The Future is Now
“Based upon the logic I’ve heard from other pastors over the past 15 months, if experts & elected officials declare Climate Change a global emergency, pastors will close their churches again. After all, “gathering isn’t essential”, “we’re not climatologists”, “love your neighbour”, “it’s life or death”, “zoom church is suitable”, “the $ fines will be too high”, & “Rom 13”.
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Pastor Aaron Rock, a Neo-Evangelical minister who serves Harvest Bible Church in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, who wrote the above on Facebook, seems to understand ecclesiology better than a lot of Lutherans - even while not sharing our belief that what happens at the altar and in the sanctuary during Holy Communion is a literal miracle in which Christ is truly present in His body and blood.
Canada is becoming quite an oppressive state. One recent example is the severe lockdown that went into effect just hours before Easter Sunday this year. On Good Friday, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau acknowledged the “long weekend” (a wonderful euphemism for the holiest day of the year to some two billion people) and that “we’re all going to have to do things differently again this year.”
Article Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association.” Well, sort of. For Article One preemptively takes away those freedoms when the State decides citizens don’t have freedom of religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression, press, assembly and association: “only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the first ten amendments of which are known as the Bill of Rights) does not include such a disclaimer - such a disclaimer implying that one’s “rights” are not rights at all - which come from God - but are actually State grants of privilege. That said, we have seen our governments - federal, state, and local - act as though they did have the Canadian Loophole in them. In fact, many countries - including Communist China - also “guarantee” religious freedom, albeit with the Canadian Loophole. And this shows the real value of such lofty government “guarantees.”
The past couple years caught the Church by surprise, and we learned not only a lot about our governmental leaders, but also about our church leaders. We have learned a lot about ourselves, and what we really believe, teach, and confess regardless of what we say on paper: in Scripture and in the confessions.
Whether or not you agree with Pastor Rock regarding the danger of government overreach related to “climate change,” it is hard to be so Pollyannish as to believe that we will not have future conflicts with the State in whether or not our services are “essential,” whether our God-given rights trump positive law, whether their constitutional limitations are real or only theoretical, and whether or not the Ekklesia (Church) can long exist where there is no ekklesia (assembly). Sadly, some people will never return to assemble with the saints again, seeking instead convenient Zoom sessions that they can watch in their pajamas. We have opened the proverbial can.
But as for future government “emergencies,” we need to start talking about this now. At what point do we comply? And for how long? At what point do we resist openly? At what point do we take the Divine Service underground in defiance of the State? These are questions for individual believers, families, congregations, districts, synods, and the church catholic.
And we confessional Lutherans need to crush underfoot any and all heretical and oxymoronic suggestions such as lay-communion or remote electronic consecration, not to mention granting the State unconditional authority based on a flawed reading of Romans 13. The time to wrestle with these issues is not in the middle of a crisis when pastors, congregations, and families have a window of opportunity to do whatever they want with impunity - whether out of well-intentioned ignorance, or by carefully planned stealth. After all, as the saying goes, never let a crisis go to waste.
Thank you to Pastor Rock for calling Christians to deal with future “emergencies” by talking about them now.