With churches in Kentucky able to resume in-person worship services 10 days earlier than expected, under a court ruling, Gov. Andy Beshear pleaded with them Saturday to not open unless they are ready to follow the guidelines he issued Friday.
“People, take your time,” he said at his daily briefing. “You don’t want your house of worship to be a place where the coronavirus is spread. … Make sure that you are ready if you have church this Sunday. Make sure you follow all of these rules.”
Beshear cited examples of religious services in Kentucky and elsewhere that led to outbreaks of covid-19 and deaths. “If you haven’t read through all the guidance and you can’t meet it, don’t come back just to come back,” he said. “Make sure your sanctuary is just that, a place of safety and comfort.”
He said his church, Beargrass Christian Church, in Louisville won’t have in-person services until June, and asked that faith leaders not be pressured to have them.
“My faith is critically important to me,” he said, reciting some familiar points. “I hope you’ve heard me talk about my faith in a way that you know that. So, we never set out to stop anything specific related to religion; we were just trying to save lives by stopping groups of people coming together for anything.”
Noting that courts in other states have allowed such bans to apply to houses of worship, he said, “For those that are more interested in courts’ wins and losses, and might be celebrating, I really hope, I really hope, that these rulings don’t have some people going back faster than they should, not doing everything that needs to be done, and causing the spread of this virus.”
He added, “Since this has started, I’ve been done with politics. I’m not counting wins and losses; I’m counting the number of lives and the number of deaths I have to announce every day, and I hope that the actions of trying to speed this up by two weeks don’t result in more people being lost.”
Beshear thanked churches that cooperated, and said, “If I’m disappointed about one thing, it’s that two total churches in this state took the attention away from 7,000 other ones” that gave up in-person services.
As churches prepare to resume in-person services, they are being told not to sing, because singing can create aerosols that spread the virus. Tennessee pastor Ken Boer of The Gospel Coalition, a group of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition, discusses the risks in an article for Kentucky Today, a publication of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
Beshear again pleaded with Kentuckians to sign up for testing, so the state can meet the federal guideline of testing 2 percent of its population each month. He said most testing sites will accept anyone, and “If you’re going back to work in the next couple of weeks I’d recommend that you go get a test.” Earlier, he said, “The more people you’re around and the longer you’re around them, the more opportunity this has to spread to you.”
Asked what will happen to the old “healthy at home” mantra now that the new one is “healthy at work,” he said. “The more people we work with and the longer we’re there the more we should just come home.”
In other COVID-19 news Saturday:
- As factories, retail stores and other businesses prepare to reopen Monday, Beshear and Health Commissioner Steven Stack exhorted Kentuckians to wear masks, maintain social distancing and take other precautions to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19. “That second spike would shut down our economy again and more important than that, we would lose more Kentuckians,” Beshear said.
- Stack said that if not Beshear’s orders and Kentuckians following them, “We could have been standing here today talking about tens of thousands of Kentuckians who have died from the coronavirus. … We have done a wonderful job … This is exactly when people start to get complacent.”
- He added, “There has never been a time more important than now … for you to follow the guidelines. … This is exactly the time, when the weather starts getting nice and people start going outside and are really tried of having these restrictions … We really have to make sure we pull together.”
