Even as a series of churches file lawsuits alleging that coronavirus shutdowns violate the First Amendment, top Protestant and Catholic leaders are saying that pandemic restrictions do not pose a broad threat to religious liberty.
In the past two weeks, churches in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Kansas have sued local governments after drive-in services were either banned or shut down by police. At the same time, three churches in California that have not suspended in-person services have also sued. Elsewhere, pastors have been arrested when they refused to cancel their in-person services.
Prominent Christian leaders, however, have assured their followers that widespread government bans on large religious gatherings are not a threat to religious liberty, so long as they remain temporary and reasonable.
“It’s not a violation of religious liberty for the state to use its police power towards social distancing,” said the Southern Baptist religious liberty advocate Russell Moore. “But it has to be consistently and fairly applied, and it can’t single out churches or religious organizations as opposed to other groups.”
Moore, who spoke at length about religious liberty during a Wednesday livestream on Facebook, said that during the coronavirus pandemic, he has been pleasantly surprised at how few “skirmishes” have occurred regarding the subject. Moore defended the churches in Greenville, Mississippi, and Louisville, Kentucky, calling the bans on drive-in services “inconsistent and incoherent saber rattling.”
Both cities were forced to walk back their orders after three churches sued. In Louisville, a judge granted a temporary restraining order to the church, saying that Mayor Greg Fischer’s order was unconstitutional. In Greenville, Mayor Errick Simmons lifted his ban after Attorney General William Barr released a statement siding with the churches and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves directed him to do so.
In all the cases, the churches’ arguments rested on the fact that their drive-in services did not break social distancing guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, specifically, in that congregants never rolled their windows down while parked near each other. Moore noted that making a case for these sorts of services to go on is much stronger when governments are already allowing drive-in businesses to remain open.
“If you have churches doing this and they’re meeting all of the guidelines for social distancing, you can’t penalize people with tickets in that way if you’re not going to do that at the Sonic,” he said.
An overwhelming majority of Christians believe governments can shut down public church services, a recent study from the American Enterprise Institute found. And, even after President Trump in the past week has moved toward opening state economies again, a strong majority number of people still think that churches should remain closed, a Rasmussen poll released on Wednesday found.
Writing in the Washington Post in early April, Albert Mohler, a prominent conservative Southern Baptist theologian, and religious liberty advocate Kelly Shackelford, said that as long as governments remain reasonable and shutdowns are temporary, Christians should learn to adjust.
“Asking houses of worship to briefly suspend large gatherings is neither hostile toward religion nor unreasonable in light of the threat,” the two wrote. “Rather, this is a time for all of us to exercise prudence over defiance. Love for God and neighbor demands nothing less.”
Mohler and Shackelford criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for comments suggesting that he might force churches and synagogues to close permanently if they did not comply with his shutdown orders, calling them “careless.” Shackelford is president of the First Liberty Institute, the legal group representing several drive-in churches, and has been an outspoken critic of governments banning drive-ins.
Coronavirus-related religious liberty battles, however, have remained a mostly Protestant issue. No Catholic churches have filed suit against local governments, and all but one diocese in the United States, Las Cruces in New Mexico, remains closed to the public.
The bishop of that diocese, Peter Baldacchino, broke ranks with Catholic leadership by speaking out against government shutdowns of churches in a Wednesday letter to priests, saying that by keeping churches closed Catholic leadership is “overlooking those who are dead interiorly.”
“Televised Masses have been an attempt to bridge the gap during this time, but I am increasingly convinced that this is not enough,” Baldacchino said. “The eternal life offered in Christ Jesus needs to be announced. It was precisely the urgency of this announcement that drove the first apostles and the need is no less today. Christ is alive and we are his ambassadors.”
Arguments such as Baldacchino’s do not reflect the majority of the Catholic episcopate, according to Baltimore Archbishop William Lori.
“The Church has to take steps to ensure that we are kept safe and healthy and those steps have to be reasonable, rational,” Lori told the Catholic magazine Crux. “We do not feel as though we have been forced into doing this by the government. We feel like we’re doing the right thing.”
Lori, who once served as the Catholic Church’s point man on religious liberty in the U.S., added that he has “no sense whatsoever” that governments wish to discriminate against religious people by asking that churches close.
“All of our rights and liberties are very important,” he said. “They are a gift to us from the creator. They are constitutionally guaranteed, but they are not absolute. No one right is utterly absolute, that includes religious freedom.”
