Los Angeles Church Again for Christ

"There is no pandemic."

The words from the white-haired pastor echoed inside the cavernous megachurch in Los Angeles.

It was Aug. 30, only 18 days after L.A. County public health officials had demanded that Grace Community Church terminate holding indoor services.

Simply the pastor, 81-year-old John MacArthur, had kept the doors open, delivering defiance from his pulpit every Sunday.

Canton health inspectors had tried to enter the church building in previous weeks but were blocked by security guards. "We exercise not consent to a search or visit," a security guard told the inspectors, reading from a prepared statement in early August. "This is a Jesus Life Matters protest."

If the inspectors had been immune inside, they would take seen thousands of congregants sitting side by side, well-nigh without masks.

They hugged and sang hymns and shook hands and erupted in applause during MacArthur's sermon. When the offering plate came effectually, the congregants gave $40,046, almost six times more than than the previous Sun, according to the church bulletins.

This picture of worship in the fourth dimension of the coronavirus has emerged every bit a seemingly intractable legal and emotional drama that turns on sharply differing visions of safe behavior during a pandemic. Most religious institutions take been following public health rules, turning to livestreams, outdoor services and drive-through events, but a handful have objected, arguing that the government doesn't take the authority to restrict their prayer practices.

Few churches have captured a bigger spotlight for their disobedience than the megachurch in Sunday Valley. The congregation has not only continued services but has also questioned the existence of the coronavirus.

"There'due south another virus loose in the world, and it's the virus of charade," MacArthur told the congregation in his Aug. thirty sermon. "And the ane who's behind the virus of deception is the arch deceiver Satan himself."

Throughout the summer, MacArthur repeatedly insisted no one from the church had contracted the coronavirus or been hospitalized with COVID-xix. Even so congregants take indeed been stricken and hospitalized with COVID-19, according to MacArthur's own account in a church interview in April. They included a young couple who were hospitalized and a visiting pastor who died of the disease shortly later on attending a church building conference in March.

County health officials launched an outbreak investigation at the church building in October after three other people contracted the coronavirus. Church officials in a statement released last month dismissed the investigation, proverb it involves three part-fourth dimension employees who have not been hospitalized. Three among seven,000 congregants is not an outbreak, they said, and they encouraged worshipers to keep attending services. "We are going to see for worship this Sun to celebrate the Lord's Table together," reads the statement. As of Sunday, the church had v confirmed cases. `

The church and its magnetic leader, a descendant of pioneering pastors who preached to cowboy stars from a bygone Hollywood age, seem to revel in their contrarian role.

When the canton slapped a lawsuit against MacArthur and the church in mid-Baronial, he quickly formed a legal team — including a senior legal adviser to President Trump's reelection campaign — and kept holding services indoors. When a judge sided with health officials in mid-September and ordered the church not to come across indoors, MacArthur mocked the county's health guidelines. And in a September appearance on "The Ingraham Bending" on Fox News, MacArthur seemingly dared authorities to throw him in jail.

Grace Community Church's omnipresence has not suffered, even as a third major moving ridge of infections looms and outbreaks of the disease keep to be reported beyond the country, including an outbreak in Shasta County at an evangelical church's ministry school. At times, Grace has been so crowded, people had to stand in the back, co-ordinate to courtroom records.

MacArthur and church attorneys declined to respond to repeated requests for an interview. MacArthur, in the Fox News interview with host Laura Ingraham, stood his ground. "Our church is literally flooded with people. We accept them in every nook and cranny jammed together," he said, maxim worshipers are attending "to hear the message of forgiveness and salvation in a time when fearfulness is existence propagated on every street."

Members of the church interviewed by The Times, most of whom declined to provide their full names because of privacy concerns, gave a wide range of reasons for agreeing with the church building's stance.

Lance, 22, a Santa Clarita resident, said "it'south not that dangerous for someone like me," referring to the lower, but sometimes serious, health risks the virus seems to pose to immature people.

