Prominent Evangelical Church is the First to Sue D.C. Over Covid-19 Worship Limits

The Washington Post ^ | 9/22/20 | Michelle Boorstein

[marshmallow]

A large, prominent evangelical Capitol Hill church late Tuesday filed a legal challenge to the District, alleging the city government is violating the First Amendment by facilitating and tolerating massive anti-racism protests but forbidding worship services — indoor or outdoor — of more than 100 because of covid-19.

The complaint filed by the 850-member Capitol Hill Baptist Church is the first legal challenge by a religious organization to the capital’s coronavirus restrictions. There have been two others in the region — one in Virginia and one in Maryland — since quarantine measures began, and final decisions are pending in both.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, challenges the city’s limits on worship generally, but asks specifically only for the right to meet outdoors. It notes that Bowser appeared at a huge anti-racism rally in June, that the city police have been assigned to such events and that her office has not enforced its own ban on outdoor gatherings of more than 50 people.

“The Church takes no issue with Defendants’ decision to permit these gatherings, which are themselves protected by the First Amendment, and the Church supports this exercise of First Amendment rights. The Church does, however, take exception to Defendants’ decision to favor certain expressive gatherings over others,” the suit said. “The First Amendment protects both mass protests and religious worship. But Mayor Bowser, by her own admission, has preferred the former over the latter.”

The suit comes at a complicated time for Capitol Hill Baptist, which offers online bible study, lectures and a journal, among other things but no virtual worship, says in its suit that worshiping together in person is required for a “biblically ordered church.” The 142-year-old, largely White, conservative congregation has spent much of the year in intense internal conversation about racism..................

[livius]

Every single church in DC has got to join the suit. Including that of the Holy Wilton.

[bhive]

They have real churches in D.C.? I know they have the museum churches like the National Cathedral. But real churches with real pastors? Wow.

[ebb tide]

Meanwhile, this is what the francisbishop, Wilton Gregory, of Washington, D.C., is up to:

Gregory for Virtual Prayer Vigil against Federal Executions - September 24, 2020

[Salvavida]

If you don’t know the linkage.....Sok is the lay pastor, but the senior pastor is Mark Devers. He is from the same reformed theological tree as John MacArthur of California.

[metmom]

I didn’t know that.

[DuncanWaring]

From the letter:

“Taking the life of another human being harms each one of us, defying the sanctity of human life and devaluing our worth as God’s own creation.”

Is there any record of him expressing these sentiments on the concept of taking the lives of the unborn?