A10 eZ re the washington post.monday, april 6 , 2020
San Antonio city leaders plead-
ed with churches friday to use
remote services. Sides said he
struggled with the decision, keep-
ing in mind the dozens of calls
from members telling him their
homes were not safe, their mar-
riages were falling apart, their
jobs lost.
“We hear a lot about the exter-
nal, the import of washing hands
and not touching the face,” Sides
said. “But what of the i nternal?”
The solution for Sides was an-
other drive-in service, at which
the pastor uses a public-address
system to preach from atop the
flatbed of an 18-wheeler.
Church member Tracy Wil-
liams said that she would rather
be in the church sanctuary but
th at there was something beauti-
ful about sitting in the car, in the
sunshine, l ifting her hands o ut the
window. When Sides spoke a word
that resonated, the members
honked their horns for a n “A men!”
“I know people may not under-
stand, but for me, church is a big
part of my life, and as long as
something is set up within the
church and it’s w ithin the c onfines
of the law, y es I am definitely g oing
to go t o church,” s aid Williams, 56,
of San A ntonio. “People are feeling
isolated, and there is strength in
being in the h ouse of G od, hearing
the word and gathering with like-
minded believers.”
The rev. Tony Spell, pastor of
the megachurch Life Ta bernacle
outside Baton rouge, has been
defying an emergency order by
the governor banning gatherings
of more than 50 people. Police on
Tuesday issued a misdemeanor
summons to Spell, who says that
he had 1,000 people in his church
Sunday and that he was planning
to hold services a gain this Sunday.
“We feel we are being persecut-
ed for our faith by being told to
close our d oors a nd not gather,” h e
said. H e noted that some stores a re
open, including clinics that per-
form abortions. “ You’re saying reli-
gion isn’t e ssential, but Ta rget i s.”
Palma, who preached at rivers
of Living Water here on Sunday,
said he is not afraid of the virus.
“Not at all, not at all,” t he 43-year-
old said. “I have my faith. I don’t
fear t his and n ever have.”
In a baseball cap declaring
“God is in Control,” Gary Works
took his seat on a bench along the
side of the Sacramento sanctuary,
only about the size of a large sub-
urban living room. The other
church he attends regularly, river
Valley Baptist, closed for the d ay.
“But Pastor Dan is my mentor,
and this is where I want to be,”
Works said.
Works is a recovering metham-
phetamine addict who was at one
time homeless; he has been sober
for 18 years. During that time, he
said, he has missed no more than
five Sunday services a t the church.
“I just don’t miss church,” said
Works, 69. “This is a big part o f my
recovery, and I’m not going to
abandon w hat has saved my l ife.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]boorstein reported from Washington,
hernández from san antonio, and
rozsa from Jupiter, Fla.feels so much better to me to have
the message in person.”
A poll released this week of
Protestant pastors found that the
number of churches holding ser-
vices dropped from 99 percent on
march 1 to 64 percent b y march 15,
and then to 7 percent b y march 29,
according to Lifeway Christian
resources. Lifeway is the publish-
ing division of the Southern Bap-
tist Convention.
Polls a lso h ave shown that those
who lean conservative politically
are more skeptical of the virus’s
seriousness and danger. Until ear-
ly march, Trump falsely claimed
the coronavirus cases were de-
creasing and said the disease
would disappear “like a miracle.”
Those who attend church more
frequently a re much more likely t o
identify as or lean republican,
polls also s how. forty-four percent
of the GoP leaners go to religious
services at l east weekly, compared
with 2 9 percent of Democrats.
Te xas Gov. Greg Abbott (r) de-
clared last week that religious ser-
vices are essential to the lives of
Te xans. Pastor Jason Sides used
facebook Live to tell his flock he
was determined to open Christian
World ministries in San Antonio.
Sides had held a prayer service
on Wednesday, and 75 people
came into the 1,000-person sanc-
tuary for the first time in w eeks.
“If church is as essential to you
as a trip to the pharmacy or Wal-
mart, the doors will be open,”
Sides said Wednesday. “We will be
trusting God to take care o f us.”
But by the weekend, Sides had
had second thoughts.online service Sunday.
Houses of worship are suscepti-
ble as coronavirus hot spots for a
simple reason: They bring people
together, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an
epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins
University. A Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention publica-
tion this past week noted that
singing, which can disperse the
respiratory droplets that carry the
virus, is another aspect of the con-
cern a bout places of worship.
The service at rivers of Living
Water Church includes perform-
ers using an electric guitar and
drums, and ostring plays the pia-
no as the c ongregations s ings. The
service began Sunday with a brief
prayer and a long hymn. No one
wore a protective mask.
“This is a tough situation be-
cause when people are under
stress, you don’t want to remove
their stress coping mechanisms,”
Nuzzo said.
on a quiet Palm Sunday in Jupi-
ter, fla., families slowly trickled
into one of the few churches in
Palm Beach County that is still
offering in-person s ervices.
“We’re offering hope,” said Jill
Barry, whose husband, Steve, is a
pastor at Ascend Church. “We’re
keeping social distance, but we
want to keep our doors open to
people.”
roxroy Edmondson w as literal-
ly keeping the door open — hold-
ing it so people wouldn’t have to
touch it to get inside the store-
front church.
“I don’t feel connected online,”
Edmondson said as he offered
hand sanitizer to congregants. “Itto a church. And 43 fell ill, one
fatally, after attending a march 15
service at the Life Church of Glen-
view, in Glenview, Ill., a Chicago
suburb. At least 10 members tested
positive for the coronavirus. The
service was held several days be-
fore the Illinois governor imposed
a stay-at-home order.
