Sam Rodriguez, pastor in Sacramento and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, opened his segment of an online Q Ideas forum Wednesday, Sept. 2 by talking about his daughter’s bout in the ICU with COVID-19. 

He knows the coronavirus is real, he said. “But my daughter told me, ‘I survived to serve as a testimony, for you to fight for our God-given rights.”

Rodriguez joined John MacArthur, lead pastor of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, Francis Chan, former pastor of a California megachurch and author who joined from Hong Kong, and other evangelical pastors and religious freedom experts to weigh in on how churches should navigate changing restrictions on religious services during the pandemic and when a rule may be government overreach. 

If Califorrnia said they would shut down every large gathering including protests, casinos and bars, that is fair, Rodriguez said. “But it is not fair when you discriminate and allow other gatherings to take place but not the church. It's morally reprehensible.” 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has enacted the country’s most stringent stay-at-home rules during the COVID-19 pandemic, including banning singing inside houses of worship or gathering in homes, including for a religious service. 

Rodriguez emphasized that in the current political moment of racial justice and division, his church is 40% white, 40% Black and 20% Asian and Latino, saying that when they sing together, it is beautiful and healing. 

“We literally sense the presence of God when we come together,” he said. “In the middle of this [political moment], the church is the answer and now the governor is telling me I can't sing or gather people in my house to sing. It's constitutionally illegal. Elections have consequences. We elected our governor in California. These are the consequences, under the guise of safety and health.”

Rodriguez prayed at President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony and has been a faith advisor to the White House on immigration.

Some churches have held outdoor worship with social distancing (some in creative ways like surf lessons on the beach), while others are pushing back with lawsuits. Earlier this month, a California trial court judge allowed MacArthur’s Grace Community Church to hold indoor worship with social distancing and masks. Then the state’s court of appeals issued an emergency order to supersede the trial court, saying Grace Community Church could hold only outdoor services until their lawsuit against the city, state and county concludes. 

MacCarthur has been disobeying the orders to hold weekly in-person services and encourages other churches to do the same. 

“Being a pastor means that you’re a truth-teller,” MacArthur said at the Q Ideas forum, Church and State. “That means you protect people from deception that comes from the world.” 

MacArthur said the point when he decided his church should gather in person again was when CDC data predicted only 0.01% of people will die from COVID-19, or less than one death per 100,000 Californians. 

“So the narrative doesn't work,” he said. “They can't sell us this lie anymore that makes us shut down the church. We don't know anyone sick or in the hospital with COVID.”

In mid-August, the CDC reported a death toll of 162,000 Americans, pegging the mortality rate at 0.04% of all Americans, but that number does not calculate the probability of any particular individual dying from COVID-19 and changes when deaths increase. In April, the same mortality rate was recorded at 0.01%, while cases continued to rise. So far, COVID-19 has killed more than 182,000 Americans according to data by John Hopkins University, but the data is likely undercounting as comparisons to total excess deaths show a rise in deaths this year compared to last year.

MacArthur summarized Romans 13 about the God-given role of government to punish evil and protect those who do good, and compared the verses to civil disobedience in Acts 4 where Jesus’s apostles are told not to preach but they defy the government to preach, citing God as their ultimate authority. 

“The head of the church is the Lord over everything,” MacArthur said. “He’s the Lord over government and the Lord over the church. The only time you have a conflict is when the government invades the Lordship of Christ.”

The church held services on a livestream for four weeks beginning in March, then decided meeting in person outweighed the risk of dying from COVID-19 for those who aren’t elderly, sick or have underlying health conditions. 

Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta, suspended church services through the end of the year and described a drive-thru memorial service for a high schooler in his church who lost both of his parents in their 40s and 50s to COVID-19. 

Hundreds in the community gathered with candles but since the teenager was COVID positive, “he couldn't even get out of his car to be comforted and went home to live alone until he can join his grandmother,” Stanley said. 

He said most of the churches in the Atlanta area have reopened with mask and social distancing regulations, but his church decided to innovate and deploy their staff to meet community needs in new ways with the money they are saving by not meeting in person. 

Francis Chan, an author and founding pastor of Cornerstone Community Church who now lives in Hong Kong where religious freedom and democratic rule is more under threat than in the past 20 years, asked what American Christians have done with their freedom. 

“I'm grateful for the people who fight for religious freedom but at the same time i'm not afraid of losing it because the church is still flourishing,” Chan said. “I want to see a pure church where people are devoted and understand what it means to follow Jesus.” 

General counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner, said the religious freedom legal defense heard from more than 3,000 faith-based organizations in March asking about their constitutional rights under COVID-19 restrictions on their religious services. 

She noted that most government officials change rules once they realize unintended impacts on houses of worship seen as pillars of communities and even COVID-19 relief. But six months into the pandemic, facts on the ground are changing, she said. 

“We're growing more and more concerned that the notion that we will love our neighbor is seen as one of luxury,” Waggoner said, adding that the societal impact of closing churches is still unknown. 

John Inazu, a professor of law and religion at Washington University, said that American Christians need to remember that there are limits to all kinds of constitutional rights.

“We have a right to gather but it’s not absolute,” he said. “What you and I may choose to do in our own church also affects other people. The state has every right to say you can't do that, it's going to harm other people.”

Government overreach comes when houses of worship are treated differently than other similar spaces like casinos, Inazu said, referencing Nevada’s rules allowing up to 50% capacity in casinos but less than 50 people in houses of worship, though both would hold gatherings indoors and could accommodate for social distancing. 

Os Guinness, a social critic and author who’s lived in Europe and China, said “for 300 years, America's got religious freedom almost perfectly right. In the last 20 years, there's been a bigger sea change in religious freedom.”

He summarized what he sees as three threats to religious freedom in the U.S: the reduction of religious freedom to worship and religious services, the movement led by New Atheists after 9/11 to remove religious freedom from public life, and the idea rooted in Marxism and anti-Christian animosity that religious freedom is actually a source of bigotry and hatred rather than the first freedom the U.S. was founded upon. 

Meagan Clark is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Follow her on Twitter @MeaganKay.

Mattie Townson is an intern for Religion Unplugged and a journalism student at The King's College. She is the Campus Editor for her school newspaper, The Empire State Tribune.