Concerns about a Post-Equality Act World

I was in the fourth grade and we had a bully in our school that loves to pick on us. His name was Bobby. Bobby was an 8th grader. He came from a very poor broken home. Our bus would stop and pick him up from the school bus he literally lived in. We hated when he sat behind us because we always had to lean forward to prevent him from flicking our ears or necks. Once off the bus his joy was chasing and tackling us on the playground.

One day my best friend Jimmy and I decided that two fourth-graders could take on one-eighth grader. So we came up with a plan.

The day finally came. Bobby chased us around the playground where I took my position up high and Jimmy down low. When Billy got there, Jimmy wrapped up Bobby’s legs while I jumped like Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka off the top ropes landing on Bobby’s head. He hit the ground with great force! Jimmy and I both jumped up super pumped about what we had just accomplished. The problem was Bobby jumped up too! The two of us had no follow-up plan, so we did what any 4th graders would do, we ran and hid behind the teacher. Billy never bothered us after that. There was kind of mutual respect from that moment on.

Pastoring a church with a Christian school has brought with it an additional amount of pressure this past year. It has been very difficult to wade through all the rules and regulations Covid has put upon us. There have been daily meetings for weeks as we try to adjust and accommodate our parents and staff. We have done our best to make sure we have complied with the “powers that be.”

Two weeks ago, we received a call from our local health department. They literally yelled, threatened, and degraded us for several minutes about the way we were handling students who were in contact with someone testing positive with COVID. They told us they were tempted to send someone to our school to set us straight or even shut us down. Why? Because we were following the State guidelines and not our county’s local Health Department guidelines.

I felt like a fourth-grader back on the playground again. The only problem was I didn’t have Mrs. Brown to hide behind. There was no one to go to. There is no one able to stand up for us and no way we could fight them if they decided to shut us down. There was no lawyer, police officer, or politician that could help us. Even the CDC and the Governors’s office told us despite the discrepancies, we were subject to local authorities. It was an awful feeling.

This was just a taste of what things will be like if the Equality Act were to come to fruition. We would be helpless in a horrible situation. It represents the greatest present threat to religious liberty in the United States. Al Mohler puts it this way, “The audacity is breathtaking, and the threat to America’s first liberty is all too real.” “Visible before our eyes is the threat of an anti-theological state and the end of authentic religious liberty in America” (Mohler, March 15, 2021, “The Equality Act and the Rise of the Anti-Theological State.”).

There would be no one we could turn to and no one who would be able to take our defense. There might be ways we could outsmart them and “knock them down” concerning certain restrictions, but it would only be a fragment of time until they would “get back on their feet” and come after us again. Leaving us nowhere to run. The language in the Equality Act specifically prevents any claims of religious liberty. The act will bar Colleges, camps, Christian Schools, and ministries for their beliefs and force them into compliance with any category the LGBTQ deems necessary.

It is a very scary thing to know “before our eyes is the threat of an anti-theological state and the end of authentic religious liberty in America” (Mohler).

If it comes to this we must do our best to think outside of the box and keep our ministries going. God promises to give wisdom to those who ask.

So how do we plan if something like this were to happen?

1. As a Christian school, be prepared to go strictly remote as we did during the COVID epidemic.
2. As pastors, we need to make sure our families can survive if we are sued or worse.
3. Make sure we are investing in the local police and sheriff departments. If my sheriff comes to lock our doors, I want it to be a personal struggle and not just “another door.”
4. As citizens, we must determine what point it is better to obey God than man.

Despite all of this, we rest in the fact that God is in control. He has not called us to quit! We must persevere! The Word of God is not and cannot be bound!

Treg Spicer is pastor of Faith Baptist Church – Morgantown, WV. Follow his blog here. We republish his articles by permission.