Shutting down the Churches in 2020
One thing that has been completely memory-holed from the past 2 years has been the government-enforced COVID lockdowns of 2020. One thing that I hope to remind everyone today is how we allowed our politicians and public health officials to shut down our Churches.
Across the US, scores of Christian pastors were either arrested (e.g. Tony Spell of Louisiana) or fined for holding in-person Church services in 2020–in defiance of state/local government bans of large in-person gatherings. Just despicable.
Since we allowed the government to shut down our Churches in 2020, there are two facts that I have recognized:
1. No one has been held accountable for shutting down our Churches in 2020
For Fact #1, not a single politician or “public health official” has been held accountable for keeping Churches shut down throughout 2020. Our public officials and leaders have gotten away with violating our 1st Amendment rights–to worship the one Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s not much more to talk about for Fact #1, but I wanted to make this fact know. Unfortunately, not a lot of media people have discussed this sentiment.
2. Some conservative and “Christian” leaders failed to defend religious freedom in 2020
Two notable people that come to mind for the second point are Andy Stanley and Rod Dreher.
Andy Stanley is a well-known Christian pastor out in Atlanta, Georgia. He publicly stated how he was “embarrassed” that Churches would resist the Government’s tyrannical lockdown and stay open. Additionally, Stanley kept his Church shutdown until early 2021. Let’s all hope that Andy Stanley repents of his hard-heartedness and for depriving his congregants of in-person Church services for almost a full year.
The second person is none other than Rod Dreher. If you’re an early fan of this blog, then you might remember that I expressed my personal dislike for Rod Dreher. In my opinion, he’s a conservative grifter. He’s made appearances on Liberal Media as a “token conservative”, voted for an irrelevant 3rd Party in the 2020 presidential election, voted for Democrat Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards in 2015 & 2019–even though Governor Edwards recklessly shut down the state during the COVID-19 pandemic, the list goes on.
Besides my personal grievances with Rod Dreher, what really bothers me about Dreher is that the fact that he condemned a Christian pastor for staying open during COVID.
What’s worse, Dreher wrote multiple articles on the American Conservative attacking a Christian Pastor in Baton Rouge named Tony Spell. For instance, Dreher wrote an article criticizing Pastor Spell for keeping his Church open even though one of Spell’s congregants died of COVID-19.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a quote from an article Dreher wrote about Pastor Spell:
“I hope it doesn’t come to this, but if the police have to arrest this pastor, I’ll applaud it. This is not a matter of religious liberty, but of public safety in a true emergency … The pastor could host smaller services and still be within the law. Nobody is telling him that people cannot come to church; they’re just saying that the gatherings have to be smaller. It is a reasonable request in this unprecedented emergency. But the Rev. Spell cares more about his rights than his duties of charity to the community. For shame. The day will come when Christians who meet for worship in defiance of the law will truly be saints. This is not that day …”
These remarks are nothing short of repulsive and duplicitous. Dreher was more than willing to defend his buddy Governor John Bel Edwards–even though Edwards shut down Churches in Louisiana for months. However, Dreher was also more than willing to attack a Christian pastor for defying a repressive government order.
To this day, I do not believe that Dreher has ever apologized for his disparaging remarks toward a brother in Christ. Let’s hope that Mr. Dreher has a change of heart one day, but I won’t hold my breath.
I didn’t mean for this post to just become an anti-Dreher rant, but that’s the way it ended up.