As many of you know who follow us on Facebook, our church and the Brocton Christian Church have been holding combined drive-in services since Easter Sunday. It was Brocton’s idea and they secured speakers, headset microphones, and eventually an AM transmitter to send the service through the car radios of those who attended. Then they graciously invited us to join them, first for Easter, and then to continue together until churches could be opened up again.
The Easter service went well except that without the AM transmitter which they did not have at that point, some of the speakers were difficult to hear at times and, of course, we had to roll down our windows at least partially on a Sunday that was cool though not cold. The next Sunday the sound was better as they were able to adjust speakers and microphones, but the music they had downloaded to a phone to run through the speaker wouldn’t work and the song leader had to lead us acapella. But then they ran into a further snag. Near the Brocton church are two transmitters which interfered with the AM signal, making it impossible to transmit over the radio. So they came to Redmon to see if it worked any better there.
And it worked well! So the combined service moved, last Sunday, to Redmon. At the Redmon Christian Church we moved the sound board to the vestibule so it would be close enough to hook the AM transmitter into it. We had regular microphones and also the use of Brocton’s headset mics, but we while we could run music from the song leader’s phone through the sound system, we couldn’t broadcast it on the AM wavelength because we don’t hold the correct license. So, I played the Clavinova which only the song leader could hear, and everyone else heard only her voice through the radio as they sang along in their cars. As had been done in Brocton, we used plastic gloves to place photocopied song sheets and a bulletin inside of baggies to be distributed to each car, and factory prepared and sealed wafer/juice communion cups were likewise distributed. In the intervening week, we managed with two cords that we bought and two cordless microphones that Brocton got to wire the Clavinova into the sound board across the church so that music to the songs would be heard on the radio this week.
Then the Edgar County Board of Health intervened. They had observed our service last week and didn’t like it. Too many people were going into and out of the church (far less than go in and out of Walmart!). Our cars weren’t parked six feet apart, but neither are the cars at the hospital, at Walmart, or at any other store in Edgar County. We can’t collect the offering in offering bags because people might touch it while putting in their money. Yet at the pharmacy, we handed over money to an ungloved pharmacist who handed back our change and our prescription. At the bank we put a check in the drawer and an ungloved cashier took it, processed it, counted out money, put it in an envelope and handed it back to us. How many people had touched that money before she gave it to us? Does the bank sanitize their bills and coins before giving them to customers? If not, isn’t that a far greater risk of infection than a church member dropping an offering into an offering bag? The Health Department apparently doesn’t think so! Nor do they want us handing out communion. Congregants should bring their own. Really? The containers are factory sealed and dropped into the hands of congregants by a gloved and masked individual. How is that dangerous to the health of anyone? Especially since in the proposed guidelines for reopening churches, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) says that food may be served if it is in individual containers for each congregant rather than served buffet style. Surely communion bread and grape juice would fall into the category of “food,” and therefore we are actually following CDC recommendations. Yet, the Edgar County Board of Health found problems with that.
Troubles far worse than these have occurred across the country as (mostly) Democratic governors, mayors, and health departments have flexed their despotic powers. In Kentucky, Easter drive-in services were forbidden in one area, and every car that showed up anyway had its license number written down by a police officer so that they could be mailed $500 fines. The Department of Justice had to intervene and tell the mayor the congregants could not be fined.
In Minnesota, churches are closed but abortion clinics are open. The governor of Minnesota is currently being sued under the 14th amendment which guarantees fair treatment of everyone. The plaintiffs rightly claim that government cannot prohibit the free practice of religion nor compel churches to close and allow other entities like abortion clinics to remain open. Fair treatment under the law is guaranteed by the 14th amendment.
In Kansas, public health orders allowed people to go to bars and dine in public restaurants but refused to allow more than 10 people to gather in a church, even if they were engaged in social distancing.
Greenville, Mississippi church goers were warned that to sit alone in their cars in a drive-in service like ours would be committing a crime until the DOJ intervened. They warned the city’s mayor “The City appears to have thereby singled churches out as the only essential service . . . that may not operate despite following. . . recommendations regarding social distancing.” The ban was reluctantly lifted.
