An Incident of Civil Disobedience to Consider

Christ Church of Moscow Idaho has made national news for holding a Psalm Sing in a public space, while not masking or social distancing.  Moscow's mayor recently extended a universal mask mandate until January 1.

Gabe Rench of Cross-Politic and two other church members were arrested during the singing, and detained for a few hours.  Two others were given citations.

Here's Breitbart on it.

Here's the local news.

Here's Doug Wilson's take.

My take:

I'm not sure of the wisdom of this response to civic laws that appear groundless to many.  I'm not against it, because I've been uncertain what the best response is.

Some say we should only resist the civil authorities when we are forbidden from doing what God's Word commands.  That would rule this action a violation of Romans 13.  God's Word doesn't address face masks or social distancing.  The two widely divergent views of the pandemic are both plausible (*see below), so I lean against defying civil authority generally at this point, too.  Though I admit to going into stores without a mask on where I knew the civil authority mandated it.

Where the state is forbidding churches to meet for a long time or indefinitely, I believe the church has grounds to disregard the state, without violating Romans 13.  John MacArthur is right in doing what he is doing.  Mark Dever has pointed out that during the 1918 Spanish Flu, the DC civil authority ASKED churches not to meet, and they agreed and didn't.  Because everyone SAW the emergency.  Today, it's a toss-up.  *Is there a real medical emergency that we are preventing by the lockdowns and mitigation?  (We know a lot more medically now than in 1918!)  Or is the pandemic emergency manufactured for this election season?  Leftist civil authorities have to insist their motivations are medical, not political, so they stick to their guns.  MAGA folks suspect media advocacy and bias, manufacturing a crisis, which is so obviously true that they have a real point.

SOMEBODY needs to call out the leftist civil authorities on the actual data, which doesn't call for such stringent measures at this point.  I'm glad Christ Church did, even as I wonder about the wisdom of the church stepping into the fray in this way.