Earlier this month — seriously, this month — Pastor Jonathan Shuttlesworth claimed America would be spared from COVID-19 because Donald Trump was “pro-Israel.” That didn’t pan out. The virus is spreading quickly and affecting all of American life.
So what’s his next act? Shuttlesworth now says he’ll be holding a “Woodstock”-like in-person church service. He’s doing it despite the fact that Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne was just arrested in Florida for holding in-person church services and putting countless people at risk of catching the disease.
Right-wing evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth, a close friend of Rodney Howard-Browne, says he intends to hold a large Woodstock-like Christian gathering in defiance of stay-at-home orders. pic.twitter.com/sn5Pvt1NA5
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 31, 2020
I’m gonna announce it… We’re gonna hold an outdoor Easter blowout service. Not online. A national gathering. You come from all over, like Woodstock. And we’re gonna gather and lift up Jesus Christ.
I’m not ashamed that Dr. Rodney got arrested. I’m ashamed that when they wanted to arrest preachers for having church, in the entirety of the state, there was only one to come for.
Shuttlesworth is lying. They didn’t arrest Howard-Browne for “having church.” They arrested him for defying a public safety order to avoid large gatherings. No one would have stopped him for live-streaming a service, as so many other pastors have been doing.
The idea that he’s going to hold a mass gathering — a threat, and nothing more, since no one should trust a damn thing he says — is absurd. He’s acting like social distancing is some anti-Christian conspiracy.
If an atheist suggested Christians hold a mass gathering in the middle of a pandemic, there would inevitably be conservatives screaming about how we were planning an act of genocide. But when this idiot does it, it’s a form of martyrdom among the people who don’t accept science and think their faith grants them automatic immunity from the virus.
This guy wants to kill Christians. The sad thing is that there are some members of the death-cult who would gladly follow his word if he ever organized such an event. They would gladly put themselves in the path of COVID-19 to own the libs.
(via Right Wing Watch)