CREEDE HINSHAW: Self-serving call for church re-openings is dangerous

A conservative nonprofit firm that defends churches in thorny church-state cases wants Sunday, to be designated ReOpen Church Sunday. To set such a national day is a naïve and dangerous idea.

Their website, beneath the words in bold font NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT, exhorts every congregation in the United States to re-open this Sunday. Here is the first line of their web page: “(We) … are calling on the churches to open and believers to start meeting again on Sunday, May 3.”

That blanket invitation is as irresponsible as suggesting we ought to research bleach as a way to cure COVID-19.

On a national radio program, the group’s director was more cautious than on his misleading website. His mass re-opening movement – which he began retracting — amounts to nothing more than asking churches to “begin the process” or “begin thinking about” re-opening.

Well, duh.

Almost every church, mosque and synagogue in this country is already starting to think about re-opening without the necessity of a misleading call to open every church this Sunday.

But Liberty Counsel and Director Mat Staver apparently want to stir the pot by stridently pointing out a religious body’s “constitutional right” to remain open. Their website conveniently ignores that most congregations of every faith group, wanting to protect their own members and live in harmony with the larger community (both duties of a Christian), have voluntarily complied with their governmental bodies, trusting their public health officials, medical advisors, elected leaders at every level and good common sense.

A few defiant, highly publicized congregations have snubbed the government in their rush to stand on their Article One rights while ignoring the verses in their Bibles commanding them to obey secular authorities.

It is congregations such as these that Liberty Counsel has taken as clients in suing the government. There’s an advocacy group for every disaffected person or organization, but these lawsuits are more than a stretch. Consider one church in Virginia, for example: The pastor kept his church open and declared himself “essential.” He vowed to keep on preaching until he went to jail or the hospital. A few weeks later he died of COVID-19.

Is your church thinking and praying about re-opening? There are congregations that can realistically open on Sunday. If they are able to observe all the precautions, I salute them. We’re better when we gather together. Every congregation yearns to return to corporate worship and study.

Every congregation’s situation will be different, a fact that Liberty Counsel reluctantly acknowledges in the very last sentence of its strident call that all of us should open this Sunday. This publicity-grabbing stunt feels more like a self-aggrandizing nonprofit trying to drum up more clients to justify its existence.

In a radio interview, Mr. Staver used words far more ironic and even prophetic than he probably intended. Here was the question: “In a state still tightly locked down, should a church go ahead and open this Sunday?” He replied, “The leaders of that church would have to decide if that was the hill they wanted to die on.”