Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
When Corporate Worship Is Taken Away

When Corporate Worship Is Taken Away

Last updated on: April 13, 2020 at 10:08 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

When Corporate Worship Is Taken Away 2020-04-13T10:08:13-04:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Here is another problem with online worship: Instead of meeting virtually with your own congregation’s service, you can livestream celebrity church!

To help us out with Easter, CNN had a feature From the Pope to Mariah Carey, here are some options for your Easter service livestream. You could link to Joel Osteen’s service, which was featuring the pop star Mariah Carey. For Catholics, you could livestream the Pope. The Presbyterian Church (USA) was offering a 37 minute Easter service for all of their congregations to use. Or you could link to a Charlotte megachurch, with was offering six services throughout Easter day.

Once we get used to online services, will local congregations become obsolete? These star-studded attractions with high production values would have a big competitive advantage over regular churches recording their services with smart phones. Viewers from all over the world could gravitate to their favorite services, forming not just megachurches but gigachurches and terachurches, with virtual denominations and only one pastor. Could online church could do to local congregations what Amazon has done to brick and mortar retail?

Used rightly, online services can help congregations come together virtually when they can’t meet in person, joining with each other to hear God’s Word and to worship Him under the leadership of their own pastor. But there are limits to what online worship can accomplish. Christianity–with its doctrines of creation, incarnation, resurrection, sacraments, and vocation–is an embodied religion. And worship needs to be embodied too. Longtime reader and commenter on this blog Tom Hering put it very well in his comment to our Good Friday/Easter post:

The most unhappy reality of our temporary “exile” is our loss of the full sensory experience of worship. We can still experience online services through sight and hearing, but being reduced to these two senses is a great impoverishment. We don’t taste the bread and wine, or smell the wine, or touch the elements with our hands and tongues. We don’t feel the nearness of other people – something we sense with our whole body. We don’t feel the vibrations from voices and musical instruments. These losses remind us we’re physical creatures. They teach us we can only be happy as physical creatures. A non-physical Heaven populated by disembodied spirits would be no heaven at all. (Our nature as physical beings also explains the revival of ink-and-paper books, vinyl records, film photography, brick-and-mortar shopping, etc.)

Joy Pullman, the executive editor of the The Federalist and a Missouri Synod Lutheran, has pointed to another group of Christians that is denied the opportunity to worship together and to receive the Sacraments: Persecuted Christians. God’s people who are in prison or concentration camps are cut off from their churches, yet they are certainly faithful and cared for by God. In our current circumstances, we can think of them. We are not suffering as they are, but we too, in a much lesser way, are experiencing what it’s like to have the government telling us how we may or may not worship.

In another article, Pullman shows how some jurisdictions are putting more restrictions on churches than they are on secular gatherings. Where meetings of 10 people or fewer are allowed with social distancing, churches trying to set up small groups of that number to worship and receive the sacraments are being threatened with punishment. Some authorities are forbidding “drive in church,” in which worshippers stay in their cars to listen to the corporate service on the radio. The governor of Kentucky has said authorities would write down the tag numbers of cars in church parking lots on Easter morning, whereupon their owners would be thrown into a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

Pullman reports how the governor of Indiana, a Republican, is presuming, among many other things, to tell churches how they are supposed to conduct communion. Among his guidelines:

It is preferred that no communion be distributed.
In instances when communion is distributed, only prepackaged communion may be used and must be prepared and distributed in a manner that meets food safety standards.

He is referring to those little fast-food-style packets with a small cracker and a sip of grape juice. We Lutherans, as well as other sacramental churches, would never use those! For one of many reasons, because Christ’s institution requires actual wine. (Nor may we have bread and wine at home that the pastor consecrates online. Nor may the pastor consecrate a bunch of elements, then send them out to members at home. For why, see this.)

To be sure, we are in the middle of a pandemic. Churches ought not completely defy the civil authorities, as some are doing–this Pentecostal megachurch in hard-hit Louisiana held an Easter service for 1,000 worshippers, distributing “anointed handkerchiefs” to heal them of any diseases they might get–refusing to submit to the lawful magistrates, a violation of Romans 13, and refusing their obligations to love and serve their neighbors, a violation of Christ’s command to do so. But churches that agree to follow the social distancing requirements and other COVID-19 requirements ought not to be shut down by the state.

Some of our politicians are exercising their emergency powers with too much relish. In their apparent zeal to outdo each other in the severity of their measures to slow the epidemic, they are not letting any other considerations get in their way. Not economic needs, and certainly not civil liberties. They are running rough-shod not just over the freedom of religion but also other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The government’s prudential measures to require social distancing and staying at home might make it impossible for a business to function, but does it really have the authority to order private businesses to shut down? Can’t there be some crafting of measures that keep civil liberties in mind?

So far, the courts are sending mixed messages. A federal judge has blocked the mayor of Louisville from banning COVID-19 emergency-compliant drive-in services, marveling at the overreach in eloquent terms:

“An American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” U.S. District Judge Justin Walker wrote in a temporary restraining order issued Saturday. “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. … The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, ‘beyond all reason,’ unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld the right of the Governor to put limitations on religious gatherings.

“But these measures are necessary!” we might be told. “Besides, they are only temporary. Even Abraham Lincoln suspended civil liberties in time of war. When we are trying to save lives, civil liberties are a luxury. You have to be alive before you can worry about freedom.”

We might wonder, though, how long is temporary? One month becomes two, and the whole timeframe is open-ended. And even when the epidemic fizzles out, what precedents will have been set? Will we have become used to the government restricting our liberties, for our own good, of course? Will we start accepting that as the price of the government taking care of us?

As for invoking “necessity” as the all-justifying reason, I can’t help but think of the line from Milton: “Necessity, the tyrant’s plea” (Paradise Lost, Book IV, ll. 393-394).

UPDATE: A California county ruled that online worship services may not include singing.

UPDATE: For more examples of ridiculous abuses of power, read this.

UPDATE: For what is happening in democracies around the world–ruling by decree, suspending civil liberties, cancelling elections, intrusive use of police, etc.–read this, originally from the Washington Post: Leaders seize new powers to fight coronavirus, fears grow for democracies.

UPDATE: The Justice Department says it will investigate cases of local governments that are unfairly targeting churches.

Photo credit: Breawycker / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Christianity and government

church and state

civil liberties

coronavirus and the church

Previous Post

April 10, 2020

Holy Days for the Church in Exile

Next Post

April 14, 2020 What Is So Wonderful about Lutheran Worship

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"My favorite Veterans Day video ... "Pete Hegseth Group Yelled At By Sentinel For Laughing ..."

Tom Hering

What Human Beings Are For

"The period of non religion is rising. People who identify as Christian has dropped and ..."

Patrick Dennis

A Catholic Century or an Evangelical ..."

"“We might think that what you are here suggesting is that we minimize our contact ..."

1another

What Human Beings Are For

"But Paul is making clear that we shouldn’t give mere humans, particularly unbelievers, more power ..."

DakotaLutheran

What Human Beings Are For

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was the occupation of Lydia, the first European convert in Acts?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Tentmaker Baker Seller of purple cloth Fisherwoman

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »