Churches obsessed with their right to reopen are missing the point

People who count on communal worship as an organizing center to their life are eager for it to resume after months of stay-at-home measures have taken a toll on morale. The great majority of those excited to get beyond the limitations of online worship have tempered their eagerness to reassemble as congregations. Polls indicate significant respect among believers for the coronavirus’s ability to quickly undo personal and communal health.

Among some conservative Christians, however, the move to reopen churches has taken on the shape of an aggressive campaign. It’s a campaign involving more politics than religion, more culture-war-wedge issue than substantive faith. It’s directed specifically at state government officials hesitant to hastily relax social distancing guidelines. Numerous churches have filed lawsuits claiming that a ban on religious gatherings is a violation of the free exercise clause in the First Amendment. The act of filing a lawsuit for the sake of claiming governmental hostility to religion happens to play well among those who like to promote the idea that Christians are a persecuted and victimized people.

What’s motivating this willingness to put the lives of church members at risk in order to assert First Amendment rights? I don’t think it has anything to do with an honest conviction that various governors can’t stand religion. It has everything to do with an obsession over rights.