Colonial Americans determined that freedom from the oppression of Britain was such a hill. America’s leaders determined that responding to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and jihadist terrorism on 9/11 were such hills.
Are America’s Christians facing threats to our religious liberty on such a level that we must stand up at any cost?
Have we reached that point where we must say to secular authorities, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29)?
They point to the governor’s support of recent Black Lives Matter protests, claiming that he protected the protesters’ freedom of expression while blocking that of Christians in worship. In their view, the governor’s act constitutes a breach of their religious freedom.
John MacArthur’s well-known church in the Los Angeles area has chosen to reopen for in-person worship; a video of his sermon shows attendees sitting beside each other without wearing masks. The church’s website defends the decision as obeying “the biblical mandate to gather for corporate worship.”
South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom
In South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the US Supreme Court denied in late May a California church’s request for an injunction against the state’s phased reopening plan.
The governor’s executive order limited religious gatherings to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of one hundred attendees. The court determined by a five-to-four vote that “although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”
By contrast, the majority noted, “the Order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”
Writing in dissent, Justice Kavanaugh disagreed: “California’s 25 percent occupancy cap on religious worship services indisputably discriminates against religion, and such discrimination violates the First Amendment.” His dissent was joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch.
We can view this case as a disagreement regarding which activities are more like attending worship services and therefore subject to California’s attendance cap, or we can see it as an attack on public worship and therefore on religious liberty.
