Six Romanian congregations in Chicago have informed Illinois’ chief comrade, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, “they will no longer obey his unconstitutional edicts that discriminate against their churches, and they WILL re-open their churches on Sunday, May 10, 2020.”
Their letter to Pol Pot–sorry, Pritzker is a curious mix of statements about the “trampling” of their Constitutional liberties with promises that their churches will obey the also-unConstitutional-and-just-plain-silly edicts on anti-social distancing, sanitizing of surfaces, etc. But their declaration thrillingly notes,
The [2700] Romanian-Americans in our congregations have chosen Chicago as their homeland, many of them after fleeing communist oppression that targeted religious gatherings, houses of worship and communal exercise of their religion and faith.
We found a home in Illinois, where the promise of freedom has been consistently and faithfully achieved, until your Executive Order 2020-10 unlawfully required that our churches shut their doors to our congregants … We love our adopted country, and the Freedom we have found here, too much to stay silent as you trample on our God-given rights. In light of our shared experience living behind the Iron Curtain – where discriminatory treatment of Churches by authoritarian governments was the norm – we are determined to do everything that we can to ensure that our beloved country and our State remain the beacons of freedom that brought us here.
That certainly starts the day with a shot in the arm, doesn’t it?!
Those of you in Chicago whom Parson Goat has betrayed may want to switch your membership to one of these half-dozen defiant churches. In any case, you can worship our Lord corporately again this Sunday!
Thanks to Mark Carroll for alerting me to this energizing story!
7:11 am on May 5, 2020