Jews are also being harassed. The country is seeing rising acts of violence against Jews. The Guardian Angels in New York are on high alert, patrolling Jewish neighborhoods to protect them from anti-semitic violence. And Orthodox Jews who turned out for the open air funeral of a beloved Rabbi in New York City were threatened with arrest by Mayor de Blasio.
Police responded to a Louisiana church where hundreds had gathered in a church one Sunday. They were breaking the governor’s rule of no more than 50 together in a group. The pastor of the church, Tony Spell, said no “dictator law” could keep people from worshipping God. Republican Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana argued “I agree that all our constituents and religious leaders should follow the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). However, the decision to gather should be the choice of the individual or institution and not a mandate by any government entity. The state has no authority to enforce this proclamation nor any ban on worship.”
The problem, of course, is that in one state you can have 50 meeting together and in another you can only have 10. Some states are opening up and others are not. Some city mayors are draconian in their orders and others are more permissive. Some county health boards in Illinois would not allow drive-in church services while others did. The lack of conformity seems unfair and unreasonable. Can 50 people be together safely if they are masked and stay 6 ft apart? Then why limit groups to 10 people? And if hospitalizations are going down and the “curve” has been flattened, why now are we having to wear masks in public in Illinois when we haven’t had to for the duration of the virus so far? How does this make sense? Many of us, especially those of us who are older or have underlying illnesses have been wearing masks anyway, but it seems this should have been implemented a long time ago since experts have long suggested wearing a mask of some sort in public.
Beyond the inconsistencies and the often seemingly unreasonable requirements is the flat out unequal treatment of houses of worship. It took a law suit to get our governor to open churches, finally deeming them “essential” entities. But restrictions placed upon them remain unequal, even those coming from the CDC. They suggest that rather than collecting the offering as usual, churches place a bucket somewhere for congregants to drop their money into. Why? How is that different that dropping my money in an offering plate? The concern, I suppose, is that during the offering people will violate the six foot social distancing. But if that is the concern, I would suggest that the CDC visit Walmart or any grocery store. Walmart has aisles marked as one way, but most people don’t notice or they ignore the “Do not enter” signs on the floor of the aisles. Thus, shoppers following the signs are forced to meet and pass within a foot or two at most of other shoppers, at least half of whom are not masked, or often employees who are stocking shelves. Why is this allowed in grocery stores but not in churches?
It is important to maintain the safety of our congregants, but in most churches these days it would be entirely possible to keep them as safe if not safer than when they shop for groceries or pick up food at a restaurant’s curb side or drive-up. Those who fear the determination and godliness of Christians and Jews are finding in this pandemic an easy way to close us down. It is time for us to demand our constitutionally guaranteed equal protection under the law and to hold our services in our churches again. In Redmon, we will meet in the church next Sunday, with everyone masked (we will provide masks for those who don’t have them) and seated six feet apart in every other pew. If needed we can set up folding chairs in the back. Communion, in the same factory sealed containers we used for the drive-in services will be available in the pew racks which have been sanitized. Songs will be projected on a screen as will scripture passages and we will provide a bucket for offerings. We will sanitize again after each service. We will endeavor to keep everyone safe, but we will gather together to worship God as the Church has done since the resurrection of our Lord. And if local petty bureaucrats try to prevent us, we can rely on the Department of Justice to intervene.
The Justice Department is siding with a Virginia church suing Gov. Ralph Northam after police threatened a pastor with jail time or a $2,500 fine for violating the state’s coronavirus lockdown restrictions by holding a 16-person church service on Palm Sunday. The people were spaced far apart in a church that could fit 293 people. State officials claimed the church had violated state regulations, but the DOJ said they offered “no good reason for refusing to trust congregants who promise to use care in worship in the same way it trusts accountants, lawyers, and other workers to do the same.”
“As important as it is that we stay safe during these challenging times, it is also important for states to remember that we do not abandon all of our freedoms in times of emergency,” Matthew Schneider, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement. “Unlawful discrimination against people who exercise their right to religion violates the First Amendment, whether we are in a pandemic or not”
Under this president, the rights of the religious are protected.