Jesus Is Essential: These Churches Answered Trump’s Call and Defied Lockdown

On Sunday, just days after Donald Trump encouraged houses of worship to reopen even in states under coronavirus lockdowns, churches from Maine to California defied the law and welcomed worshippers at live services.

In Washington State—the early ground zero of COVID-19 in America—Covenant Christian Church in Spokane welcomed a sizeable, mask-less crowd for morning prayers, according to the local Spokesman-Review. The Reverend Ken Peters, who claims he’d been holding in-person services since May 3, blasted the “satanic” agenda of Governor Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order and vowed to start offering a second in-person service each Sunday evening.

And in California, where in-person services also remain banned and where officials say more than 180 people were exposed to the virus at an illicit church gathering on Mother’s Day, News Channel 3 reported that Church Unlimited in Indio flouted state rules by reopening its doors this weekend. On Saturday, a Pentecostal church in Chula Vista also filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of forcing Governor Gavin Newsom to allow churches to open.

Meanwhile, an independent Baptist church in southern New Jersey defied that state’s lockdown to hold Sunday services in a challenge to Governor Phil Murphy—whose executive order has kept churches closed since March, and who on Friday announced he’d allow gatherings of up to 25 people, but only outdoors. The Solid Rock Baptist Church in Berlin, along with the nearby Bible Baptist Church in Clementon, invited their members to the first in-person services since March, when those initial stay-at-home orders went into effect.