There are other cases. But none
has reached the scope o f the trage-
dy at the Bethany Slavic mission-
ary Church, a 3,500-member con-
gregation that occupies a fenced
compound here in southeast Sac-
ramento.
Public health officials say 71
congregants of the church, a ma-
jor gathering place for the city’s
large Eastern European immi-
grant community, have been in-
fected by the coronavirus. As of
Saturday, that infection number
accounts for 18 percent of Sacra-
mento County’s total cases. Te n
people have died in the county.
The church is now closed, its
high gates locked to outsiders and
a police car parked outside the
main sanctuary. Signs posted are
in English and russian, one in
large print on the front door an-
nouncing: “No Any Services.”
Among the sick is senior pastor
Adam Bondaruk, who has been at
the church for three decades. The
church administrator, Viktor Ly-
ulkin, said by phone that Bondar-
uk, a Ukrainian immigrant, has
been hospitalized and is in stable
condition.
“We’ll find a way to celebrate
Palm Sunday and Easter as a com-
munity when this is all over,” Ly-
ulkin said. The church held onethe coronavirus pandemic
that if his church were larger, he
might not have held the public
service Sunday. “We don’t want
anyone here to get sick. But we
also do not want to violate our
right to the free practice of reli-
gion.”
for the religious, one of the
crueler elements of the coronavi-
rus and its potent contagiousness
is that places where people go in
times of fear, i n search of solace in
faith and in friends, are closed in
many states to stop the spread of
the disease. Churches, temples
and other places of worship na-
tionwide — where c ongregants sit
close, take Communion, share
hugs and handshakes and pecks
on the cheek — have served as
hothouses for the virus, with reli-
gious gatherings exacerbating
outbreaks in New rochelle, N.Y.;
Washington, D.C.; Glenville, Ill.;
and Sacramento, among others.
These open-or-close decisions,
often made by politicians at the
state and local levels of govern-
ment, to some appear to place
constitutional religious rights in
conflict with the demands of pub-
lic health at a time when more
than 1,000 Americans are dying
each day because of the virus.
Services live-streamed on face-
book and drive-through worship
have been used as workarounds
from f lorida to California.
The in-person gatherings in
some cases go against many stay-
at-home orders and bans on as-
semblies of more than 10 people,
which President Trump has en-
dorsed. Eight states do not have
such orders, but there have been
arguments within the White
House that a national regulation
should be put in place as infec-
tions accelerate.
Here in California, where Gov.
Gavin Newsom (D) announced a
statewide stay-at-home order two
weeks ago, more than 14,000 peo-
ple are infected w ith the virus, and
330 have died. The rate, in the
northern parts of the state at l east,
is slowing. But the state lags in
testing, so the numbers might be
low estimates.
more than a dozen states ex-
empt churches from their stay-at-
home regulations, arguing that
the government is exceeding its
constitutional power to shut
down a religious institution, re-
gardless of the public health ques-
tions at s take. California does not,
officials say.
florida Gov. ron DeSantis (r),
who under pressure last week is-
sued a statewide stay-at-home or-
der, said he was exempting
churches, arguing that the govern-
ment does not have the authority
to effectively force them to close.
But some houses of worship
and gatherings of religious lead-
ers have proved particularly dan-
gerous in areas where the virus
has been prevalent.
following the outbreak in Sac-
ramento, mayor Darrell Steinberg
(D) made clear that disregard for
the prohibition on church gather-
ings could prompt police inter-
vention. Steinberg’s wife serves as
cantor at the city’s largest syna-
gogue, which now streams its ser-
vices online.
“This is a time when people are
coming to church for hope and
meaning, and in that way, f aith has
never been more important,” s aid
Steinberg, a member of Congrega-
tion B’nai Israel, one of the oldest
west of the mississippi. “I believe
passionately in the free exercise of
religion, but I must say I am out-
raged that anyone would use the
free exercise of religion to justify
gathering together at t his time.”
“To claim that the free exercise
of religion is absolute and out-
weighs the obvious life-and-death
risk of praying together right
now,” Steinberg continued, “well,
it’s b lasphemy itself.”
Sacramento police have been
advised that in some cases, it
might b e permissible t o disperse a
congregation. Steinberg said
those acts would happen only
when there is a “blatant disre-
gard” f or the prohibition.
“We’re not going to use arrest-
ing people as the way to address
this,” t he mayor said. “Social pres-
sure is much more appropriate,
and that social pressure includes
making it clear that these are legal
orders being defied.”
The concern extends national-
ly, given the reach of the virus,
from m egacities to small towns.
In late february, six people who
attended an Episcopal church con-
ference at t he omni Hotel in down-
town Louisville tested positive for
the coronavirus. North Carolina
public health officials say “multiple
cases” of the virus are linked to a
march event held by the faith As-
sembly Christian Center at t he mil-
lennium Hotel Durham, despite a
ban on gatherings of more than 100
people at t he time.
rural minnesota has reported at
least nine coronavirus cases traced
churches from A
Finding solace in ‘gathering with like-minded believers’
Photos by Melina Mara/the Washington Post
TOP: Gary Works, left, listens to Pastor Dan Ostring at the Palm sunday service at rivers of Living Water church in sacramento. Works is
a recovering methamphetamine addict who has missed no more than five sunday services at the church. “This is a big part of my recovery,
and I’m not going to abandon what has saved my life,” he said. ABOVe: B ethany slavic Missionary church in sacramento has closed, as 71
of its congregants, including its senior pastor, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.“To claim that the
free exercise of
religion is absolute
and outweighs the
obvious life-and-
death risk of
praying together
right now, well,
it’s blasphemy
itself.”
D arrell Steinberg,
mayor of sacramento