Thinking About a Pastor in a Canadian Jail

By Don Johnson
February 23, 2021

A story out of my old home town appeared on many media outlets reported last week, including this one: Canadian Pastor Jailed Over COVID-19 Violations | Christianity Today. Of course, such stories arrest the attention of most Christians and cause immediate concern. We are sensitive to stories of persecution. Persecution is a reality in recent history around the globe. Christians have raised funds and supported ministries to persecuted Christians in various regimes, mostly totalitarian in nature. For something like this to happen in Canada brings it all a little too close to home. Canada, we think, is a democratic nation, founded on small “l” liberal policies of freedom and civil liberties. How can it be that this kind of thing should happen in Canada? Should we raise the alarms and man the barricades? Or at least raise some funds in support?

To answer these questions, I think we need to understand something about how Canadian law works and something about the circumstances of this particular case. When we grasp these matters, I am confident that we will have a good idea how to proceed.

The first thing for American observers to understand is that Canada is not the same as the USA. I’ve tried to explain the difference in more detail in my personal blog, you can access that here. For the purposes of this article, I’ll just note that the foundation of Canada rests on a decree of Queen Victoria (in 1867), and executive authority still resides in the Crown (though mostly symbolically, the real power is in Parliament now). The foundation of the USA is the Declaration of Independence, an assertion of free citizens about their will to establish their own nation. Consequently, the freedoms Canadians enjoy are not those of “small ‘l’ liberal policies and civil liberties,” they are the gifts of the Crown (i.e. the government). As such, the government has the power to limit those freedoms, albeit within the limits of what the Canadian constitution calls “reasonable limits,” an open-ended term.

The second thing to understand are the regulations in Alberta concerning churches as of the most recent update (Dec 13, 2020). The full list of requirements are here, this is a summary of key provisions:

Maximum of 15% fire code capacity for those attending in-person services
Masks are mandatory indoors
Distancing of 2 meters required
No worship services in private homes

Some reports make it sound as if most churches in Alberta closed, and only a few, like GraceLife Church, pastored by the arrested James Coates and Fairview Baptist in Calgary, pastored by Tim Stephens, remaining open. In fact, most churches in Alberta are open and are in compliance with the guidelines. One pastor friend, in an email to me, commented:

To read the articles about the “jailed pastor” you would think that Alberta is persecuting churches, but our church has been in full operation for the last eight months with minor intrusion.

An article on the CBC website reports:

Pastor James Coates was brought into custody this week after his arrest on two counts of contravening the Public Health Act and on one criminal charge for failing to comply with a condition of an undertaking.

For a good summary of the legal issues facing James Coates, see this article on TGC Canada.

In addition, it reports, concerning the Calgary church:

In January, Pastor Tim Stephens was fined $1,200 by Calgary bylaw officers for violating public health orders. But the church has continued to encourage congregants to break rules by holding gatherings larger than allowed capacity and not enforcing the wearing of masks.

“It is … Jesus Christ, not civil government, that defines what is essential for the gathered church,” Stephens wrote in a blog post on the church’s website on Saturday.

In an article last week on the story, Christianity Today reported:

But authorities repeatedly flagged the church for not capping attendance at 15 percent of capacity, requiring masks, or social distancing, as required by health regulations in Alberta.

Premier Jason Kenney commented on Facebook with this post, part of which said:

The suggestion that Alberta has any restriction on preaching is completely false. Under Alberta law, no one has been or will be fined or sanctioned for preaching.

Anybody in Alberta can preach their faith and, and religious communities are encouraged to gather in congregational worship within the safe guidelines laid out by Alberta Health. This is unlike many other provinces in Canada that have completely suspended congregational worship to prevent viral transmission.

The pastor of the Calgary church, Fairview Baptist, put together a video describing his views of the relationship between church and state, which he calls “sphere sovereignty.” He asks, near the end of the video, “When is it prudent or permissible to disobey an earthly authority in obedience to Jesus?” He proposes three scenarios in which this is allowed:

When an authority forbids what God commands
When an authority commands what God forbids
When an authority commands what is not within their “sphere” to command

On this last point, he says:

For the state to use its power of coercion in areas of health, like forced sterilization, vaccination, or other medical orders is clearly outside their sphere of responsibility given by Christ.

Why does Pastor Stephens use “forced sterilization” as an example here? This is hardly what the government is currently doing. Through history, governments have attempted various means to combat widespread outbreak of disease. These means include quarantines, school closures, bans on public gatherings and immunization programs, among others. The New England Journal of Medicine reports about the 1918 influenza epidemic that:

Cities that implemented stringent controls, including school closures, bans on public gathering, and other forms of isolation or quarantine, slowed the course of the epidemic and reduced total mortality.

