We know that regular church attendance improves our emotional well-being. Pew Research, for example, found two years ago that actively religious people are more likely than their less-religious peers to describe themselves as “very happy.”Now we learn from Gallup that only those who attended religious services weekly saw a positive change between 2019 and 2020 in how they rated their mental health. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has discovered the same thing in its survey: Americans relied on religion to navigate the challenges of 2020. 62% of respondents said that faith or religion was important to them during the outbreak. Mary Margaret Olohan, social issues reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation, asks the obvious question: Why have Democratic lawmakers repeatedly issued orders that restrict or prohibit religious services?
Governors like Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam banned gatherings of 10 or more people through initial stay-at-home orders, restrictions which effectively banned church services. Authorities have arrested multiple religious leaders for defying coronavirus orders, such as Pastor Tony Spell of the Louisiana Life Tabernacle church and Florida megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne.
Religious organizations in New York most recently took Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the Supreme Court over his restrictions on houses of worship, accusing Cuomo of “targeting Orthodox practices.”
As you might expect, the restrictions on churches seem to have an ulterior motive. In California, abortion clinics and strip clubs get more pandemic freedom than churches. “If you’re going to accept that argument that dancing nude is protected speech that’s so significant that it overcomes the government’s interest in regulating its citizens with COVID-19 orders, then obviously the divine worship of God, which is expressly mentioned in the First Amendment, should be held to a higher standard,” said Paul Jonna, an attorney with the Thomas More Society. Let us pray.