Posted on 04/10/2020 8:29:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
The governor is telling Christians how worship must be done and with stricter rules than for all other public gatherings. That is none of his damned business.
It is a fundamental aspect of constitutional law and historic American practice that no government may tell citizens how to worship. How one worships is a sacred duty that our laws and traditions have reserved entirely to the individual’s conscience, completely outside of the bounds of government interference.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, however, has decided that this natural right secured in both the Indiana and national constitutions is something he is allowed to waive by executive order. Yesterday afternoon, he demanded that churches perform services according to his edicts or be subject to government punishment.
His requirements are not only unconstitutional because they trespass on the constitutionally secured individual right to worship, but they are discriminatory because they place restrictions on churches that do not apply to other organizations, groups of people, and establishments. The governor is telling Christians how worship must be done and with stricter rules than for all other public gatherings.
In addition to limiting church services to gatherings of 10 or fewer people, his administration made these edicts for the services themselves (emphasis added):
To continue safely serving their communities, faith institutions are directed as follows:
- Church buildings and other physical locations for worship should be closed.
- Livestream or other virtual services are best.
- The minimum number of necessary personnel should be used at all times for any services.
- Staff and volunteers who are not speaking should wear masks.
- Drive-in services may be conducted only under these conditions:
- Attendees must be inside vehicles at all times.
- Attendees should not interact physically with clergy, staff or participants in other vehicles.
- Vehicles should contain only members of a single household. Do not bring your neighbors or others outside of your household.
- Cars must be spaced the equivalent of every other parking spot or approximately 9 feet apart.
- No one may exit a vehicle at any time.
- Portable bathrooms are not allowed on the premises and no church facilities may be used by attendees.
- It is preferred that no communion be distributed.
- In instances when communion is distributed, only prepackaged communion may be used and must be prepared and distributed in a manner that meets food safety standards.
The following individuals who are vulnerable and at higher risk for illness should not attend:
- Persons who are 65 years and older.
- Those who have severe underlying medical conditions, like heart or lung disease or diabetes.
- Individuals who are sick.
The parts in bold are particularly egregious ones that prevent and inhibit sacramental worshippers from the most important parts of their religious services — namely, the physical presence of God himself in the sacrament of Christ’s true body and blood.
To make things worse, the governor’s edict came one business day before the height of the church year, Easter, allowing for basically zero possibility of legal redress. This timeframe also gives clergy virtually no time to be able to comply while still offering communion this high holy weekend, as they would have to procure in one day single-serve communion elements if they didn’t already use them.
For religious reasons, many serious churches do not use prepackaged, individually wrapped food for the sacrament. They neither have such supplies nor are inclined to use them even if available. In other words, the governor decided he is allowed to ban the most serious Christians from the sacrament on the holiest days of the year.
Even if you do not believe as these Christians do, you should be alarmed at this precedent for government deciding what kind of worship is allowed. If government can do this to some people, it can do it to you.
This is all also not medically necessary to save lives. Indiana’s own projections show its medical resources are nowhere near becoming in short supply, even during the supposed “peak” of infection due in a few days. The state in fact has many excess ICU beds and ventilators.
At least 36 of the state’s many rural counties have 10 or fewer cases of coronavirus, yet the governor shut down all their churches as if they are as risk-prone as Indianapolis, the state hotspot. And Indianapolis’s case numbers, the largest in the state, are still 0.1 percent of their approximately 2 million population.
Outside of Indianapolis, hospitals are empty and some are laying off staff. The number of serious worshippers who prize the sacrament so much that they would attend tiny services to partake of it for Easter is miniscule and would not affect these overall projections.
There is no medical or public health reason to ban churches from their own religious activities within the same parameters that apply to other organzations, such as the 10-person limit. Even that limit in Indiana has been discriminatorily applied against religious worshippers. It still does not apply to places like grocery stores, which are allowed unlimited numbers of shoppers.
The state has decided that religious practice is not “essential” during an “emergency.” That is not the state’s decision to make.
That’s why these practical matters are also completely beside the point. No government official has any legitimate authority to tell Christians how Jesus’s body and blood must be prepared or served. That is individuals’ religious prerogative. Christians have historically never allowed any secular government to dictate our religious practices, even during pandemics. And this religious prerogative is secured by Indiana’s state constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
“All people shall be secured in the natural right to worship ALMIGHTY GOD, according to the dictates of their own consciences,” says Indiana’s state constitution. “No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience” (emphasis added).
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The Supreme Court has interpreted this very broadly to preclude government infringement on religious exercise, especially in worship settings.
Many in our government and society have decided that nothing is more important than physical health in the case of the coronavirus, even though we have never applied this exclusive standard to anything ever before. If we did, we would all be shut in our houses forever, for doing this also prevents transmission of the flu to the sick and elderly and is massively slowing deadly road accidents, the death tolls for which are still far higher than for coronavirus.