Are we seriously arguing that such measures are “outside” the “sphere” of government? In some cases, government measures failed. In others, they apparently have some success. In my own opinion, most of the measures of our governments against Covid-19 are ineffective at best. We see widely different strategies in various jurisdictions, with essentially the same results. However, does my opinion of the effectiveness of my government’s policies give me leave to simply ignore those policies?

Let’s consider another sphere of authority. Suppose my children, when they were young and under my roof were to respond to my directions with something like, “Dad, I don’t think you are giving me that command ‘in the Lord’ [see Eph 6.1] — I think I’ll just ignore it.” What kind of response should that elicit?¹

The attempt to argue that government has no authority over matters of public health seems to simply be “special pleading.” Using an extreme example (“forced vaccinations”), Pastor Stephens conveniently ignores really dealing with the public interest in defeating the Covid-19 virus.

Perhaps one could say more on the authority question, but it seems to me that the government is acting within its sphere of authority when making regulations about health. (I reserve the right to not like their regulations and to complain about them, although I am not sure a complaining spirit will do me much spiritual good.)

My pastor friend from Alberta has this to say in summing up the arguments of Pastor Coates and Pastor Stephens:

In my interactions with James Coates (and Tim Stephens) and listening to their sermons on this topic, it seems there are three main reasons for their civil disobedience.

The entire church must gather together in one place at the same time each week. Anything less is compromise to Caesar and exposes a deficit ecclesiology. Limiting capacity to 15% causes most churches to split up into smaller groups.

The governing authorities have no authority to interfere by regulating church gatherings, especially in limiting fellowship by requiring physical distance and wearing masks.

The church has an obligation to love neighbors. Since the government orders are unloving (in the opinion of the pastor), the church has an obligation to stand up against these orders.

This summary demands some response, regarding the responsibilities of Christians to authority and our responsibility to gather together. We are well familiar with Peter’s response to the Sanhedrin in Acts 5.29, “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.” The Sanhedrin attempted to prevent preaching in the name of Jesus. Most Christians since that day will not fail to preach Christ simply because authorities demand that we cease. However, this is not the case in Alberta currently.

Some raise the exhortation of Hebrews 10.25, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together…” I don’t have space for a detailed exposition of this passage, but I would like to note some things. First, the recipients of Hebrews were considering a voluntary removal of themselves from their churches because of the fears of persecution, they weren’t facing a temporary, but compulsory health care order. Our governments are assuring us that these orders are temporary. We have little choice but to take them at their word.

Churches have forsaken assembling temporarily from time to time in the past. Extreme weather conditions will cause cancellation of services. My friends in snow country regularly post such notices to their people on Facebook.² When we suspend services temporarily for extreme weather, are we disobeying the exhortation of Hebrews 10?

Some years ago, I toured Cades Cove in Tennessee. It is a hidden valley, not too far from Knoxville, where the buildings are preserved from the days of the early settlers in the area. It is well worth the visit. One thing I remember at one of the old churches in the Cove was a notice that during the Civil War, churches suspended services “because there were too many Rebs in these parts.”³ Were the churches of Cades Cove in violation of Hebrews 10.25 when they suspended services?

For my part, I find it very hard to justify disobeying health orders, a legitimate sphere of government activity, especially over a temporary order restricting services due to a health-care crisis. I don’t have to like the restrictions, but I can’t support a pastor who defies them.

As I close, I’d like to refer you to three articles (all with a Reformed perspective) where the authors reason well, in my opinion about the relationship of the Christian to governmental authority. I suspect they do a better job than what I have done, so I’ve saved the best till last!

The last thing I will say in this post is this: please pray for the churches of British Columbia, my province. Our government ordered us to suspend all in person worship on Nov 19, we are not allowed to meet even with limited numbers and other precautions. We are rather tired of this, and there is as yet no hint of a reprieve coming our way.

Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

Let us grant that Paul’s imperative for children vis a vis their parents is comprehensive: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” Very little of the child’s life is outside that sphere of authority. But isn’t the command to obey government just as absolute? “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities.” [↩]
In my own ministry, we suspend services when we get two or three inches of snow! — We realize how pathetic that sounds, but when you live in paradise [Vancouver Island], snow is hard to take! [↩]
Apologies to my Southern friends! [↩]