Churches: Should they be allowed to reopen?
“It’s about time,” said John Davidson in TheFederalist.com. This week, as stores and other businesses began to reopen across the nation, groups of religious leaders filed lawsuits for the right to do the same, with churches filled to a third of capacity and following social-distancing guidelines. Some are holding services in defiance of Democratic governors who are still showing a “dangerous ignorance, or perhaps indifference, about the place of religious freedom and freedom of conscience in our constitutional system.” In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz tipped “his liberal hand” by keeping churches closed even as shopping malls, bars, and hair salons reopened, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, until public pressure forced him to retreat. But the governors of California, Michigan, and Illinois are sticking to their unconstitutional guns, earning a warning last week from President Trump. “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important essential places of faith to open right now,” Trump said, and “if they don’t do it, I will override the governors.” Legally, Trump may not have that power, but he’s right: The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion. What is the legal justification for allow shopping malls “to reopen while churches must keep their doors closed?”
“We’ll give it a shot,” said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. Governors have sweeping powers to protect the public health, and churches have proved uniquely efficient vectors for transmitting the coronavirus. One singer at a March choir practice in Washington infected 52 of 61 members, two of whom died. A similar outbreak at a church in Arkansas infected 35 attendees, who in turn infected 21 in the community; three people died. A service in Frankfurt,
Germany, infected 107, even with social distancing. Gathering crowds in confined spaces is “a great way to spread Covid-19,” said Judy Stone in Forbes.com, and if you add singing to the mix—an activity that expels virus-filled droplets from the mouth with greater velocity and range than regular speech or breathing—the deadly effect is magnified. If we reopen America’s churches today, all those “vocal expressions of faith will fuel more outbreaks and death.”
Federal guidance would be useful here, said Lena Sun and Josh Dawsey in The Washington Post. But while the Centers for
Disease Control released a “detailed road map” for reopening schools, restaurants, and mass transit, equivalent CDC guidelines for churches were blocked by a White House reluctant “to alienate the faithful.” Trump’s stance is motivated by pure politics, not a genuine concern for “religious liberty,” said Gabby Orr in Politico .com. His aides are panicked that a poll showed double-digit drops in his favorability with white Christians in only a month, due to the president’s botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some governors have certainly “gone too far in their church lockdowns,” said Rod Dreher in TheAmericanConservative.com, but “the coronavirus doesn’t care about our politics.” Any priest, pastor, or rabbi who puts loyalty to Trump above the safety of worshippers is indulging in “recklessness.” For now, the faithful can worship in virtual services, said the Rev. Edward Beck in CNN .com. To put “ourselves and our parishioners in danger” by gathering them in enclosed physical spaces, just to strike a blow for some politicized notion of “religious liberty,” would endanger something more precious: what we Catholics like to call “the right to life.”