Some people believe that there are more important things than physical health. Freedom. Protecting the nation’s poor and its future by not destroying our economy and tax base that uphold myriad already strained social welfare programs. Worship. Christians especially have historically placed obedience to God above their physical safety and very lives. We are in fact commanded to do so. For us, “to die is gain.” This elevation of health above all else has quickly become a competing god.
Indiana’s governor is demanding that the people of his state worship health and political power instead of Jesus Christ. It was behavior like this that occasioned the Pilgrims’ departure for the country that became the United States.
But where else can serious religious believers go now? Where will we find redress for our grievances against a state that has decided religion is nonessential during national emergencies for which the evidence is still not matching the claims? Do enough Americans care about prioritizing conscience above government to secure our rights any longer? Do enough Christians?
Muster the militias.
I’m not voting for this asshole again.
He’s a RINO
More to come from this wannabe diety and all like him in governor’s offices.
No doubt.
I know of no one in Indiana who has been arrested or fined solely for violating pandemic orders. (Most of which are suggestions) The only instance I know of was a guy busted for OWI and driving while while suspended at 3:00 AM who was also cited for violating the stay at home order. This article is just fear mongering.
April 20, 2019 by RadicalDiscipleship
The Resurrection is Against the Law
An excerpt from Bill Wylie-Kellermann’s classic Seasons of Faith and Conscience (1991).
The sealing of the tomb is, I believe, notoriously misunderstood. I grew up with a Sunday School notion that to seal the tomb was a matter of hefting the big stone and cementing it tight. The seal, in my mind’s eye, was something like first-century caulking–puttying up the cracks to keep the stink in. Not so. This is a legal seal. Cords would be strung across the rock and anchored at each end with clay. To move the stone would break the seal and indicate tampering.
The event conspicuously echoes the story of Daniel sealed in the den of lions. “And a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel” (Daniel 6:18). As there, this is a legal lock on the tomb door–not air tight, but politically tight. To move the stone and break the seal is a civil crime. The resurrection is against the law.
The seal is also a recurring theme in the book of Revelation. Remember the scroll of history sealed with seven seals? Only One is worthy to break them and look upon or unveil the truth: that One is the Lamb who was slain. The seal is a claim of ownership and authority. Its meaning in Revelation is at least that God in Christ reigns sovereign over all history and in all events.
Caesar, in Pilate, on the other hand, violently disputes the claim. He has set his seal of approval on Jesus’ death, and now he guarantees it with troops. Secured by security forces. When the seal is broken in the resurrection, it stands among the signs that the power of the powers (death in all its forms) has been broken. The dominion of political authority–especially inflated, aggressive–and imperial authority has been cut to the heart.
Even Hitler never thought he could control who could come to a “pre-packaged Holy Communion”!
This is obviously a bureaucrat drunk with power, and IF there are any patriots with a spine left in sleepy Indiana, they should show themselves worthy of being Americans.
It’s obvious that his rules are aimed at Christian churches: “It is preferred that no communion be distributed.” Muzzies don’t distribute communion.
NO bathrooms must be available for use. That eliminates most of the senior citizens.
Being a Republican doesn’t cancel out one’s inner idiot.
Stop suggesting Christians disobey civilian authorities. It isn’t biblical. Jesus calls us to “ “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”
I don’t care if individuals handle snakes, cut off their hands or pluck out their eyes. I DO CARE if they spread disease.
OMG!! BUCK UP!
It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”
-Sam Adams
If Christians are obligated to obey civil authorities, then why did St. Peter escape from prison?
Unfortunately there is no one to run against this RINO idiot. He will probably be easily elected in November.
Except for bringing in new business to Indiana, Holcomb has been a liberal, country club Republican.
“We ought to obey God rather than man,” Acts 5:29. is God’s command to Christians when government edicts conflict with God’s Word. This is not optional. The Constitution guarantees that government CANNOT infringe on our right to come and worship and receive Holy Communion, as this dictator governor does when he bars Christians over 65 to come worship and specifies that the elements should be “prepackaged”! Outrageous.
Are you anti-Christian bigots any better than the KKK?
He has been disappointing at times. Like this cell phone ban that he approved.
Handle all the snakes you want. Just STOP spreading disease. It’s more than just about YOU.
There is nothing in the Bible that says it’s OK for Christians to spread a plague.
When they claim that the State is God, do I worship the state to please God or god?
When a Goobener makes a Non Constitutional declaration of law, it is clearly a crime and not a law to be respected or followed as this Goobener declared to uphold the Constitution in order to become a govenor. He invalidated his oath of office and is NOT a valid leader.
Jesus was never a wimp.
And if they say that all bullets belong to the state and get on the train car I will give them bullets with the greatest precision I can muster for the rest of my life.
Then we will all meet to discuss this before God, not god.
Me? Well bless your heart.
What are moslems doing today, hmmmmmm???
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