As we all know by now, a number of churches were reckless enough to hold in-person services yesterday in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Even without local or statewide stay-at-home orders or bans on mass gatherings, the science and anecdotal evidence is undeniable—no amount of precautions are enough to justify large gatherings of any sort at this point, secular or otherwise.
Among the scofflaws yesterday was Risen Savior Lutheran Church, a Missouri Synod congregation in Basehor, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. The pastor there claimed that every member of his church was part of the choir, allowing him to do an end run around the 10-person limit for gatherings in Kansas.
Well, we saw an example of the other extreme at Maryville Baptist Church, an independent KJV-only Baptist church in Hillview, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville. It was one of the few churches in the Commonwealth that stayed open even though Governor Andy Beshear had warned that anyone taking part in mass gatherings over Easter weekend, religious or otherwise, would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days. Kentucky State Police would be on hand to take down license plates and forward them to county health departments.
Maryville Baptist’s longtime pastor, Jack Roberts, has publicly vowed that he would sooner go to jail than shutter his church, even though there have been no fewer than two major outbreaks of coronavirus in the Commonwealth that can be traced to churches. True to his word, he held a full schedule of services yesterday, with several people coming from other states to attend. Several of them covered their license plates.
That was an outrage. But Sarah Ladd of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal discovered another outrage in the church parking lot. Somebody, or a whole lot of somebodies, got the bright idea to scatter nails all around the lot just before people were due to arrive.
The nails were gone by the time Sunday school started.
I’m sorry, but this is vile. Let’s be clear—Roberts was being incredibly reckless by opening up his church today. And the 50 people who attended were being equally reckless, especially those who came from outside Kentuckiana.
But whoever did this was equally wrong. Did these vigilantes want it on their consciences that they could have potentially caused a slew of accidents from punctured tires? No one deserves this. It’s no different from the vigilante outfits who find it acceptable to read out the license plate numbers of suspected child predators and post it live on Facebook.
Whoever did this forgot that “no one is above the law” also means “no one is below the law.” And the irony is that while it sounds like merely disregarding the limits on mass gatherings is only a misdemeanor, the clowns who scattered nails in the parking lot may have committed a felony.
Predictably, deplorable Twitter is already spewing conspiracy theories. For instance, Todd Starnes wondered—wink, wink—if Beshear and the state police were behind it.
Um, Todd? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Unless you can furnish this evidence, get the hell out of the way.
Let’s be clear—what Roberts did yesterday was beyond wrong. And the people who scattered nails in the church parking lot were equally wrong. They must be tracked down, and they must be prosecuted and jailed for as long as legally possible. You can’t leave people like this out there.