The DC Mayor Doesn’t Get to Define Church

But what if Covid-19 is still with us for several years, so that the government may seem to have a legitimate reason for restricting churches from meeting? How long before churches say, “We have to meet before our lack of assembling results in serious damage to the church?”

Covid may continue for a long time. Government’s restrictions are often inconsistent. Just this morning, I read that WHO is now saying that total lock-downs aren’t such a good idea after all. Not because they are ineffective, but because the harm they cause is greater than the resulting good. Such reasoning is highly subjective. Who gets to decide when it is necessary for churches not to meet, and when the absence of assembling causes unacceptble damage to the church?

I am pretty sure that pagans do not care one way or another about what we do. I am pretty sure that those without Christ have their eyes blinded by Satan. I am pretty sure that the argument that we will win them if we comply with the state is wrong. Can we point to one group of believers who are winning pagans to Christ because that group is complying?

Yes, our attitudes most always be checked by the Word. Yes, we must be Christ like.

We live in a nation that has a wonderful Constitution: the basis for our rule of law. In that Constitution, we have certain liberties that other people groups do not have. I do not want those freedoms taken away. I will continue to live like an American citizen who enjoys the freedoms that I have under our Constitution.

Jim wrote:

I am pretty sure that the argument that we will win them if we comply with the state is wrong.

That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m saying the vitriolic anger at “the left” is strange coming from Christians, when we’re not supposed to hate our mission field. You can’t reach people with the Gospel when you hate them.

[G. N. Barkman]

But what if Covid-19 is still with us for several years…

[…]

Covid may continue for a long time.

I agree. In fact, Covid is out, and like every other virus, it’s never going to go completely away. The question will be how we handle it. Will it be like Ebola, which is mostly ignored unless there is an outbreak? Will it be like the flu, with vaccinations every year, with multiple variations for the different strains, but otherwise we continue with life as usual? Or will it be something “special,” something too “deadly” to handle like the flu, where we have to live in essential lockdown for the rest of our lives? If it’s that latter, we’ll have to figure out how to have church even if it’s forbidden by the powers that be.

Pandemics come and go, and as you noted, even the WHO is saying that the cost of lockdowns is greater than the potential good. I hope that eventually our government realizes we can’t live the rest of our lives in fear, and we can’t do this every time a new virus is discovered with a higher-than-average mortality rate. But as others have noted, maybe churches can use this to develop ways to carry out their purpose and mission if this should happen again (or, God forbid, never get back to normal).

[G. N. Barkman]

Who gets to decide when it is necessary for churches not to meet, and when the absence of assembling causes unacceptble damage to the church?

of course, WHO decides, naturally

I’m not sure what What and I Don’t Know get to do, though, this ain’t baseball

— sorry, Stan, couldn’t resist.
Ollie

nuts, double post, that will teach me to be a smart aleck

[TylerR]

Jim wrote:

I am pretty sure that the argument that we will win them if we comply with the state is wrong.

That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m saying the vitriolic anger at “the left” is strange coming from Christians, when we’re not supposed to hate our mission field. You can’t reach people with the Gospel when you hate them.

I don’t hate the left. But I do hate very much a lot of what they’re doing. BLM, for instance, while seemingly supporting of African Americans, actually plays on their fears and deals them a horrible hand by trying to make them (and many others) dependent upon the state. It is, in my view, a racist movement.

Dan, I agree.

On a related note about my concerns with conservative Christians and social engagement generally, the most striking tidbit so far from Tara Burton’s “Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World” (https://amzn.to/378QbtM) is below. It captures my own concerns with the Religious Right so well. The same concerns, but very different framing. Burton writes:

Even the institutionalization of white evangelicalism in the past few decades—bolstered since the late 1970s by evangelicals’ alliance with the Republican Party—is rooted in narratives not of ecumenism but of cultural resistance … the sense of meaning and purpose these evangelical organizations provide their adherents remains the narrative of the brave underdog, valiantly fighting against the encroaching forces of post-1960s secularism.

So much of the focus has been on cultural resistance in (unwitting?) service of some form of Christian nationalist impulse, not the Gospel. I share the concerns. My framing is just different. I suspect JMac and Dever share the same concerns, but their framing is also quite different. I suspect this divide over whether “cultural resistance” is a legitimate philosophy for a local church is at the heart of this difference in framing.