Reply to Evangelicals: Can you explain to me the desperation to open churches?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am trying to understand this drive to re-open churches, despite the clear public health evidence that it endangers those who attend church and the people they come in contact with.

Why so desperate?  Why can people not handle church via Zoom, or praying for a few weeks only with their immediate family?[/quote]

It's become a highly unproductive and politicized debate, largely because the question of whether any particular business or institution is to reopen has been framed to turn on whether that institution is "essential" or not.  So it has become kind of a proxy fight between those who want the government to say "churches are essential" versus those who want the government to say "churches are not essential."  Further, churches have a legal entitlement not to be treated worse than similarly-situated secular institutions, so in many cases they have a legitimate grievance when the state says institution x, y, or z can reopen, but not churches, and the question of what the right analogy is could be debated.

It's actually kind of an interesting issue from an intellectual perspective, with some nuance to think through.  I suspect that the overwhelming number of people who have to consider the issue, either because they want to go to church or have to decide how to deal with them, are pretty measured and reasonable about the whole thing, as illustrated by many on this thread, and that most of this debate is really about loud partisans on both sides who are getting way too much attention and use the issue to beat the drum on pre-existing hostilities, to wit:  "Your imaginary Sky Daddy must now yield to the Science" vs. "Allowing tattoo parlors, etc., but not churches to reopen is persecution of the righteous."  It's all pretty silly, and largely a manufactured controversy IMO.[/quote]

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