On Good Friday, Christianity’s most solemn day, lawyers for religious freedom are expanding their war on governors and mayors who have ordered an Easter church lockdown and ban on drive-in services due to the coronavirus.
Notable cases in Kansas, Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi argue that the orders violate the First Amendment and religious freedoms that the country was founded on.
And in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has strongly urged opponents to drive-in services to drop the ban. In a letter to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a ban fan, the Kentucky senator urged, “Religious people should not be singled out for disfavored treatment.”
He added: “The government should not flatly prohibit religious gatherings that comply with CDC guidelines unless it has no other choice to stop COVID-19. And given that the government permits gatherings of people in vehicles in parking lots for commercial purposes, I believe the government has means to stop the spread of COVID-19 short of a flat ban on gatherings of people in vehicles for religious purposes.”
In the latest case, a Virginia family of 12 has filed a complaint in U.S. District Court challenging Gov. Ralph Northam’s ban on groups larger than 10, including in houses of worship, and to declare churches “essential,” just as doughnut shops are.
Becca and Mariano Diaz-Bonilla of Vienna, Virginia, argue that their rights are being violated because their family is big, with 10 children, and thus they aren’t allowed to attend mass as a complete family or even to have their Catholic priest come to their home to conduct a Mass.
The family, which has promised to practice safe social distancing and other rules to block the spread of the virus, said in the court document posted below: “Especially during a challenging time, plaintiffs rely on prayer to God and access to the Sacraments for grace. Plaintiffs’ rights as practicing Christians will be irreparably harmed if they are prevented from celebrating the Easter worship services, starting with Good Friday services on April 10, 2020.”
Diaz-Bonilla told Secrets that the Bill of Rights declared freedom of religion essential and that the governor couldn’t challenge that.
He also dismissed virtual services as unfulfilling. “Sacraments online is no more a substitute for receiving the sacraments in person than would be me showing a starving child a picture of steak and potatoes,” he said.
In Kansas, lawmakers have removed the governor’s order limiting church gatherings.
And in Mississippi and Kentucky, the national religious freedom legal foundation, First Liberty Institute, has pleaded that officials drop their rules against drive-in services, practiced by many churches nationally as an alternative to indoor meetings, including in Virginia.
In its letter to the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, for example, the group said the city’s ban was “unlawful because it treats houses of worship less favorably than similarly situated entities. For example, the prohibition does not apply to restaurants that provide drive through or take out service. Nor does it apply to establishments such as Walmart, where far more people park with more contact and less oversight.”
And in its defense of pastor Charleston Hamilton and King James Bible Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, Liberty special counsel Jeremy Dys noted that police have been ticketing church drive-ins. He provided Secrets with a photo of Hamilton preaching in a parking lot where the well-spaced cars, windows up, were outnumbered by police cruisers.
Hamilton also posted videos of the drive-ins, including one that showed police in a cluster outside of their cars.
