PART I
It was bound to happen without a properly thought out and detailed Presidential Executive Order which would forbid states, counties, and cities from attacking the First Amendment, particularly the freedom to worship as people see fit, while preventing the media from abusing freedom of speech.
The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky decided that he would stop churches from gathering together to worship, while allowing liquor stores to carry on their business as “essential”. On Fire Christian Center Inc, petitioned the US District Court in the Western District of Kentucky to place a Temporary Restraining Order on the mayor and city of Louisville from interfering with their plans for their Easter Service. District Judge Justin R. Walker accepted that petition and placed a Temporary Restraining Order on the mayor and the city. [CIVIL ACTION NO. 3:20-CV-264-JRW]
But he also had a great deal to say about governments’ and their high handed actions against Christians in his Memorandum Opinion, from which I have quoted below:
On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship – and even though it’s Easter. The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, “beyond all reason,” unconstitutional.
According to St. Paul, the first pilgrim was Abel. With Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sara, they “died in faith, not having received the promises” of God’s promised kingdom. But they saw “them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
The Plymouth Colony’s second Governor, William Bradford, alluded to St. Paul’s pilgrims when he recalled, years later, his fellow colonists’ departure from England. The land they were leaving was comfortable and familiar. The ocean before them was, for them, unknown and dangerous. So too was the New World, where half would not survive the first winter. There were “mutual embraces and many tears,” as they said farewell to sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers, too young or old or fearful or frail to leave the Old World.
But they sailed west because west was where they would find what they wanted most, what they needed most: the liberty to worship God according to their conscience. “They knew they were pilgrims,” wrote Bradford, “and looked not much on those things” left behind, “but lifted their eyes to heaven, their dearest country and quieted their spirits.” The Pilgrims were heirs to a long line of persecuted Christians, including some punished with prison or worse for the crime of celebrating Easter – and an even longer line of persecuted peoples of more ancient faiths. And although their notions of tolerance left more than a little to be desired, the Pilgrims understood at least this much: No place, not even the unknown, is worse than any place whose state forbids the exercise of your sincerely held religious beliefs. The Pilgrims’ history of fleeing religious persecution was just one of the many “historical instances of religious persecution and intolerance that gave concern to those who drafted the Free Exercise Clause” of our Constitution’s First Amendment.” It provides, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” At the time of that Amendment’s ratification, religious liberty was among the American experiment’s most audacious guarantees.
For millennia, soldiers had fought and killed to impose their religious doctrine on their neighbors. A century before America’s founding, in Germany alone, religious conflict took the lives of one out of every five men, women, and children. But not so in America. “Among the reasons the United States is so open, so tolerant, and so free is that no person may be restricted or demeaned by government in exercising his or her religion.”
It was bound to happen without a properly thought out and detailed Presidential Executive Order which would forbid states, counties, and cities from attacking the First Amendment, particularly the freedom to worship as people see fit, while preventing the media from abusing freedom of speech.
The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky decided that he would stop churches from gathering together to worship, while allowing liquor stores to carry on their business as “essential”. On Fire Christian Center Inc, petitioned the US District Court in the Western District of Kentucky to place a Temporary Restraining Order on the mayor and city of Louisville from interfering with their plans for their Easter Service. District Judge Justin R. Walker accepted that petition and placed a Temporary Restraining Order on the mayor and the city. [CIVIL ACTION NO. 3:20-CV-264-JRW]
But he also had a great deal to say about governments’ and their high handed actions against Christians in his Memorandum Opinion, from which I have quoted below:
On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship – and even though it’s Easter. The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, “beyond all reason,” unconstitutional.
According to St. Paul, the first pilgrim was Abel. With Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sara, they “died in faith, not having received the promises” of God’s promised kingdom. But they saw “them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
The Plymouth Colony’s second Governor, William Bradford, alluded to St. Paul’s pilgrims when he recalled, years later, his fellow colonists’ departure from England. The land they were leaving was comfortable and familiar. The ocean before them was, for them, unknown and dangerous. So too was the New World, where half would not survive the first winter. There were “mutual embraces and many tears,” as they said farewell to sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers, too young or old or fearful or frail to leave the Old World.
But they sailed west because west was where they would find what they wanted most, what they needed most: the liberty to worship God according to their conscience. “They knew they were pilgrims,” wrote Bradford, “and looked not much on those things” left behind, “but lifted their eyes to heaven, their dearest country and quieted their spirits.” The Pilgrims were heirs to a long line of persecuted Christians, including some punished with prison or worse for the crime of celebrating Easter – and an even longer line of persecuted peoples of more ancient faiths. And although their notions of tolerance left more than a little to be desired, the Pilgrims understood at least this much: No place, not even the unknown, is worse than any place whose state forbids the exercise of your sincerely held religious beliefs. The Pilgrims’ history of fleeing religious persecution was just one of the many “historical instances of religious persecution and intolerance that gave concern to those who drafted the Free Exercise Clause” of our Constitution’s First Amendment.” It provides, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” At the time of that Amendment’s ratification, religious liberty was among the American experiment’s most audacious guarantees.
For millennia, soldiers had fought and killed to impose their religious doctrine on their neighbors. A century before America’s founding, in Germany alone, religious conflict took the lives of one out of every five men, women, and children. But not so in America. “Among the reasons the United States is so open, so tolerant, and so free is that no person may be restricted or demeaned by government in exercising his or her religion.”