Mayor Gives Infuriatingly Flimsy Excuse for Fining Christians $500 Over Drive-In Church Services
By Tyler O’Neil
On Wednesday, Greenville, Miss., Mayor Errick Simmons finally dropped his nonsensical and tyrannical ban on drive-in church services. This ban became a national scandal after Greenville police slapped Christians with $500 fines for sitting in their cars with their windows up in the church parking lot, listening to a pastor preach over the radio. While this practice clearly could not expose parishioners to the coronavirus, the mayor considered it a violation of a stay-at-home order. Religious liberty law firms stood up for the Christians, lawsuits were filed, and the Trump administration got involved.
When Simmons finally dropped the ban, he gave the flimsiest of excuses for what was clearly a tyrannical abuse of his authority during a crisis.
Simmons had defended his order during a press conference on Monday, but he also asked Gov. Tate Reeves (R-Miss.) for definitive guidance on the issue, as if he did not know that Reeves had clearly said the government could not ban church services. The governor had encouraged churches not to hold drive-in services, but he insisted that “the government does not have the right to shut down places of worship. … Mississippi is not China, and it never will be.” Reeves never suggested drive-in church services should be banned — Simmons and the Greenville City Council took that step on their own, and they cannot pass the buck to Reeves.
In Simmons’ press conference on Wednesday announcing that he had dropped the ban on drive-in services, he acted completely innocent. He just needed “guidance” on the issue.
“I am pleased to announce on a call with Governor Tate Reeves today, with mayors across the state of Mississippi, the governor has answered my call,” he said. “We asked the governor for bold leadership and definitive guidance on this issue of drive-in faith-based services and parking lot services. The governor stated today, Wednesday, April 15, 2020, for the very first time, that drive-in church services where families stay in their cars with windows up are safe.”
Uh huh. Yeah, you totally had no idea drive-in church services were safe. You needed “guidance” from the governor to tell you that germs do not spread through rolled-up car windows. You needed “guidance” to explain that it was an utterly tyrannical usurpation of your power to ban people from engaging in a completely sterile religious activity on the pretext that it would prevent the spread of a virus.