Church Responds as Police Barricade Sanctuary While Pastor Awaits Trial for Breaking COVID Orders By Tré Goins-Phillips for Faith Wire
With the help of law enforcement authorities, a government health agency of unelected officials have placed a barrier around a church in Alberta, Canada, effectively closing down the place of worship.
GraceLife Church in Edmonton made headlines earlier this year after the church’s pastor, James Coates, was jailed for holding in-person worship services amid ongoing pandemic restrictions.
As CBN News has reported, after spending a month behind bars for violating the government’s capacity mandates, Coates was released from jail on March 29.
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GraceLife is being walled off by two layers of security fencing and a black tarp to obscure the entrance to the church.
RCMP and private Paladin security are here.
RCMP have no documentation to present to the church re:closure, but are keeping members off the property. pic.twitter.com/68E7ntCHVp
— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) April 7, 2021
Roads blocked and fences going up around GraceLife Church this morning… pic.twitter.com/qSbLXRWKut
— Kim Smith (@Kim_SmithTV) April 7, 2021
John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the law firm representing the church, released a statement Wednesday afternoon, rebuking the government not only for placing a barrier around the church but also for seeking to delay its trial against Coates.
He argued the provincial government has known “for many months” that it would be called to make the case in court for its pandemic lockdowns and the destruction such restrictions have caused, to include the erosion of Albertans’ civil liberties.
“Freedom of conscience and religion is the first fundamental freedom listed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” Carpay said. “It is listed first because it is one of the key bedrock principles on which Canada is built. The government has, so far, refused to justify the limits on worship and gathering. Health orders are inconsistent, differing from province to province, and arbitrarily created by one public health official who is under no obligation legally to advise the legislatures of the science and rationale which supposedly are the basis of the orders.”
