior will return,’ something about sins,” Wallace said. “The way he was saying it was kind of a warning, like, ‘You’re not doing this right; you’re not on the path of God,’ that type of deal.”

Jesse Bedore, a reservation agent at the Cape Air office next to Blue Line Sports, noticed Trudeau’s preaching through his store’s front window.

“He was just walking up and down, up and down, screaming at the top of his lungs,” Bedore said.

Was Trudeau disruptive, out of line? Bedore and Wallace thought about it and concluded that he was.

Bedore said not much street noise permeates into the Cape Air office, but this did.

“Luckily it wasn’t too busy and I didn’t have any calls, because it would’ve been hard to hear,” he said.

“He was being loud and obnoxious,” Wallace said. “I get that everyone has their views and personal beliefs on stuff, but he was just being very over-drastic, overdramatic on his preaching.”

Police said they received about four calls of complaint about Trudeau, plus a person who walked into their station to tell them about it. Gladd was the first officer to arrive at Main and Broadway, followed by Patrolman Jason Swain.

“When police got there, I didn’t hear what words were exchanged there, but they had a conversation for a good 10 minutes or so,” Wallace said. He added that DeRouville “looked like he was getting somewhat in Pete Gladd’s face.

“Meanwhile Richard was still down on his knees. At that time he was very calm,” Wallace said. “Once the cops showed up, he didn’t really put up much of a fuss anymore; it was mainly his buddy who looked like he was sticking up for Richard.”

Wallace said the officers put both men in handcuffs, but De Rouville “tried to resist going into the (police) car, and Pete had to put him down to the ground.”

How so?

“It didn’t look like too hard or anything,” Wallace said. “He did what he had to do, because the guy was definitely resisting him. He did the right thing, as a cop should do.”

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Church of Wells

Three young street preachers founded the revivalist Church of Wells in Wells, Texas, a town of 700-some people. These three elders lead the church along with two deacons, one of whom is Trudeau, according to its website.

Its manifesto is based on the belief that the world is mostly depraved and so are most Christian churches, which it calls a “great bedroom of adulteries.” They hope God will, in them, “resurrect His standard of righteousness which has long lain without a Church to bear it.”

They show an uncompromising conviction that their narrow path is the only right one.

“If we see not eye-to-eye in these declarations it is not the beam in our eye, dear reader, but thine that is the issue,” says the manifesto, written by Jake Gardner.

Written in rich language, this and other testimonials on their website show that they feel anguish over their own sins and, once saved by God, feel called to point out others’ sins. They expect to be be persecuted for doing so. Trudeau, in a testimony on the church’s website, wrote that they will preach to people until they either convert or “join with those who would crucify us even as those did, who would not bear the Lord’s testimony in the days of his flesh.”

Some things about the church have attracted controversy and news headlines. In 2012, its members prayed for the resurrection of a dead infant for 15 hours before calling 911. In 2013, an Arkansas woman left her family and friends without notice to join the church, and the family has said they believe she was held against her will. In 2014, church members’ preaching at a Wells community homecoming parade ended in a physical fight. And in June 2015, six members – including Trudeau and De Rouville – were charged with trespassing for interrupting a service at a Houston megachurch by yelling at the pastor and calling him a liar, according to KTRK-TV in Houston.

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Dispute in church

At the Saranac Lake Baptist Church Sunday, Trudeau and De Rouville “very agitatedly sat through the service,” Pastor Schneider said. At the conclusion, Trudeau “got up and told the entire church family, especially me, that I was leading them astray and that we were all going to hell.

“They tried to create a spectacle, and we just picked them up, carried them (out).

“They’re trying to get publicity,” Schneider added. “What they are sharing is not the gospel of Jesus Christ; it’s a presentation of hate.

“As our guys carried them out, our church family prayed for them,” he added. “That was probably the coolest part of the whole thing.”