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Just how untethered to the rule of law did the United States come during the Covid response?
Before March 2020, most Americans would think that monitoring church attendance, banning Easter services, and arresting hymn singers were practices reserved for Eastern-style totalitarianism. The Soviet Union persecuted Christians and the Chinese have Muslim concentration camps, but Americans’ freedom of worship is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
The free exercise of religion precedes all other liberties in the First Amendment. It was born of a core conviction that the New World could do it better than the Old World of religious wars and persecution. Freedom, the Founders believed, would not diminish religious experience but rather bolster it through toleration and peace. This was a radical conviction at the time, a dramatic departure from centuries and millennia of costly struggle.
Government guaranteed everyone’s religious liberty. And the system worked. Religious conviction did not diminish but rather intensified throughout the 19th century. Most governments in the world followed similar guarantees never to interfere with religious practice. Even in the 21st century, when the country in general had become increasingly secular, few could imagine that political leaders would launch a crusade against organized religion.
Yet that’s exactly what happened. As the Covid creed emerged as the national faith, the American tradition of religious pluralism withered away. Freedom of worship was replaced by widespread demands for conformity.
This wasn’t limited to the devoutly godless shores of Marin County or East Hampton. Christians in Idaho recently reached a $300,000 settlement with a local city after they were arrested for attending outdoor church services in September 2020. Christ Church Pastor Ben Zornes organized the worship. “We were just singing songs,” he explained at the time.
The local police chief had no patience for the violation of corona law. “At some point in time you have to enforce,” he told the press after arresting attendees at the “psalm sing.”
In my CA city, the bishop of my church went along with all the lockdowns and mandates the local and state government established. Our church members weren’t allowed inside the church or even outside it during 2020. Then after the vaccine came out, our congregation became divided into two groups, vaccinated and unvaccinated. Being allergic to all artificial chemicals used in prescription drugs and vaccines, I was one of the few unvaccinated members. Liberal and conservative congregations alike all obeyed the lockdowns and mandates primarily because their members were afraid of Covid. So if governments had stayed out of the… Read more »
Hope you decided to switch churches.
That town’s govt. needs to be “replaced.” ASAP.