Should Christians Obey Church Closure Orders From The State?

In most Western countries, including the UK, all extra-household gatherings have been banned by the state. This obviously has included church gatherings. Is this legitimate? And is there a measurable point where such a ban is illegitimate?

This question is deeply fraught, because it involves a badly understood area of Christian doctrine – how the church and the state should interrelate. Indeed, aside from the doctrines of grace, this is perhaps the worst-understood major concept in the British church today.

However, let me, for the sake of this article, assert (without attempting to prove it here) a general model, before applying it to the specific situation.

The church and state are both instituted by God for His purposes – to glorify Him, to obey Him, to enforce His laws. They are separate institutions, and neither rules the other. The state – or, to use the traditional terms, the prince and the lesser magistrates – should make civil laws in accordance with the “general equity” of God’s moral law revealed in the Bible. The church should be ordered according to Scripture, and is in that context entirely independent of the state. The state, however, whilst not ruling the church, has a duty to protect and preserve true religion.

Now, we need not reflect too long on how far fallen both many churches and, certainly, the state in the UK is fallen from this standard. The question is: assuming this model to be true (helpfully, it is), ought Christians obey state instructions to cease corporate gatherings?

Generally speaking, Christians are to obey lawful government, and the most famous summary of this idea – Romans 13.1-7 – is often cited to justify more or less any legal imposition upon Christians (this is, of course, the refuge of the idolater of the state, but it is a common enough claim). Let’s cite the verses, so we can refer back:

13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ² Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³ For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴ for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.  ⁵ Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. ⁶ For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. ⁷ Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honour to whom honour is owed.

We ought also to cite 1 Peter 2.13-20, which explicates the point.

¹³ Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, ¹⁴ or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. ¹⁵ For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. ¹⁶ Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. ¹⁷ Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor.

¹⁸ Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. ¹⁹ For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. ²⁰ For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

The lawfully-instituted prince is given authority by God. Even when such a prince (or master, for a slave) is unjust, they have a delegated authority. “The authorities are ministers of God” – a high calling and honour.

This would indicate, at a first glance, that if lawful authority shuts down church gatherings, we must obey, no questions asked, even if the standard is unreasonable. But consider 2 Corinthians 11.23-25, where Paul is listing his suffering for the Gospel:

²³ Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labours, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. ²⁴ Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. 

Paul boasts of imprisonments, beatings, lashings, stoning – some from civil and some from Jewish religious authorities. We hear in Philippians 1 of Paul’s imprisonment in the Roman imperial prison itself for the crime of preaching a Heavenly King; he talks of himself in Ephesians 6.20 as “an ambassador in chains”. Has he broken his own dictum and defied the civil authorities in that authority given to them? Is that anything to boast about?

Paul also says to the Christian that “our citizenship is in Heaven” (Philippians 3.20). Though we subject ourselves to earthly authorities in their proper capacity, we are not their subjects, and they do not have fiat power over our lives. The state cannot command us to sin – consider the 7,000 who did not bow the knee to Baal, who are the very symbol in Romans of God’s faithful remnant; or again, consider Daniel, who prayed to God openly in a state that demanded pagan worship. Christian faith is not something that is freely permitted inside the head but is controllable by the state when it reaches the realm of the body.

Paul accepts the punishments meted out by unjust authority, as do Daniel and the three young men at the court of Persia. None complain. But they persist in what seems unconscionable rebellion against the God-instituted state.

But of course it was not rebellion; Paul and Daniel were subjects of the King of Heaven, and were acting on his higher demands. Paul paid his taxes, and Daniel wrote out the King’s orders, but neither permitted intrusion into the realm of religion by the state – indeed, Daniel was used of God to punish the state (in its embodiment, the King) for its idolatry and refusal to protect true religion.

So the Christian may defy the state’s impositions on matters of religion. Is church gathering a matter of religion? If it is not, scarcely anything else is – consider the whole thrust of Hebrews 10.23-25 on the matter, which instructs Christians in this manner:

²³ Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Meeting together to encourage one another, and stir up one another to love and good works, is directly connected to holding fast the confession of our hope. And indeed the author expects that the Christian may suffer for such faithfulness (10.32-34):

³² But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, ³³ sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. ³⁴ For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. 

Moreover, the same author describes the gathering of Christians thus (12.22-24)

²² But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, ²³ and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴ and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

We now see the meaning in Peter talking of suffering for doing good – there are actions of conscience, of the matters of true religion, which require the Christian to defy the state. One of those is meeting to approach heavenly Mount Zion together and stir one another up in faith. This is not cover for armed rebellion or refusing to pay your taxes; let no-one think that somehow Romans 13 or 1 Peter 2 lose all meaning in the face of these distinctions. It is carnal to trump one text with another, in relation to your personal preference. But it does clearly delineate matters reserved to the church, not the state.

Have churches been unfaithful, then, in following closure orders? I don’t mean have individual Christians, now worshipping in their household contexts, been unfaithful; I mean, have the duly-instituted authorities over churches (church government, that is) been unfaithful?

The context of the orders was, in essence, a sort of preemptive demi-quarantine – don’t mix too much because you must presume you are infected, and we have to slow the spread of the infection. Leviticus 13 provides for state-ordered quarantines, in incredible detail (59 verses!). God-honouring states now do not need to meticulously enforce these laws as they were written, but as mentioned above, they must pursue the “general equity” – the logic in the law. Quarantine laws existed in the Old Testament as a way to love one’s neighbours.

Churches, then, that obeyed the closure orders, were not necessarily unfaithful (though some institutions, such as the Church of England, by going farther than the law, have confessed thereby to an idolatrous servility). Indeed, in general, such obedience was faithful, and loving to one’s neighbours – when all other public movement and meeting was curtailed, and when next to nothing was known about the virus, it was quite proper to be obedient.

But what about now? Should churches obey closure orders if other sectors are reopened? Though there must be careful thought on the matter, and special care must be taken about those churchgoers who are medically vulnerable, the answer is, in general, no.

Why not? For two reasons:

(1) Physical-health-essential services like hospitals and food shops staying open during a wider closure made sense – but if non-physical-health-essential services are allowed to reopen with social distancing guidelines in place, and yet churches are not, the state is guilty of unequal weights and measures, of different standards. Deuteronomy 25.13-16 addresses this:

¹³ “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. ¹⁴ You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. ¹⁵ A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶ For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God.

If this state dishonesty had to do with a matter under the state’s competency, it would still be generally right to obey – but the practice of true religion is *not* under the state’s competency, so under such an injustice the church is permitted to appeal to its own King on the matter, and act in accordance with its own law.

(2) Such servility surrenders something to the state – and in this nation, a pagan state – which is fatal to the work of the church. If we declare that the state is able to decide that true religion is not essential, whilst – as the American example goes – “liquor stores and abortion clinics” are, we have surrendered our ambassadorial credentials; we can no longer speak for true religion. We obey quarantine laws to love our neighbours, but we can never surrender the hierarchy of value to the magistrate in this way.  This is idolatry of the state – a common-enough corruption in the British church today, but damning nonetheless.

Churches must weigh the matter carefully, considering what neighbour-love consists in, installing appropriate protective measures in the gathering, and so forth – but if the state relaxes restrictions elsewhere but not for the church, the church must return to Mount Zion together, and if necessary suffer for doing good.