Pastors Issue Declaration to Illinois Gov. Saying They Will Open Their Churches May 10 by LIBERTY COUNSEL for Charisma News
Romanian pastors in Illinois have issued a declaration to Gov. J.B. Pritzker announcing they are opening their churches for in-person services on May 10, with proper and extensive social distancing and safety precautions. Liberty Counsel represents these pastors and churches and will be filing a federal lawsuit against Gov. Pritzker’s unconstitutional orders.
The six pastors who signed the letter, along with Horatio Mihet, chief litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel, once lived under the heavy hand of a totalitarian regime in Communist Romania. They are painfully familiar with government-suppressed religious freedom and the jailing of pastors and Christians as criminals for merely following their religious teachings to meet and preach the gospel. For many, like Mihet, their first day of freedom was on Dec. 25, 1989, when Nicolae Ceausescu’s Communist regime was overthrown. These pastors know what it is like to not have freedom, and that is what they now see happening in the country they love.
The letter reads, in part:
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We love helping others and believe that’s one of the reasons we are chosen as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, to serve God’s children. We look to the Greatest Commandment as our Powering force.
The Romanian-Americans in our congregations have chosen Chicago as their homeland, many of them after fleeing communist oppression that targeted religious gatherings, houses of worship and communal exercise of their religion and faith.
We found a home in Illinois, where the promise of freedom has been consistently and faithfully achieved, until your Executive Order 2020-10 unlawfully required that our churches shut their doors to our congregants, irrespective of any social distancing and health precautions that we are willing and able to implement, while allowing many other non-religious businesses and organization to remain open.
We love our adopted country, and the Freedom we have found here, too much to stay silent as you trample on our God-given rights. In light of our shared experience living behind the Iron Curtain – where discriminatory treatment of Churches by authoritarian governments was the norm – we are determined to do everything that we can to ensure that our beloved country and our State remain the beacons of freedom that brought us here.
