Category Archives: Religion

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 14, 2020:  

When the senior pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, John MacArthur, opened services on Sunday, he said:

The question has come up a number of times about why Grace Church does not just comply with the orders that have been laid down for churches, and I thought it might be helpful to give you a list of the things that are required of us as a church, so that you understand how utterly impossible that would be.

He then ran through the list of restrictions Los Angeles County Health Officer Buntu Davis placed on the church in order for it to be able to hold services. It was a long list, and MacArthur was interrupted several times with laughter from his congregation.

Before moving on to the service itself, MacArthur added: “Obviously, this is not constitutional, but more importantly, it goes against the will of the Lord of the church, Who calls us together.”

That is the core issue: whether the county can prohibit the church from holding services indoors, claiming the right to do so in the name of public health, or whether such an order exceeds the state’s authority in light of both the Federal and California constitutions.

And that is the issue that Mitchell Beckloff, the Superior Court Judge, skirted in his 22-page ruling against the church on Thursday.

He danced around it, claiming that his order against the church was merely a temporary restraining order and not a ruling on the merits:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 31, 2020: 

In a staggering show of vindictiveness, Los Angeles County served notice this weekend on Pastor John MacArthur that it was canceling his church’s lease on County property. The land the church sits on belongs to the county, and they want it back. They also want revenge.

Four times the county has tried to shut down MacArthur’s Grace Community Church over its refusal to follow COVID edicts against indoor church services, and four times it has been rebuffed.

When Jenna Ellis, the lead attorney from the Thomas More Society  which is helping defend the church against the onslaught from the county, learned about it, she called it out for what it was: government tyranny through retaliation. Ellis remarked,

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 20, 2020:  

Pastor John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, isn’t the only mega-church defying Governor Gavin Newsom’s COVID-inspired edicts and mandates against worship services being held indoors.

Following Newsom’s edict on July 13 moving most of the state back to Phase 1 — a complete ban on businesses and churches from operating indoors — Greg Fairrington, pastor of Destiny Church in Rocklin, video-taped his response. He said,

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, August 9, 2020: 

Once officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health finished “investigating” Grace Church of Sun Valley, California, for holding in-person services in defiance of the state’s mandates limiting such services, they sent a “cease and desist” order to senior pastor John MacArthur. If he continues such defiance, and holds services in the future, he faces a daily fine of $1,000 or arrest.

He continues to hold such services, and a top-drawer coterie of high-powered attorneys are gathering around the church and its pastor to offer free legal assistance. Such assistance is likely to be needed, and soon.

One of the attorneys is constitutional lawyer Jenna Ellis, a senior fellow at the Falkirk Center for Faith & Liberty who provides legal counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom. She is also the senior legal counsel to the Trump 2020 presidential campaign, has served on the president’s legal team during his impeachment trial, and is Trump’s personal counsel.

She can see what’s coming: a battle royal over the constitution. Ellis remarked:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 4, 2020:

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said on Monday that officials from its Environmental Health division are “investigating and will be reaching out to the church leaders [at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley] to let them know they need to comply with the Health Officer’s Order” to discontinue singing at places of worship and limit indoor attendance to 25 percent of capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower.

Senior Pastor John MacArthur already knows about that order, and he isn’t obeying it.

On Friday, July 24, he let them, and the whole world, know why. In his “Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open,” he wrote:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, June 14, 2020:

The Justice Department sent a letter to officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, on Wednesday regarding religious discrimination over the County’s enforcement of coronavirus lockdown orders on religious gatherings but not on George Floyd protests.

Wrote Eric Dreiband, an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, May 10, 2020: 

Some churches are suing. Some are asking permission to reopen in-person church services. Some are announcing they are opening in-person church services — with or without the government’s permission.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove issued a temporary restraining order on Friday against Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s edict banning in-person church services.

The complaint was brought by Tabernacle Baptist Church of Nicholasville on Wednesday, May 6. The judge issued the order on Friday and the governor officially backed off that same day. The judge’s ruling applies to all churches in the commonwealth.

On March 25 Governor Beshear issued an executive order that required all organizations that are not “life-sustaining” to close. According to his edict churches were not considered to be “life-sustaining,” but laundromats, accounting services, law firms, hardware stores, and other secular entities were. This formed the first basis of the complaint: blatant discrimination.

But the meat of the complaint rested on constitutional violations:

Requiring Plaintiff [Tabernacle] to abstain from its religious gatherings, despite substantial modifications to satisfy the public health interests at stake, violates Plaintiff’s Constitutional right to free exercise of its religion;

 

By denying Plaintiff the ability to assemble via an in-person church service, Defendants [Governor Beshear and another official in his administration] are in violation of the Freedom of Assembly Clause [contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution];

 

Requiring Plaintiff to abstain from its religious gatherings, despite substantial modifications to satisfy the public health interests at stake, violates Plaintiff’s Constitutional right peaceably to assemble [also in the First Amendment].

On Friday the judge granted what the church demanded: a temporary restraining order against the governor’s edict.

Later that day the governor backed off: