Baptist Church That Prominently Resisted COVID Lockdowns Passes Church Bylaw Pledging to Defy Gov’t on Future Constraints
A Baptist church known for being one of the first churches in the country to be fined for opening their doors during the Covid lockdown, (if not the first) and who made international news after their pastor publicly tore up a governmental ‘cease and desist letter’ from the pulpit, has unanimously passed a new church bylaw formalizing that they will never again close their church under threat by any government.
In June 2020, the Baltimore County Department of Permits fined Calvary Baptist Church in Dunfalk, MD, led by pastor Stacey Shiflett, $500 for their May 17th service. The government accused them of having “unsafe structures” for having more than ten parishioners in their building, even though they had a 600-seat auditorium. Stacey, in turn, publicly tore the edict up, declaring, “Newsflash: Pharaoh doesn’t get to dictate to God’s people how they worship their God!”
Though many people at the time offered to pay the fine, Shiflett refused all aid offers. The case against them was eventually dropped, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it hadn’t. When we reached out for comment, he told our reporter: “I told my church I would go to jail before we paid a fine. This is America” and that “bottom line, we determined never to shut our doors again. It violates our understanding of Scripture and is a flagrant violation of our First Amendment rights.”
The church, which presently runs 350 congregants in a Sunday morning service and had 150 qualified voting members during their evening service, passed a bylaw that said just that: receiving UNANIMOUS support from the entire church in a secret ballot, belying the church’s unity on the matter.
The amendment reads:
“We strongly believe in the biblical command to worship God together – in person. The word CHURCH means “a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly.” If there is no gathering together, there is no church.
We are blessed to be able to share our church services via livestream with our elderly shut-ins and missionaries around the world. However, we do not believe that a livestream or recorded church service is a biblical replacement for the command to assemble together.
Furthermore, we do not recognize, nor will we comply with any outside edict, laws, mandate, restriction or regulation by an ecclesiastical body or government entity interfering with our biblical and First Amendment, Constitutional right to assemble and worship.
As a congregation, if forced to choose between the mandates of God or the mandates of man, we will choose to obey God. (Hebrews 10:25; Psalm 122:1; Acts 5:29; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Matthew 10:28; 1 Timothy 3:15; Acts 4:31; Acts 11:26)
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Utterly based! Vax pushers like Robert Jeffress should take heed.