Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom has banned indoor religious services (along with various types of secular gatherings) in 29 counties representing 80 percent of the state’s population, in the name of containing the spread of COVID-19. Numerous churches have defied the order, including Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, Cornerstone Church of Fresno, Destiny Christian Church of Rocklin, and Harvest Rock Church of Pasadena.Harvest Rock Church is the least-publicized of the four California Evangelical megachurches that are deliberately defying state and local orders mandating social distance and prohibiting indoor worship and singing. So far, it appears that the Pasadena authorities are hesitating actually to cite or fine Harvest Rock attendees, although it looks like, if the authorities do move against them, their response will be similar to that of North Valley Baptist Church, which is simply to pay the fines and go on with their usual worship.Last week, Pastor Ché Ahn of Harvest Rock Church announced that he would pay for any tickets given to those who choose to attend in person despite the order, Pasadena Now reported.
“What I want to do is encourage you, and I have encouraged all those with underlying conditions to stay home,” he said. “I’ve encouraged the elderly to stay home. I want to encourage you that if you feel, hey, I don’t want to get a ticket, please stay home. Now, if you do show up and you get a ticket, Harvest Rock Church is going to underwrite that ticket, we’ll pay for your citation.”
Local officials have threatened Ahn with fines, jail time, or worse for his civil disobedience, such as an August 13 letter by Assistant City Prosecutor Michael Dowd. “Your compliance with these orders is not discretionary, it is mandatory,” Dowd wrote. “Any violations in the future will subject your church, owners, administrators, operators, staff, and parishioners to the above-mentioned criminal penalties as well as the potential closure of your church.”
It seems to me that the circumstances with the California churches raise two related questions. The first is that each of them reports attendance at Sunday services of several thousand -- Grace Community Church reports about 7000, for instance. This strongly suggests a total attendance for all four of over 20,000. Yet the pastors uniformly report that, of all these people, there have apparently been no reported COVID infections, and certainly no hospitalizations. Since pastors have a duty to console the sick, they'd be among the first to hear of any.
But let's say these pastors are truly nefarious and cover up the hospitalizations and deaths for their own purposes. How long could they cover this up, when health authorities and the media would make an immediate scandal of the issue? These people would have been hospitalized in noticeable numbers, and medical authorities would have investigated their deaths. But it hasn't happened.
Yet the media and health officials report their Sunday worship as "superspreader events" that must be stopped with all the resources available to the state. But with these parishes meeting for three months, since early June at least, there seems to be little empirical evidence of contagion resulting from church services, even those that include singing and handshakes at the peace. Why can't the authorities recalibrate?
A second related question arose with Speaker Pelosi's Monday visit to a hair salon, which violated state health orders by being held indoors, without wearing a mask, and using blow-dry. While the reaction to Pelosi's hypocrisy is predictable, a more important issue was raised in San Francisco news interviews:
Mrs Pelosi is 80 years old, part of the population said by health authorities to be most vulnerable to COVID. Yet as the citizens said on the news reports, she apparently sees no particular danger to herself, her family, her staff, her colleagues, or anyone else with whom she associates in exposing herself to the virus in violation of the widely dispersed and generally recognized health measures.
In that case, as the San Franciscans point out, why can't everyone else get their hair done? Why can't everyone go to church, when it's increasingly clear that there is little risk in doing so?
There will be court hearings in coming days and weeks where these issues will come up.
