A Mississippi church on Thursday accused local government officials of “targeting” the drive-in services it has been holding during the coronavirus pandemic.
The church, King James Bible Baptist Church, sent a letter to Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons through First Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal institution that specializes in religious liberty cases, asking that Simmons lift a ban on drive-in church services. The letter said that the order infringed on the right of Charleston Hamilton, the church’s pastor, to assemble his congregation.
“Your recent order prohibiting drive-in services leaves him in reasonable fear that he and his church members will be fined and criminally prosecuted for merely engaging in drive-in church services that fall well within the CDC guidelines,” the letter said. “We require Greenville, Mississippi, to withdraw the unconstitutional order that, disturbingly, targets religious exercise.”
Simmons’s order, issued on Tuesday, listed drive-in services as gatherings that violated Gov. Tate Reeves’s shelter-in-place order for the state. The city ban on drive-in services, Simmons said, would not be lifted until Reeves ended his ban on church gatherings.
The letter opposing Simmons’s ban stated that Hamilton’s congregation had not gotten out of their cars during services and that Hamilton himself had maintained the proper 6-foot social distancing requirements while preaching. Hamilton intends to continue this practice on Easter Sunday regardless of whether or not the ban is lifted.
Jeremy Dys, a legal representative for Hamilton’s church, called the order “draconian and unconstitutional,” adding that the order also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which states that no government entity may issue ordinances that uniquely target religious practice.
As most churches have shut down because of the pandemic, several have resorted to drive-in services as a safe alternative to in-person meetings.
