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Ordered back to work

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Carl Herrera, Mar 24, 2020.

  1. Buck Turgidson

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    dachuda86 and FranchiseBlade like this.
  2. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    God will help those who don't help themselves.

    Pay me if you want to hear more about how you'll be saved by the incoming liberal induced Armageddon
     
    dachuda86 likes this.
  3. calcium

    calcium Member

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    Except the damage done may affect and include you. As in it is not self contained.
     
  4. dachuda86

    dachuda86 Member

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    I blame the recent outbreak of Republican complacency and greed. This man is trying to cash in and save money.
     
  5. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    And... it appears that falwell lied...



     
  6. SamFisher

    SamFisher Contributing Member

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  7. pirc1

    pirc1 Contributing Member

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  8. Carl Herrera

    Carl Herrera Contributing Member

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  9. pirc1

    pirc1 Contributing Member

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    Here is another brilliant move by a religious group. Let's see if they do better than Liberty.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/louisiana-church-defies-covid-19-004904194.html

    Louisiana church defies COVID-19 order, holds Sunday services
    Molly Hennessy-Fiske
    LA TimesMarch 29, 2020, 8:49 PM EDT

    [​IMG]
    Services at Life Tabernacle Church in the suburb of Baton Rouge, La., are continuing despite the governor's order banning large gatherings to fight the spread of the coronavirus. On Sunday, 1,265 congregants attended morning services at the church, the pastor said. (Woody Jenkins / Central City News)
    Pentecostal preacher Tony Spell didn’t just stand before his congregation on Sunday in defiance of the governor’s order to stay home: He leaped into the pews, paraded, hugged and laid hands on worshipers’ foreheads in prayer.

    “We’re free people. We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to cower,” the Rev. Spell said from the pulpit of Life Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Baton Rouge. “We’re not breaking any laws.”

    Across Louisiana, the coronavirus has infected more than 3,500 people and led to 151 deaths as of Sunday, with one of the highest per-capita death rates in the country down the interstate in New Orleans. To limit its spread, Gov. John Bel Edwards banned gatherings of more than 50 people earlier this month and on March 22 issued a stay-at-home order.

    To comply, Catholic churches canceled Mass and switched to virtual services. Many Protestant churches did too. But some have continued to gather, with none drawing more attention than Life Tabernacle.

    The 60-year-old church has continued to use its fleet of two dozen buses to bring hundreds of congregants to services three times a week from five surrounding parishes, including congregants from mobile home parks and public housing in low-income neighborhoods. More than 1,100 people of various races worship by age group at seven sanctuaries on the property. In addition to spiritual guidance, the church offers free breakfast. Only about 10% have stayed away, said Spell's father, the Rev. Tim Spell, 66, including his own 90-year-old father who has been sheltering at home.


    A volunteer at Life Tabernacle Church outside Baton Rouge, La., checks a woman's temperature before she can enter Sunday's service. (Woody Jenkins / Central City News)
    On Sunday, 1,265 attended morning services at the church, said the Rev. Tony Spell, 42. Seven were baptized, he said, and 10 were “spirit filled” (spoke in tongues).

    So far, no church members have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, said Spell, as he watched buses arrive before Sunday’s service, having passed a half-dozen empty parking lots of other churches up the street.

    Like other places across the nation, testing here is limited. Only 27,871 of Louisiana’s 4.7 million residents had been tested as of Sunday, and the disease has spread to all but five of the state’s 64 parishes.

    While different states have issued different provisions for houses of worship, 17% of those polled by three political scientists last week said they were still attending church in person. Nearly three dozen people who attended a church event earlier this month in rural Arkansas tested positive for COVID-19. At a church in the Chicago suburbs, 43 people showed symptoms of the virus following a service this month and 10 had tested positive as of Friday.

    As people entered the church Sunday, Life Tabernacle volunteers checked their temperatures before allowing them in. Hand sanitizer was available inside; few in the crowd of several hundred in the main sanctuary wore gloves or masks.

    Some sat a few feet apart. But others embraced. And as Spell began preaching, the assembled paraded around the room shoulder to shoulder in their usual “victory march.”

    Outside, several protesters had gathered in black hazmat suits. More than 9,400 people had signed an online petition calling on authorities to prosecute Spell. The local newspaper, the Central City News, has been boycotted for helping Spell stream services online.

    Wearing a blue suit, hair slicked back and clutching a Bible as he stood on the pulpit, Spell explained that he had been advised by attorneys from the evangelical Florida-based Liberty Counsel not to enter the crowd in case law enforcement entered and tried to arrest him.

    He did anyway.

    Spell joined his wife, son and father in singing gospel classics alongside congregants, including, “We’ll Understand it Better By and By,” “All My Hope Is in Jesus” and “Eye of the Storm.”

    He told the group that at least four church members had lost their jobs after employers saw photographs online of them attending services, including one of the singers with him on the altar.

