Churches as Essential Businesses? NOT REALLY.
Recently, our President criticized some state governors for not designating churches as essential businesses. Come on, he said, let the churches open!
For me, “church” has never “closed.” In many ways, it has been richer and sweeter than ever. Below is a letter written by a pastor to our President, which I commend to your reading. I agree with every word.
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Mr. President, Congregations are NOT buildings. They are the PEOPLE who gather - and, as a pastor I can attest we have never closed - not for one day. We have just moved to choose life and to center the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the wellbeing of our neighbors.
If you were active in a religious community, you would see that we are apart physically, but together all the time online, over the phone, and through letters. We are gathering for worship, prayer, education, community, and justice building without ceasing.
Don't you know that prayer, God, and love are available everywhere? While I value what I do as a minister in a sanctuary, I could not keep my people from these things. The spirit cannot be owned or commodified. I am not selling it. My people do not need to purchase it from me. Rather, we share in the life of faith whether in a sanctuary or anywhere we are together (whether online or in person).
Our building will remain closed as we heed the current advice of public health officials, scientists, and the heartbreak of our people mourning those now gone.
Don't you worry. We know we are essential. That is why we are choosing wisely for the health of all people on whom our congregation's future and our country's future rests.
Besides, there has been little time to rest or close for even a minute as we, people of faith, attempt to deal with the many things and people you have deemed unessential.
It has been much more challenging to be part of a coalition of healing in the context we find ourselves in with so much food and housing insecurity, inadequate healthcare access, inequities in education, systemic racism, mass incarceration, income inequality, and more.
I don't want to hear the U.S. President say that he will bully Governors to force open the doors of my sanctuary for prayer. Not that Presidents, or Governors for that matter, wield that power anyway.
What I long to hear is the voice of a President who is moved by his conscience in the face of so much devastation to admit that we must do better and to grow towards greater acts of compassion, solidarity, and humility.
If power and wealth has so corrupted the vision of a President that he cannot see and act for the wellbeing of a greater number of his constituents in a crisis, then I long for other political leaders from inside and outside of his party to hold him to account.
You want pastors to pray. I want presidents to wield power responsibly. I'd even say, it's essential.
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