by “standerinfamilycourt”
All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor. Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake; for the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains. If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake. But if anyone says to you, “This is meat sacrificed to idols,” do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake; I mean not your own conscience, but the other man’s; for why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?
Why in the world do we have monitored stay-home orders, with fines and jail time attached these days? What in the world happened to our freedom of association, much less our free religious exercise? Is it not due to the political climate in which a vast majority of the citizens of the United States of America (or the UK, Australia or most any other stricken nation) instinctively know they are not ready to meet their Maker, and are (justifiably) terrified of suddenly dying? Is it not also partly due to the same sentiment in the hearts of most of our state and Federal policy-makers? In the UK, there are even reports of surveillance drones, and of officials defacing public park spaces as tactics to keep people inside and at home.
Not surprisingly, when pastors start getting arrested and jailed in the U.S. for holding physical instead of virtual church on Sunday, we’re finding it triggers two different kinds of outrage, even among evangelicals. Disgruntled Camp 1 points in knee-jerk fashion to the First Amendment, to the commandment not to forsake the gathering of the saints, Paul’s instruction to observe corporate communion, and the imperative of anointing the sick with oil and laying on of hands.
Says Matt Walsh: “Pastor Howard-Browne insists that his church took many precautions. Hand sanitizer was given out. Staff wore gloves. Congregants were spaced out as much as possible. They may not have all been 6 feet apart, but they were certainly better spaced than you will be if you wait in line at the grocery store.”
(Debatable – seems a bit hard to visualize non-contagious spacing in a teeming megachurch, as shown in the video that triggered the arrest.)
Camp 2 points to public witness, and the commandment not to presumptuously put the Lord to the test.
Says Christian religious freedom attorney, David French:
“There exists within Christianity a temptation to performative acts that masquerade as fearlessness. In reality, this recklessness represents—as the early church father John Chrysostom called it—“display and vainglory.” Look how fearless we are, we declare, as we court risks that rational people should shun. In the context of a global pandemic followers of Christ can actually become a danger to their fellow citizens, rather than a source of help and hope.
“Or, put another way, reckless Christians can transform themselves from angels of mercy to angels of death, and the rest of the world would be right to fear their presence.”
Both evangelical camps make good points. The environment for hostility against Christians was already fairly toxic on a purely ideological basis well before people started testing positive for COVID-19, and it’s not such a stretch to imagine that temporary emergency measures might one day morph into permanent shutdowns, if certain voices in the debate got their way. In fact, the Mayor of New York City just this past week threatened a synagogue with permanent closure for holding services, as if he truly believed he had the constitutional authority to do so.
On the other hand, the Lord has not spared His (purported) flock from infection in shocking numbers, and from possible death, as a direct result of disobeying local authorities to gather, as noted by Mr. French’s account of events in his own state of Tennessee. Similar reports came out of an Assembly of God church in Arkansas and a Presbyterian church in Washington State in the past two weeks.
Regular readers of this blog know that the Assemblies of God has official doctrine that (contrary to clear scripture) permits pastors to occupy the pulpit who are in “marriages” Jesus called ongoing adultery. In a sudden 1973 reversal of biblical doctrine on marriage that had been in place since the denomination’s inception, it became “compassionate” to descrate the sanctuary of the Lord with such “weddings”. The same can be said of the Presbyterian church, not only with regard to remarriage adultery which is ensconced in its founding doctrine, but more recently with regard to sodomous “weddings”. The Lord God’s hand joins neither.
Jesus had a pointed promise, not at all inconsistent with what has actually occurred, of what these practices would yield in the last days:
“And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:
‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.”
Meanwhile, an article in the New York Times pointed the finger at evangelicals, shrilly accusing Christians of responsibility for spreading the disease by a “hostility to science”. If evangelicals have done so, they’ve done so spiritually, far more so than physically, as God’s wrath falls on an immoral nation from which the mainstream church has grown almost indistinguishable. Far from contributing to physical spread of coronavirus, most churches now sit empty on weekends, while worship teams play to a livestream camera, and the pastor’s sermon is broadcast to the flock. Tithing is by text.
Listen to what the Holy Spirit says in Psalm 91, a passage which reverberated this past week across social media:
“You will not be afraid of the terror by night,
Or of the arrow that flies by day;
Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.
A thousand may fall at your side
And ten thousand at your right hand,
But it shall not approach you.
You will only look on with your eyes
And see the recompense of the wicked.
For you have made the Lord, my refuge,
Even the Most High, your dwelling place.
No evil will befall you,
Nor will any plague come near your tent.”
This is a very important conditional promise, simply because it is not possible to dwell with a sodomy or adultery partner (not even given the tallest stack of legal paper) and with the Holy Lord at the same time. He stands as a witness, He declares to the “divorced” and “remarried” priest, with the covenant spouse of our youth. Spare Him the excuses. He knows who He has personally joined to whom.
And what of the church founded by Rodney Howard-Browne, the jailed Florida pastor? He might not have a case under the Federal constitution for a couple of important reasons:
(1) The national RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) doesn’t cover his situation
(2) It wasn’t “Congress” who enacted the temporary orders that are infringing on the congregation’s right to gather.