A 33-year fellow member wearing a surgical mask outside the church said that God knows when his believers volition die and that they should non fear expiry.

"When we breathe our last jiff, and nosotros aren't right with God, nothing else matters," said the woman.

Outside the church walls, however, neighbors plead with congregants to consider the health implications for the largely Latino neighborhood. Many of the unmasked congregants park on nearby streets, worrying some residents then much that they fear coming out of their homes on Sun mornings. Aurora Perez, a 50-yr-sometime marketing professional who lives nearby, expresses her ain estimation of the Bible on the sign she holds outside the church each Sunday on Roscoe Boulevard.

"Love thy neighbor, Matthew 22:39," reads the sign. "And article of clothing a mask."

Perez has light red spots across her trunk — scarring from COVID-xix, a testimony to her own castor with the illness.

::

Neighbors of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley have grown worried virtually the thousands of congregants who get together every week for services.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

MacArthur'southward religious roots run deep in Fifty.A. His father, Jack, drew throngs of worshipers while pastoring at Fountain Avenue Baptist Church building in Hollywood, one time erecting a giant tent on Santa Monica Boulevard for an upshot that featured glory believers like vocalist Roy Rogers and actress Dale Evans.

John MacArthur, subsequently taking over Grace Customs Church in 1969, eventually became one of the most successful evangelical preachers in the country, with a congregation estimated at about vii,000. An author of almost 400 books and study guides, he has a radio program that broadcasts beyond the world.

MacArthur, a former college athlete, avoids flashy services that he derides equally showtime religion. Members consider him an approachable pastor and telephone call him "John" or "J-Mac." They are drawn to his preaching style, which espouses a literal interpretation of Scripture.

Forth with Christian parables come up harsh judgments. MacArthur has called Catholicism a "false religion," compared the "prosperity gospel" preaching of televangelist Joel Osteen to a spiritual Ponzi scheme and recently called Blackness Lives Matter "an organization designed by Satan" because of its support of LGBTQ equality.

His initial stance on the pandemic was hardly controversial. In March, when the coronavirus outbreak struck, MacArthur complied fully with health orders requiring churches to close, telling his congregation that Christians should live peacefully under the authorities.

Defiance of safety measures is a "foolish" thing to practice, he said, that makes "Christianity await anything but loving." "This is authorities law for the greater good of the population," MacArthur said in a March 28 interview with a Grace staff pastor.

Just inside i month, his views began to change.

Presently, he was echoing the same arguments and hyperbole that Trump and conservative media have spread near the pandemic — that the mainstream media have overhyped the pandemic; that not that many people have died and the data are wrong, and those who did succumb actually died from other illnesses; that it's really merely the flu — and saying it's all the government'southward ploy to control Christians.

But in other settings, he said otherwise.

In belatedly April during an interview with a church building elder, MacArthur said that a young couple in the Castilian-language ministry had contracted the coronavirus and wound upward in a hospital. "It was such a virulent feel for them," he said.

In the same interview, he said that a 90-twelvemonth-old Russian pastor who attended the church's annual Shepherds' Conference in March, which drew 3,500 men from around the world, became infected. Alexey I. Kolomiytsev, a pastor emeritus at a Battle Ground, Wash., church, died of complications from COVID-xix two weeks after attending the conference, co-ordinate to his son's online memorial message.

MacArthur said in the April interview that the Russian pastor is the "only person that we know of that came out of the Shepherds' Conference and had that virus and ultimately died."

But another man from the Washington church building who attended the briefing with Kolomiytsev, 77-year-old Vladimir Dyachenko, developed symptoms in early March and died of COVID-19 on Apr 1, according to a GoFundMe page by his family and news reports by Slavic Sacramento, a daily Russian-language news site in California.

A third person from the Washington church building, Associate Pastor Sergey Yelchaninov, also came downwardly with COVID-19 and was hospitalized near a week after Kolomiytsev died, his family told a local ABC affiliate. He was hospitalized for 49 days and made a remarkable recovery. He did not attend the conference, his daughter said.

