It’s hard to believe, but there are still a number of churches who don’t understand that holding regular services and keeping their schools open is dangerous and reckless at this point. Even without a hard-and-fast ban on mass gatherings, any pastor with an iota of common sense would know that continuing regular services isn’t worth the risk.
My pastor here in Charlotte, for instance, called off in-person services last week when Governor Roy Cooper merely recommended against holding mass gatherings of 100 or more people. He undoubtedly heard a lot from the decent number of doctors, nurses and CNAs in our congregation as well.
On the other end of the spectrum are people like Tony Spell, the Baton Rouge pastor who held a service for several hundred people because he considers calls to flatten the curve to be “politically motivated.” Or Guillermo Maldonado, the guy who hosted the “Evangelicals for Trump” kickoff; he actually wagged his finger at those who stayed home.
Well, add another one to the list—Keith Gomez, pastor of Northwest Bible Baptist Church in Elgin, Illinois. According to WBBM-TV in Chicago, Gomez is keeping his church’s school, Northwest Baptist Academy, open in direct defiance of Governor J. B. Pritzker’s order last week that all public and private schools in Illinois close for at least two weeks.
Watch more coverage from WBBM here.
After a number of concerned friends and relatives of the school’s 60 students and 20 faculty members reached out to the station, WBBM started asking around. Reporters came to Elgin and saw there were indeed students on campus—only to be hustled off campus by church officials. Kane County state’s attorney Joe McMahon has lost patience, and has threatened to slap the school with a closure order if Gomez continues to flout Pritzker’s directive—which is based on guidance from “numerous public health agencies at the local, state and federal levels to protect the public’s safety.”
The church maintains that it is still holding regular services, saying that it makes decisions “based on what is in the best interest of our people, not because of government mandates.” Gomez apparently believes it’s in the best interests of his students to remain open—and concern about infecting others be hanged, even though Dr. Emily Landon brought home why this is simply a risk we can’t take. He also maintains that any attempt to shut down the school violates his First Amendment rights.
Au contraire, “Pastor.” This is a “time, place and manner” restriction that applies to all institutions, secular or otherwise—a precedent which is practically written in blood.
Gomez is really playing with fire here. His church seats over 1,200 people, meaning that he’s coming awfully close to violating Pritzker’s ban on holding mass gatherings of more than 1,000 people. If Gomez tries to challenge that ban, or Pritzker’s order to keep his school closed, he’ll be laughed out of court, and possibly sanctioned. Not even the most warped interpretation of the First Amendment would or should protect him.