Category Archives: Religion

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 17, 2020: 

On condition that his congregation wear masks and follow social-distancing guidelines, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, was prepared to hold indoor services on Sunday.

Those were the conditions set by a lower court on Friday, which turned aside Los Angeles County’s demand to close the church to inside services altogether. MacArthur said he’d be willing to follow those guidelines as a gesture of good will, in anticipation of a full hearing on the matter on September 4.

But that wasn’t good enough for Los Angeles County and its health official. Late Friday night, they appealed the decision to the Second Appellate District’s Court of Appeals, asking it to set aside the lower court’s agreement with the church.

On Saturday, a three-judge panel of that court tossed that lower court’s ruling and agreement and said that the county could continue to ban indoor services at Grace Community Church.

The panel said they couldn’t decide the issue instantly, that the issues were too involved, and consequently the county’s demands must remain in place:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 14, 2020: 

Within days of opening his church to worship services in July, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, received a “cease and desist” order from Los Angeles County.

The order started off gently: “The County requests that you immediately cease holding indoor worship services or other indoor gatherings, and adhere to the Health Officer Order directives governing activities at houses of worship.”

But then the state bared its teeth:

If you or Grace Community Church continues to hold indoor services in violation of the law, you are subject to criminal and civil liability….

 

Violating these orders is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and imprisonment of up to 90 days. Each day that you conduct indoor services is a separate offense….

 

Unless written confirmation is received by 5:00 p.m. on July 30, 2020 that Grace Community Church will comply with the law, the County will pursue further action through all available avenues of relief.

That date came and went. MacArthur and his church held those prohibited indoor services on Sunday, August 2 and Sunday, August 9.

On August 12, the church filed a lawsuit claiming that the “law” to which the county referred was unconstitutional and that the church was being discriminated against.

MacArthur made the “Biblical Case for the Church’s Duty to Remain Open” on July 24:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, May 31, 2020: 

A street preacher whose First Amendment-protected rights were violated received a settlement last week from Portland, Oregon. It’s a tiny win in a big war, but an important one.

In June four years ago, Mark Mayberry, a 59-year-old electrician, was handing out Gospel tracts in Portland’s Waterfront Park. He was also holding a pro-life sign and engaging passersby in conversation. A city park official decided he was in violation of the park’s regulations and cited him. When Mayberry refused to leave, he was cited for “failure to obey a park officer,” local police were called, and he was removed from the park with instructions not to return for 30 days.

Mayberry complained and his case was heard by Hearings Officer William Guzman, who found in Mayberry’s favor, deciding that the citation was

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 26, 2020: 

The letter sent to three Romanian Churches near Chicago from the city’s health commissioner was chilling: “If you continue to operate in defiance of the Executive Order [the “Stay at Home” order issued by Governor J.B. Pritzker], the City will pursue all available legal remedies, including … Summary Abatement.”

The three churches — Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church, Metro Praise International, and Philadelphia Romanian Church — received orders on Friday, May 15, not to hold in-person worship services until public-health officials deemed that it was safe to do so. On Sunday the 17th, they held in-person services anyway.

This generated a letter on May 22 from Allison Arwady, MD, Commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Public Health (CDPH) that was hand-delivered to each pastor. In it, she reviewed some history and refreshed her threats:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, March 11, 2020: 

For Joe Kennedy, the former coach of Washington’s Bremerton High Junior Varsity football team, it’s been a long five years. He coached the team from 2008 until his contract wasn’t renewed in 2015. For those seven years, after every game, he would take 15 seconds to go out to the 50-yard line and pray for his players.

And for seven years nobody minded. Nobody said anything. Nobody sued. Nobody even threatened to sue.

But when a school administrator paid a public compliment for how the coach was positively impacting the lives of his players, the school board told Kennedy to stop. When he didn’t, the board decided not to renew his contract.

Kennedy enlisted the help of First Liberty, a non-profit public interest law firm that specializes in such First Amendment cases. Together they sued the board, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights. And they lost.

So they appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And they lost again. So they appealed to the Supreme Court. And lost. But with a disclaimer: there were enough loose ends to the case that needed to be resolved at the lower court’s level to keep the court from reviewing Kennedy’s claim.

In the Supreme Court’s denial in January 2019, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh added a statement to the public record, explaining that “important unresolved factual questions would make it very difficult if not impossible at this stage to decide the free speech question that [Kennedy] asks us to review.”

The justices then excoriated the Ninth Circuit Court’s reasoning: “The Ninth Circuit’s opinion applies our decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos to public school teachers and coaches in a high tendentious [i.e., biased] way.”

That decision ruled that statements made by public employees in the normal conduct of their official duties are not protected by the First Amendment. It ruled that public employees are not speaking as citizens when they are speaking to fulfill a responsibility of their job. It held that the First Amendment does not prevent employees from being disciplined for making statements that are made “pursuant” to their professional duties.

But the Ninth Circuit stretched that ruling out of all recognition, according to the justices:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 10, 2020: 

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton ruled against Bremerton High School’s football coach Joe Kennedy last week, saying that “although the Court is sympathetic to Kennedy’s desire to follow his beliefs, the former must give way to the latter in this case.” The “latter” to which Leighton referred is the right of Bremerton High School to fire the coach when he took 15 seconds at the end of a football game to pray for his players on the 50-yard line.

Kennedy coached the school’s JV football team for seven years, and for seven years he took time after each game to pray for his players. And for seven years nobody minded. Nobody said anything. Nobody sued. Nobody even threatened to sue.

But when a school administrator paid a public compliment for how the coach was positively impacting the lives of his players, the school board told Kennedy to stop. When he didn’t, the board decided not to renew his contract.

Kennedy enlisted the help of First Liberty, a non-profit public-interest law firm that specializes in such First Amendment cases. Together they sued the board, claiming it violated his First Amendment-protected rights. And they lost.

So they appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And they lost again. So they appealed to the Supreme Court. And lost, but with a caveat: There were enough loose ends to the case that needed to be resolved at the lower court’s level to keep the court from reviewing Kennedy’s claim.

In the Supreme Court’s denial in January 2019, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh added a statement to the public record, explaining that