Saturday, April 11, 2020

Church Services during the Coronavirus Pandemic: Defying the State as Anti-Christian

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic during the Christian Holy Week in 2020 brought up the contentious relationship between church and state in at least the United States. Some of the American governments banned any in-person worship services even on the festival of Easter, while other governments merely discouraged such gatherings. Most churches had already stopped their weekly services, but a few outliers insisted even on having large gatherings on Easter Sunday. Those clerics tended to view themselves as defending their faith as if in an epic battle against a tyrannical state. I contend that such clerics were over-reacting—acting as if they were fighting a battle in which martyrdom might be required. The sheer entrenchment was excessive. Next, I provide some background on the Christian position on government authority, after which I will look at two cases.

In the Gospel of John (19:11), Jesus says to Pilote, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.” In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells Pharisees and Herodians, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[1] Jesus recognizes the purview of the state, and thus in following governmental law, yet he considers the only authority bearing on him to be from God. The authority over him comes only from on high because he is the Son of God, and yet he does not take on the Roman authorities by being a political zealot, for instance, even though such a role could be expected from someone with only heavenly authority over him. Yet give to Caesar the things that are his.

Caesar can have Jesus’ body, but not his soul. The latter is what counts to him, so although earthly authorities can take his body, real authority pertains to his soul as it endures after the death of the body. Easter proclaims that even the body, transformed, can survive death. In going to the Upper Room after his resurrection, Jesus walks through a door but is hungry and asks for fish. The nature of the transformed body transcends the limits of human concepts and perception.  Faith thus suggests that civil authorities do not really have power over bodies that survive death. A firm belief in an afterlife thus supports Jesus’ claims on authority. Jesus does not deny Caesar’s authority, but simply regards it as not really mattering.

Paul’s view is in sync. “Every person is to be in subjection to the government authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”[2] Obey the government, for its authority ultimately comes from the only real authority, God. This does not of course imply that government authorities are semi-divine beings, hence the objection can arise as to tyrannical uses of power. Namely, is such power also from God? Clearly not. Henry VIII of England was wrong, which I submit demonstrates just how flawed the doctrine of the divine right of kings is even in theory. Facing a tyrannical use of government authority, Jesus submits his body to Caesar anyway. Jesus is a religious rather than a political reformer, and his task was soteriological (i.e., salvation) rather than to make a political protest. His job is thus not to take on governments.

Therefore, the refusal of many early Christians to sacrifice to Roman deities, albeit from religious motivation, defied Jesus’ preachment to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Being forced to sacrifice as a political act in the Roman Empire was based on authority that really doesn’t matter (as only God’s authority matters), so making the sacrifices would not have made those Christians worshippers of idols. So their martyrdoms were unlike that of Jesus, and were not based on his teachings or example. Similarly, the Japanese Christians (and western priests) tortured until they stepped on a metal or stone engraving of Jesus were not renouncing their faith. Woe that such a trifle act could destroy a faith, even if they had stepped on the engravings in free will (which they did not).

I submit that pastors motivated to defy government orders or guidelines prohibiting religious gatherings, including worship services, during the coronavirus pandemic could not look to Jesus as their role model. “If Caesar says close down, then close down,” might be Jesus’ reply to those pastors. “It doesn’t change anything in your relationship to God.” Besides, Jesus might add that alternatives exist, such as online services, which many churches had gone to before the government guidelines and prohibitions on groups of over so many people meeting in person. It is easy to become excited in fighting for a firmly held belief or faith and to perceive government as attacking, but I submit that setting up such a dynamic says more about the pastor than Christianity.

Kentucky’s chief executive Andy Beshear said on Good Friday, “I think we’re down to seven churches statewide that are thinking about having an in-person service.”  He announced that any “residents attending a mass-gathering—including church services—will be forced to self-quarantine for 14 days.”[3] Acting on behalf of public health in Kentucky, Beshear was hardly attacking the Christian faith. In fact, he was a deacon at his church, and he frequently talked about his own faith while promoting guidelines on physical distancing. “I have never been as sure of anything in my faith as I am in this,” he said, “We must protect each other.”[4] Brotherly and sisterly love, or neighbor love. According to Leibniz, such wise love, manifesting as universal benevolence, is justice. Caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis. Such benevolence reaches even strangers, unlike Cicero’s brand of concentric circles of ethical duty.

On the week before the Christian Holy Week, a Florida sheriff arrested Pastor Rodney Brown for continuing to hold in-person worship services at his megachurch in Tampa. Brown claimed that he would not close his church until the End Times begin. In keeping with his theological timeline, he was violating a government order “directing residents to remain at home effective March 27 except for ‘essential services’—including trips to the grocery store, the doctor’s office and the pharmacy.”[5] Attending church was not listed as an essential service. Indeed, Jesus of the Gospels says, “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.”[6] So the pastor did not have to put people’s lives at risk in order for them to continue their relations with Jesus. Furthermore, the state’s strong interest in public health during the pandemic justified the government in keeping open only essential services. As Christians could pray in their homes, consistent with the state's stay-at-home order, means that attending church services was not essential to their religious lives. Besides, the Christians would have already believed that they had been saved theologically due to the vicarious, self-emptying sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Brown's religious-persecution complex even to the point of contemplating martyrdom by incorrectly viewing it as following Jesus was overdone, perhaps for attention-deriving effect.

 Pastor Tony Spell in Louisiana also mistakenly believed that it was necessary for his congregants to worship even at close range in his church in order to get back to Jesus. "I've just got to get to Jesus. . . . Come on America, let's get back to Jesus," Brown said in his church on April 26, 2020 in defiance of the government's stay-at-home order that barred such gatherings and his own house-arrest.[7] Flouting even his own arrest points to a criminal mindset that refuses to recognize, not to mention respect, laws as a constraint. Jesus of the Gospels is a religious reformer, not a criminal zealot seeking to defy the Roman Empire in order to bring it down or at least out of Judea. Give unto Caesar what is his, for he cannot have power over souls. He can, however, has power over bodies, and Jesus does not contest this in the Passion story. Jesus is quite obviously oriented to the after-life, whereas the defying pastors seemed more oriented to this world and particularly in its squabbles. 

[1] Mark 12:16-17; Luke 20:25; Matthew 22: 21. All passages quotes here are from the King James Bible.
[2] Romans 13:1.
[3] Samuel Chamberlain, “Kentucky Governor Threatens 14-Day Quarantine for Going to Mass Gatherings, including Church Services,” FoxNews.com, April 10, 2020 (accessed April 11, 2020).
[4] Ibid.
[6] Matthew 6:6
[7] Danielle Wallace, "Louisiana Pastor Breaks House Arrest to Hold Sunday Service amid Coronavirus Stay-at-Home Orders," Foxnews.com, April 26, 2020 (accessed same day).