Friend,
Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top articles,
stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and
church families.
Nonprofits like ours are expected to
experience significant impacts to our fundraising efforts. If you
support our work, would
you consider making a needed $100, $50, $25, $10, or even $5 donation
to ensure we have the resources necessary to remain financially
healthy during these difficult times?
1. THE FEDERALIST: No,
COVID-19 Didn’t Suddenly Empower Government To Do Anything It Wants To
Churches
"COVID-19 has touched every aspect of our lives, and our
religious freedom is no exception. As the world deals with this
pandemic, churches are finding creative solutions to minister to
people in crisis. Yet too often they face unsympathetic or even
hostile government officials, intent on needlessly shutting down their
efforts.
Take Greenville, Mississippi, for example. During Holy Week, Temple
Baptist Church found itself in the national spotlight after it invited
congregants to safely gather and pray together, drive-in style, with
congregants staying inside their cars.
That’s why my colleagues and I at Alliance Defending Freedom filed a
lawsuit in federal court on Good Friday on behalf of Temple Baptist.
Eight uniformed Greenville police officers went to a Wednesday night
church service and ticketed church members $500 apiece for attending a
drive-in service that complied with state safety and Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention guidelines."
In
North Carolina, Guilford County changed the county’s stay-at-home
order to allow drive-through church services just in time for Easter,
although the County imposed numerous and specific
requirements.
In
Wake County, the county has issued new regulations targeting
churches with unconstitutional restrictions on drive-through worship
services. No communion, no tithes, no (religious) literature can be
passed through car windows, yet the same government order allows
people to pay cash for take-out food at drive-through
restaurants.
2. SAMARITAN'S PURSE: Franklin Graham
Statement on Objections to Samaritan's Purse Emergency Field Hospital
Serving COVID-19 Patients in New York City
"Sunday, Christians worldwide celebrated Easter,
commemorating the historic resurrection of Jesus. Tragically, this was
also the day New York surpassed a death toll of 10,000 people
succumbing to the worldwide pandemic known as COVID-19.
In recent weeks Americans have watched New York closely as the
epicenter of this health crisis, accounting for nearly half of the
country’s Coronavirus cases and deaths—more than 190,000 and 10,000
respectively.
It seems tone-deaf to be attacking our religious conviction
about marriage at the very moment thousands of New Yorkers are
fighting for their lives and dozens of Samaritan’s Purse workers are
placing their lives at risk to provide critical medical
care."
For more context, read
this article from the Charlotte Observer.
3.
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: An Appeal to North Carolina’s Governor Roy
Cooper can lift the tragic quarantine that is devastating his
state.
"An urgent appeal to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper:
For every COVID-19 case in North Carolina (4,500 estimated), 125
people have lost their jobs (500,000 unemployed across the state). You
created this tragedy.
Your executive orders have quarantined healthy individuals for
the first time in American history. Small businesses can no longer
operate, and their employees are jobless. This may be a solution for
your medical advisers, but the results are now devastating nearly
every facet of our society.
You have also effectively denied religious freedom, a God-given
and constitutional right. Now you are in the process of stripping all
our freedoms, purportedly to protect us from ourselves."
4. NC: Governor Cooper and
protests
Did Governor Cooper issue an Executive Order to prohibit
protests during his Stay-At-Home proclamations? The Senate Judiciary
Committee wants to know after a #reopenNC protester
was arrested in Raleigh yesterday.
Click
here to read more about protests encouraging Governor Cooper to
#ReopenNC.
5.TOWN HALL:Chemical Self-Abortions,
the (Other) Looming Deadly Crisis
"When Congress passed the CARES Act, the largest
economic aid bill in U.S. history, the legislation was widely
criticized as slipping Democratic policy priorities and special
interest giveaways under the mantle of coronavirus relief. With the
ink barely dry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing for “Phase
Four,” another massive spending bill, while Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell pushes back against any rush to take advantage of this
crisis to enact unrelated agenda items.
One special interest potentially excluded from CARES, to their
outrage, was the abortion lobby. The bill contains vital pro-life
protections to prevent its massive funding streams from underwriting
abortion businesses. If the abortion lobby’s ultimate dream succeeds,
however, brick-and-mortar facilities will become obsolete. The next
frontier is the expansion, via telemedicine and the mail, of so-called
“self-managed” abortion (their term) using dangerous drugs – a
supremely ironic turn for a movement that wields the coat-hanger as a
fearful symbol of the time before Roe v. Wade. Chemical abortions,
already 30-50 percent of U.S. abortions, could
skyrocket."
5+. NC VALUES VOICE: Featuring Dr
Tom Phillips, Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association
Join us on April 22nd at 7:30pm for our second NC Values
Voice livestream, featuring Dr. Tom Phillips!
ONGOING PRAYER: CORONAVIRUS
LORD, we pray to you regarding the health pandemic facing our
nation and the world. Christ—you are the Great Physician—and we bring
to you a solemn petition in regards to our physical, social, and
economic health.
Protect our bodies and our nation as we combat the coronavirus.
We pray that our leaders in office will be blessed with wisdom to make
decisions in the interest of public health and saving lives. We pray
in particular for the elderly, who are most at risk to experience
complications when infected. We pray for all the medical
professionals on the front-lines of battling this virus.
LORD, protect all of us from infection, and may you work
through your Church in the midst of this crisis to help bring people
to acknowledge you are sovereign and good. We pray deeply that people
will come to salvation, and that our neighbors will spend their time
wisely with their families praising God for our blessings.
We pray that this virus will quickly die out, that our public
efforts—as communities and neighbors—will slow the virus' spread and
impact. LORD, we ask for you to work through those individuals
currently developing a cure, and plead that it may come soon. We also
pray for all those who will be impacted by the economic fallout of the
measures taken to combat the viruses. Be with individuals nearing
retirement who will have their savings ravaged; be with small business
owners and employees—particularly those in recreation, dining,
part-time employment, and vacation industries—who may face bankruptcy
and financial stress related to economic decline; be with our nation
as a whole, as it sets itself on the difficult path of recovering
physically and economically from this virus.
LORD, we acknowledge you are good, and that your provision for
your children is unquestionable. May your inspired words remind us in
this time of panic and anxiety:
"Be not anxious
for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for
your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food,
and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that
they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your
heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?
And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure
of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they
spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the
field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he
not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore
anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or,
Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the
Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of
all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not
therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew
6:25-34)
Amen
Will
you chip in $100, $50, $25, $10, or even $5 to help the NC Values
Coalition continue to fight for your rights? You can donate by
clicking here.
Sincerely,
North Carolina Values Coalition
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