Christians who live in Knoxville, Tenn., are now “allowed” to go back to church as of May 1, but the city and county don’t want them to sing, take communion or use Bibles.
As part of its “Community Strategy for Phased Reopening,” Knox County and the City of Knoxville in eastern Tennessee had attempted to impose a lengthy list of restrictions on congregations under the guise of protecting against the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), but these restrictions have since been overturned at the state level.
Only “core worship,” as defined by Knoxville officials, was to be allowed as part of the reopening, which forbade all “non-essential” worship activities such as groups, classes, youth services, baptism, communion and Bible-reading.
“The physical taking of communion/sacrament should not be performed due to the serial breaking of physical distancing across a congregation,” the original guidance stated before having to be revised to state that such restrictions are now recommended as opposed to mandated.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued his own guidance for the reopening of churches throughout the state, which he said overrides the attempted Knoxville guidance. As a result, Knoxville churches now have the option to not follow them if they so choose.
Executive Order 30, as signed by Gov. Lee, states that local governments cannot issue their own rules about places of worship because Gov. Lee himself was planning to issue his own statewide guidelines.
While meeting in actual church buildings is no longer banned anywhere in Tennessee, Gov. Lee is still encouraging all of them to meet online for the time being, though they are free to make their own decision on the matter.
Meanwhile, Knoxville is forging on with its phased re-opening, which in the city and county document is clearly defined as not returning “to pre-pandemic normal.” Knoxville is requiring that each of its many phases last for a minimum of 28 days, which means it will be months, if ever, before the city and county ever sees anything remotely resembling freedom.
“A minimum of 28 days will be spent in each phase regardless of whether the benchmarks are met at an earlier timepoint,” the document explains.
“The phased reopening is not a return to pre-pandemic normal, and the phased plan presents a pathway for reopening that relies on the Five Core Actions we must all consistently take to reduce the spread of COVID-19. They include physical distancing, wearing cloth face coverings, handwashing, cleaning surfaces, and staying home if you are sick or instructed to isolate/quarantine.”
As one Tennessee Star commenter pointed out, the Tennessee state constitution clearly states that all men have “a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience,” and that “no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience,” meaning people can attend services and get as close to other people as they want, without face masks, government recommendations be damned.
Calvin Freiburger
California’s Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom, on Tuesday released his proposal for resuming normal life following the COVID-19 outbreak, a four-stage plan that would leave churches closed for “months.”
California is currently in Stage 1, ABC 7 reports, with the general public staying at home and all “nonessential” businesses shut down. In a few weeks, Department of Public Health director Dr. Sonia Angell says, the state can move on to Stage 2, which would reopen “lower risk workplaces” such as manufacturing, schools, child care facilities, and offices. Additional retailers would be allowed to offer curbside pickup services as well.
The second half of the plan is “months, not weeks” away, according to Angell.
Stage 3 would see the reopening of places defined as “higher risk” due to the close proximity of people inside to one another, including religious services, beauty salons, gyms, and movie theaters. Later, Stage 4 would represent a complete end to the lockdown.
To evaluate when to move on from stage to stage, California officials will monitor several factors, including expanded testing, protections for those most susceptible to COVID-19 (the elderly and the immuno-compromised), hospital capacity, development of treatment options, and continued observance of “social distancing.”
“This is going to be a while, but there are ways we can modify the way we move around in our environment that will make it more possible (to reopen)," Angell said.
Last week, Cross Culture Christian Center in Lodi filed a lawsuit against Newsom’s prohibition of religious gatherings. The state did back down on its prohibition against gathering in church parking lots and listening to services from within the safety of one’s car.
New York police union: Enforcing social distancing causing city to ‘fall apart before our eyes’
Calvin Freiburger
The Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the largest law-enforcement union in the Big Apple, has come out against New York politicians’ priorities in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, arguing that police need to be let “out of the social distancing enforcement business.”
“The cowards who run this city have given us nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves,” PBA president Patrick Lynch declared, the New York Post reports. “Nobody has a right to interfere with a police action. But now that the inevitable backlash has arrived, they are once again throwing us under the bus.”
At the same time, he continued, city leaders are “still watering down our laws, releasing real criminals and discouraging proactive enforcement of fare evasion and quality of life issues.”
“As a result, our subways are in chaos and we have hero nurses getting mugged on their way to our hospitals,” Lynch said, “As the weather heats up and the pandemic continues to unravel our social fabric, police officers should be allowed to focus on our core public safety mission. If we don’t, the city will fall apart before our eyes.”
“This situation is untenable: the NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether,” he urged.
As of Wednesday morning, the United States is estimated to have seen more than 1.2 million cases of COVID-19, with 72,695 deaths and 201,879 recoveries. Roughly a third of those numbers come from the state of New York, which has been hit harder than anywhere else in the US.
State and city leaders have come under fire for the extent of their efforts to keep New Yorkers in their homes, such as Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s declaration that it was “absolutely unacceptable” for Jews to gather for Rabbi Chaim Mertz’s funeral, in violation of “social distancing” edicts, and that continuing to do so would be grounds for arrest.
At the same time, critics argue that New York has failed to take the steps that would have made the biggest difference. The densely-packed subway system remained open as the crisis grew, with de Blasio and Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo only last week announcing nightly shutdowns for cleaning. Further, the state health department forced nursing homes to readmit residents diagnosed with COVID-19, sending contagious people back into the most vulnerable segment of the population.
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