    “This is the America we’re living in now, where people are being persecuted for their faith,” Spell said as he took the singer’s hand.

    The pastor argued the governor should deem churches essential, as he has some retailers and clinics.

    Wall Street, he noted, “is still open.”

    “Yes, it is!” a woman cried from the audience.

    “If you’re going to persecute our church for staying open, don’t go to Walmart, don’t go to Planned Parenthood, don’t go to the liquor store because you’re a hypocrite,” said Spell, who was greeted with applause.

    His sermon veered between American history and brimstone, from Patrick Henry to Satan. At one point, while praying over a woman, both spoke in tongues.

    “I’m not so afraid of dying of a disease as I am of living in fear of a virus!” Spell then shouted, wiping his brow and stripping off his jacket.

    The crowd stood and applauded.

    “A God that brought America a virus can bring America through a virus,” he intoned, and a congregant responded, “Hallelujah!”

    Spell said he’s been demonized for refusing to close his doors, “called everything from a killer to Pol Pot to David Koresh,” referring to the Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia and the pastor who led the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian standoff with the FBI in neighboring Texas, respectively.

    But the church, he said, has remained open for all these years despite floods and storms, including Hurricane Katrina, which ripped off the roof.

    “I’d rather die than kill the church,” Spell repeated, framing the pandemic as a test of faith. “If you can’t stand up to COVID, don’t expect to stand up to a man called the Antichrist.”

    His father, who sang and played keyboard through the service, said the evangelical congregation has been unfairly stigmatized as “snake handlers,” and that fellow Americans should beware any infringement of their constitutional freedoms.

    “What’s going to happen when they come for your guns?” he said, noting that authorities in New Orleans have closed guns stores during the pandemic.

    Woody Jenkins, a former state representative and lawyer who runs Central City News, livestreamed the morning service. He said the church has been vital not only to Central, a town of about 29,000, but to some of Baton Rouge’s poorest residents.


    The Rev. Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church said during his sermon Sunday that the Louisiana governor should deem churches as essential services, like some retailers and clinics. (Woody Jenkins / Central City News)
    Jenkins helped craft the state's current constitution in 1973, which he noted protects religious freedom. He’s been trying to stay inside, avoiding his grandchildren who live nearby, but he chafes at the restrictions.

    “Are we really alive if we’re living like this?” he said after the service.

    Jenkins was joined in Spell’s office by a church member whose employer asked her to stop coming to work last week after seeing a photo of her at the church, which she has attended for 37 years. She asked not to be identified because she hopes to get her job back. She said none of her co-workers were penalized for going shopping, dining or to the gym.

    “This is where we get our strength. I can’t get this from livestream,” said the woman, who oversees the bus ministry. “I have an obligation to be here.”

    She planned to attend the church’s Sunday night service too.

    Spell and church members said they do not believe COVID-19 is fake or that they can heal themselves, as some have reported. But they just can’t imagine spending Sunday away from church.

    In the parking lot after services, women's Bible study leader Cheyenne Parker said she grew up in an abusive home in one of the area’s mobile home parks and takes the bus to church, which “was the first place I felt safe.”

    “There is a crisis right now in our world, but if the church closes its doors, what happens to the ones that were just like me?” said Parker, 39, wearing her usual conservative black dress, long brown hair pinned in a low bun.

    Before leaving for home, she thumbed through her leather-bound Bible to quote one of her favorite Scriptures, Nahum 1:7: “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.”
     
  10. SamFisher

    SamFisher Contributing Member

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  11. Carl Herrera

    Carl Herrera Contributing Member

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    The religious wing and the capitalist wing of the Republican Party are really converging on this pro-death thing.

     
  12. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    trump jealous that he didn't think of this first...

    Liberty University police issue arrest warrants for NYT, ProPublica reporters
    https://thehill.com/homenews/media/...-arrest-warrants-for-nyt-propublica-reporters
     
  13. jiggyfly

    jiggyfly Member

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  14. Carl Herrera

    Carl Herrera Contributing Member

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    Trespassing. Weak.
     
  15. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    mdrowe00 and SamFisher like this.
  16. CometsWin

    CometsWin Breaker Breaker One Nine

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    I'm definitely stealing that.
     
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  17. vlaurelio

    vlaurelio Contributing Member

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    Yeah blame it on the grand selfish greedy POS scum lie peddler racist of a leader these republicans have

    And recent? LOL
     
    #37 vlaurelio, Apr 10, 2020
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2020
  18. dachuda86

    dachuda86 Member

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    Also blaming democratic leaders who failed... IE NY! All of these fools were morons. Of course it doesn't help that the WHO failed to sound a proper alarm and helped downplay it for their Chinese communist overlords.
     
  19. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    'I don't take responsibility at all': Trump deflects blame for coronavirus testing fumble
    Trump has spent weeks downplaying the virus' outbreak.
    https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971
     
  20. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    Normally I think our society is to litigious, but...

     
    DaDakota likes this.

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