As the COVID-19 stay-at-home quarantines tarry, folks are getting restless. State governments think about pathways to opening up. The stock market leaps a couple percentage points at the slightest whisper of a vaccine. And pastors have begun to ask each other, “When can our churches gather again?”
Yet a darker question sometimes follows: “If the government continues to say we cannot meet, when do we as churches engage in civil disobedience by gathering anyway?”
Just this week I heard pastors in three separate conversations ask this question.
WHY THIS IS TOUGH: JURISDICTIONAL OVERLAP
Here’s why it’s a difficult topic from a biblical perspective: both the government and our churches have a legitimate biblical claim on the territory of gatherings. You might call it jurisdictional overlap.
Governments possess authority, if for no other reason, then to preserve human life (see Gen. 9:5–6). They are obligated by God to do so. If temporarily banning all gatherings of a certain size accomplishes that end, they should.
At the same time, churches possess a right to gather, arguably as a property of a natural right to freely assemble, certainly as the religious right to assemble. Our vertical obligation to worship God as churches creates
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