As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
In the last article, we saw the Court determined public health considerations cannot run roughshod over religious liberty concerns. Justice Gorsuch, who seemed particularly outraged, quipped the Constitution does not take a sabbatical during a pandemic. However, Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan disagree. They wish to continue to defer to Governors and public health orders.
This past Wednesday (25 November 2020), the Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Cuomo had imposed to combat COVID-19. The vote was 5-4. If the late Justice Ginsburg were on the bench instead of Amy Barrett, it would have gone the other way.
This is not a permanent decision. Justice Kavanaugh explains:
I wrote this article for the congregation where I serve, based on our specific context. It may not be your context!
What to think about government public health edicts and the Church regarding COVID-19? In an outburst of representative frustration, a Southern Baptist theologian recently posted the following on Twitter in response to his Governor’s new lockdown restrictions which, among other things, forbade dancing:1
“Leaders urge Americans to ‘put aside partisan politics’ and pray in the spirit of 1 Timothy 2.” - C.Today
Related:
Curiosity might kill cats but it’s a really good thing in humans. We could all use more of it. I offer the following to the masks-vs-COVID curious. My view on both mask use and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) use—along with most other COVID-related questions—has been that being dogmatic isn’t appropriate either way.
“… the indoor services were guided by social distancing protocols. The church, which is located in a rural community south of Huntsville and usually runs between 80 and 100 in services, met for a while during the pandemic with drive-in services. In June, Warrior Creek Baptist was back to some normal gatherings.
Grace Community Church, where John MacArthur serves, has released a statement announcing its intent to defy California’s latest rollback of church gatherings due to concerns of a resurgent COVID-19.
The statement is a disaster.
“The problem Etzioni says, isn’t the modeling team—which she believes is doing it’s best to ‘deliver results that match the data and produce ever-more-complex predictions about the future.’ Rather, it’s the way the information is communicated.
Discussion