Waiting for the courts to save them is a bit craven, isn’t it?
This pandemic has opened my eyes about the leadership of other denominations in the USA. My methodists are beyond craven and all the way to government accomplices.
I’ve seen a lot of Roman Catholic, Baptist, and independent pushback...and John MacArthur...but no mainlines and few others.
We’ll need another donatist moment, I’m thinking, but this time the donatists will still think they’re right.
The Donatists were eventually received back—after serious penance.
As it should be on both fronts; receiving back, and requiring penance for prior capitulation.
There are a lot of Catholics, so you will see a lot of just about everything. My town of 1200 has two churches (one Polish, one Irish) and the difference in approach is very great—but this allows people to at least bifurcate to what they are most comfortable with.
While our Holy Water fonts are empty, one will find two containers from which Holy Water is dispensed, one each beside each of the main doors, and under the spigot there is a bowl to catch the drips.
People do what they think they need to do to stay open at one Church, and at the other they do what they think they need to do to stave off the plague in terms of medical prevention. The one I attend has, for the sake of staving of the plague, had a couple of religious processions through town (in fairness the first one was to the other Church and back).
Our county of approximately 120,000 has had 120 total cases, 6 of which are active, 113 recovered, and 1 death. The county is divided into 6 zones, our has had 2 of the the resolved cases and none of the active (we are sparsely populated, but not THAT sparsely populated.