As antifa members hurled rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at Seattle police last week, city officials focused their energies elsewhere in the city by fencing off a nearby park to keep the Christian organization Let Us Worship from peacefully assembling.
Walker Wildmon, vice president of operations and public policy analyst at American Family Association (AFA), which advocates for religious freedom, says the city’s choice underscores the growing threat to American religious liberty.
“The Let Us Worship movement is an inspiration and couldn’t have come at a better time,” Wildmon said. “As government officials continue to unfairly target Christians, it is all the more critical that we continue to participate in corporate worship with fellow believers. Despite unconstitutional government edicts, churches across America must continue to open and remain open.”
Officials obstructed the planned prayer and worship event from occurring because Seattle officials claimed it jeopardized the “public health of residents,” Fox News reported.
AFA noted that concern for the public health—or of Seattle’s police—seemed not to factor into the decisions of officials who indulged the violent antifa gathering nearby, which led to a police officer being assaulted.
AFA has rebuked local and state officials often this year for using COVID-19-related concerns as a pretext to abuse power by unlawfully restricting houses of worship from holding services.
Wildmon says instead of seeking permission to gather, Christians should embrace their constitutional right to do so.
“As Attorney General William Barr said a few months back, the Constitution is ‘not suspended in times of crisis,'” Wildmon said. “Instead of Let Us Worship, I suggest we begin calling this movement We Will Worship.”
Despite Seattle officials closing the park, Let Us Worship organizer Sean Feucht pivoted the event to become a “worship protest,” as Fox News reported, that gathered on Labor Day.
Feucht, a California-based pastor, who has organized more than 20 rallies nationwide, noted the irony that while police officers dealt with antifa members’ attacks, “the city focused their energy on our peaceful worship and prayer rally,” writes Fox News. {eoa}
For more than 40 years, The American Family Association has operated within the mission to inform, equip and activate individuals to strengthen the moral foundations of American culture and give aid to the church here and abroad in its task of fulfilling the Great Commission. Visit AFA Action Alerts here.
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