News of more infections at a church-associated organization came in October. The Master'southward Academy, where many of the church building'south pastors serve as professors and support staff, reported 3 students had tested positive for the coronavirus, said university spokesman Corey Williams.

Every bit the pandemic spread beyond the county in midsummer, MacArthur began reopening the church doors. He said he had to because people just started showing upwardly on Sundays. Past July 12, at least dozens of people were inside the church awaiting that day'south sermon, according to social media posts from the mean solar day.

Two weeks subsequently, the church building fabricated its stance official, saying Jesus would want the church to reopen: "Christ, not Caesar, Is Caput of the Church," MacArthur and church elders said in a argument on the church'due south website.

The church provides masks and mitt sanitizer outside the entrances and cleans worship spaces, a church member said, but no i'south temperature is taken and people are non screened for symptoms.

Grace Customs Church has repeatedly held packed Sun services, defying the county's health order and, more recently, a court club directing it to halt indoor gatherings.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Canton officials appear to be weighing their options. Although L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered power exist shut off at a Hollywood Hills domicile hosting large parties, it remains unclear whether the church volition face similar sanctions.

At the next courtroom hearing Friday, the canton is asking a judge to find the church in contempt, which could lead to fines. The church is an outlier in the region, according to county officials. Nigh other houses of worship have complied with health orders, including more than 100 that asked for help in organizing outdoor religious services, they said.

The church building's attorneys have argued that it's MacArthur and Grace Customs Church building's constitutional right to freely practice their religion and that a key part of doing that is coming together in person, about practically indoors, given heat waves and fume from fires. They also cite the complications of organizing a large enough space to conform the three,000-plus believers who usually nourish each Lord's day service.

"Our position has been that L.A. County shutting downwards churches indefinitely amid a virus with a 99.98% survival rate, especially when state-preferred businesses are open and protests are held without restriction, is unconstitutional and harmful to the free practice of religion," said Jenna Ellis, a senior legal advisor to Trump's reelection campaign.

The Dominicus services don't depict just congregants. In recent weeks, residents of the surrounding neighborhood take protested along Roscoe Boulevard. They identify fliers on cars, wave signs and, at times, argue with congregants about the wisdom of worshiping without safeguards in the time of pandemic.

Perez, the Lord's day Valley resident who has spent about $600 on these fliers and signs, said her protestation is personal. She contracted COVID-19 probably while delivering food to a sick family member who works at a hospital. Months subsequently, she has modest round scars on her body, a lasting effect from the rash that the virus can cause.

As congregants stream out of church building, Perez tries to strike up dialogues. She thanks anyone wearing a mask, but they are far outnumbered by people who don't.

"Masks doesn't work," a adult female in a pink Gucci T-shirt, property two Pomeranians and a loving cup of coffee, told Perez on a recent Sunday.

Perez's husband, Felix, recording the encounter, disagreed. "It's almost doing the right thing," he said.

"But he said it'south fake," said the woman, referring to MacArthur's opinion of the pandemic.

Sun Valley resident Aurora Perez, fifty, holds a sign exterior Grace Community Church on Sept. thirteen to protest the church's decision to assemble without social distancing or requiring face up coverings.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Not all church members agree with MacArthur.

Ane member said his feel working in the healthcare industry conflicts with the pastor's views. He said he has watched co-workers get sick from the virus and have panic attacks or laissez passer out from burnout. At the height of the pandemic, he said, about iv patients died in every 12-hour shift he worked.

Jesus, the man said, would focus on helping the sick, non deny the existence of the pandemic.

"I have people ask me every mean solar day, 'Am I going to die?' And [MacArthur] is saying, 'Everybody meet in here, no problem,'" he said. "It'south like I live in two unlike worlds."

Times staff writer Leila Miller contributed to this written report.

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-08/la-pastor-mocks-covid-19-rules-church-members-ill

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