Objectively speaking, the state does seem to have a compelling state interest in suspending large public gatherings to curb the spread of a highly communicable pandemic-level killing disease, and could probably succeed in proving that the temporary stay-home order is the least intrusive means of achieving that objective. Florida is one of the states that has adopted their own RFRA.
All that said, Pastor Browne probably has a better case under the Florida constitution religious freedom clause, because it does not mention a legislature’s involvement. It simply says..”there shall be no law prohibiting or penalizing…”
The Florida constitution reads:
“SECTION 3. Religious freedom.—There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.
Constitutional attorney David French is likely factoring elements of the legal case into the arguments in his article. At the same time, it appears that Browne was quite deliberate in challenging the local order, as evidenced by the legal opinion posted to the church web page.
The following is a 1993-ish quote from our 42nd POTUS, courtesy of the Alliance Defending Freedom during Indiana’s 2015 RFRA fight with Amazon and the LGBT special interests:
Lord knows that the state imperative to safeguard the public from hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more deaths by a quick-killing, highly contagious infectious plague should be an obvious compelling state interest. Ditto for the mass unemployment that has resulted overnight – reported in the U.S. this morning as 6 million new unemployment claims – forty times the usual pace. Under RFRA language, the key is whether a temporary restriction on large gatherings (especially of megachurch proportions) is “narrowly-tailored”, or the least burdening approach available to achieve that compelling public health interest. On a short term basis, it seems the case can reasonably be made, especially where there’s hard evidence in an individual case that the church was not even following safe distancing mandates, as evidenced in the March 29 video (if you click there, don’t forget to come back and finish reading this–the worship, though crowded, is pretty awesome over there) of the River Church Tampa worship service that was livestreamed, and which led to the pastor’s arrest this week.
The head of one of the Christian legal defense funds (all five or six of which routinely refuse to defend an authentic believer’s religious free exercise right to not have their marriage forcibly “dissolved”) says he will be filing a suit this week or next in defense of the arrested pastor, currently released on bond. The final thing to say about this Florida case is that it appears from a legal opinion, pre-posted the week before on the church website, this pastor intended to be arrested, or at the very least, to lead a high-profile challenge against the stay-home orders, and this was evidently more of a priority than the lives and souls of the unredeemed passing through the church doors.
(In a very positive post-arrest development later in the week, the governor of Florida issued an order deeming church activities “essential”, as did several other governors this week.)
Contrast how a Texas pastor of a small marriage-permanence church felt led to handle the issue in the days before the governor of his state also exempted churches from being deemed a “non-essential” establishment. Brother Sparks also feels strongly that churches have a biblical mandate to gather and meet, fearing God rather than men, but probably without the ulterior motives. Churches that don’t do adulterous weddings, don’t take (non-widowed) “blended families” into ongoing fellowship, and regularly preach on Luke 16:18 don’t tend to become crowded, wealthy megachurches. Neither do the saints in that small body tend to live in ongoing heterosexual sin, be it fornication or papered-over adultery. His tiny congregation is meeting outside in the open air, while following the spacing guidelines of Caesar, honoring both God and Caesar. They won’t be endangering and cutting short the life of a potential visitor to their service who is yet-unredeemed by faith.
Given that there have been recent arrests in the U.S. of people who were engaged by the Chinese government in bio-espionage activities, and given the Bill Gates role in the overall picture, and finally, given the emerging connection of viruses with implementing the 5G network in Asia, Europe, and major metropolitan areas in the U.S., based on reports leaking out from disaffected industry employees, the wise citizen will consider the distinct possibility that “this too” might not pass back to anything we would consider normalcy. Restrictions on medium or large gatherings due to waves of plagues might become a thing on an ongoing basis. Like the cartoon figure, Simon-bar-Sinister, too many out there want to rule the world, and it’s always been a certainty that satan does. Keep an eye on the success or failure of those anti-body studies we’ve been hearing about, and whether or not our government chooses to reinstate tough espionage consequences that have been relaxed in recent decades.
Someone who has had their religious liberty violated in a profound. life-altering and lasting way, might be well-placed to see this debate over church gatherings in its proper longterm perspective. The number one motive behind all of it begins and ends with godly concern for eternal souls, or the lack thereof. If souls are the main concern, pastors don’t let the lambs in the flock die in remarriage adultery which will cost them their eternity, hence congregations don’t grow to a size where the gathering becomes a bad witness to the pagans who live in terror of being exposed to a proven killer. If souls are the main concern, pastors will go out of their way to make sure the earthly body of a lost pagan soul does not become virulently infected as a direct or indirect consequence of his church’s activities. The key thing to watch for in the coming weeks and months is how timely and equitably the restrictions on churches are lifted (at least temporarily) in the receding wake of the worst, not whether restrictions are temporarily imposed on churches in various locales. That timely lifting of restrictions is what should be fiercely fought for based on the First Amendment provisions.
Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
www.standerinfamilycourt.com
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