Pastor charged with violating coronavirus order vows to keep Louisiana church open

Undeterred by arrest, a Louisiana pastor says the doors of his church will remain open amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Pastor Tony Spell, head of Life Tabernacle Church in Central, carried on with a scheduled service Tuesday despite being issued a misdemeanor summons for ignoring a state-wide order barring large gatherings just hours earlier, police say. Authorities charged Spell with six counts of rule violations — one for each of the six services he’s held at his Central campus these last two weeks.

“Mr. Spell will have his day in court where he will be held responsible for his reckless and irresponsible decisions that endangered the health of his congregation and our community,” Central Police Chief Roger Corcoran said in a statement Tuesday, accusing the pastor of putting the public at risk for “his own self-promotion.”

“This is not an issue over religious liberty, and it’s not about politics,” Corcoran added. “We are facing a public health crisis and expect our community’s leaders to set a positive example and follow the law.”

Police said the summons is considered an arrest, although Spell wasn’t taken into custody. The local pastor was also fingerprinted and read his constitutional rights, The Advocate reported.

The misdemeanor charges, which carry a maximum of six months in the parish jail and a $500 fine, have done little to keep Spell from tending to his flock of worshipers. Ahead of Tuesday night’s service, he vowed to keep the church up and running despite explicit orders from Gov. John Bel Edwards to avoid hosting large gatherings.

Spell decried the directive as an “attack on religion.”

“We will continue to have church,” he said in a video posted to Facebook Live. “This is a government overreach. They’re asking us as a government to stop practicing our freedom of religion. And we have a mandate from God to assemble and to gather together and to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Speaking to CNN, the local pastor argued his religious services were no more of a risk than the hundreds of people still shopping at grocery stores.

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“We aren’t breaking any laws,” he told the outlet.

Spell is the second pastor to face charges for violating stringent orders from officials to help mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than 190,000 people across the U.S., the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University show. Louisiana has recorded more than 5,200 COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday morning, and 239 deaths.

In Florida, where about 6,700 residents have been diagnosed with the disease, Tampa pastor Rodney Howard-Browne found himself in police custody Monday after hosting two Sunday services with hundreds of worshipers, the Miami Herald reports. Jail records show he was booked on charges of unlawful assembly and violation of a public health emergency order before being released on $500 bail.

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Still, Spell and Howard-Browne aren’t the only ones refusing to close their doors amid the public health crisis. Churches in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York have continued to hold in-person services despite warnings about the coronavirus.

Gov. Edwards, who declared a public health emergency and issued a stay-at-home order for the state of Louisiana starting on March 23, told The Advocate he was disturbed by Spell’s defiance and his willingness to put parishioners at risk by hosting the large services.

“It’s unfortunate that a leader … would choose and make the conscious decision to violate what is a legal order which is imperative to public health,” he said, according to the newspaper.