If Chinese officials weren’t fans of the American media before, they are now. After weeks of taking all the heat for the coronavirus, the communist regime will be relieved to know that, according to the New York Times, they aren’t to blame for this global pandemic. Evangelicals are.

In a column so outrageous editors ultimately rushed to change the headline, opinion writer Katherine Stewart makes it her personal mission to pin the entire plague on the country’s faithful. “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals,” the block type insisted — until the paper was forced to turn Stewart’s vitriol down a notch to “The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Response to the Coronavirus.” If the new header was supposed to tamp down the controversy the column started, it didn’t.

It isn’t that Christians aren’t used to this sort of scapegoating. Honestly, there isn’t a problem in the world the far-Left hasn’t tried to frame believers for. But this, a hate-filled piece of editorial garbage, is exactly why Americans have turned their backs on the media. Too many outlets are more interested in attacking the president than containing the virus. And amazingly, the New York Times — from the city most ravaged by the catastrophe — is leading the way.

“Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise,” Stewart insists. “In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.” First of all, if anyone’s guilty of denying science, it’s liberals. We aren’t the ones on CNN arguing that babies aren’t human beings. Or that biology doesn’t determine your sex. Also, it might surprise the Times to know that if it weren’t for Christians, those supposed medical incompetents, America would barely have any hospitals to speak of. In New York City alone, two of the top three hospitals have religious roots. So spare us the absurd argument that evangelicals are somehow making the public health crisis worse.

But the truly offensive part of this whole rant is that while liberals are busy spewing contempt, these same evangelicals are on the streets of New York City treating patients. Groups like Samaritan’s Purse, who are part of the movement the Times bashes, don’t have time to respond to the accusations because they’re busy actually doing something about the crisis. Instead of sitting around picking political fights, they’re in the hotspots risking their lives to help strangers.

Over the weekend, while the Times was pushing out more rancor and division, the hospitals in its own backyard were crying out for help. And guess who answered? Within 48 hours, Rev. Franklin Graham’s team had set up an entire field hospital in Central Park with doctors, nurses, lab technicians, sanitation experts, and other support staff. And it’s not just New York City. Churches across the country have been reaching out to communities in ways Washington, D.C. never could. Stewart talks about Christians getting in the way of a “strong centralized response from the federal government,” but she doesn’t seem to understand that the faith community has always been a more efficient partner in serving the public good. Without the ministry of churches across the country right now, there would literally be hundreds of food banks, homeless shelters, day cares, and testing sites that would either be empty, shut down, or overrun.

Maybe, at the end of the day, that’s what the other side is really concerned about: the church’s impact. As everyone knows, it’s tragedy that forces people to look outside of themselves. In this time of social distancing, what if more people are finding the space to grow closer to God? The Wall Street Journal touches on that very possibility in a piece of commentary by Robert Nicholson, “A Coronavirus Great Awakening?” Nicholson makes the point that while this isn’t exactly the disaster World War II was, the pandemic has certainly “remade everyday life and wrecked the global economy in a way that feels apocalyptic.”

“Life had been deceptively easy until now… We float through an anomalous world of air conditioning, 911 call centers, acetaminophen and pocket-size computers containing nearly the sum of human knowledge. We reduced nature to "the shackled form of a conquered monster,” as Joseph Conrad once put it, and took control of our fate. God became irrelevant… But the pandemic has humbled the country and opened millions of eyes to this risky universe once more… For societies founded on the biblical tradition, cataclysms need not mark the end. They are a call for repentance and revival.“

Will Americans, he asks, "shaken by the reality of a risky universe, rediscover the God who proclaimed himself sovereign over every catastrophe?” We pray so.

For more on faith’s role in the virus response, don’t miss my two interviews on “Fox & Friends” and “Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream.”

Originally published here.

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De Blasio’s Close Line Hangs Churches out to Dry

The stories are gut-wrenching. They used sanitizer, kept a healthy distance, and refused to hug. But for one choir in Washington State, none of it mattered. By the end of the two-and-a-half-hour practice, 45 of the 60 people had been infected. Two will never sing again.

Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church isn’t alone. Pastors across America have watched the virus ravage their congregations — not because the churches didn’t abide by the government’s guidance, but because it was already too late. “Take it very seriously,” Pastor Mark Palenske pleaded from his home, where he and his wife Dena are trying to recover. Unfortunately, some faith leaders aren’t. In my own community back in Louisiana, Sunday services could prove fatal for hundreds of parishioners who continue to defy the order and meet. Other church leaders in Ohio and Florida also ignored the warnings, leading health experts to worry about the casualties of these kinds of “super spreader” events.

In New York City, which has basically become a virus combat zone, Mayor Bill de Blasio lost his mind when he found out that certain sanctuaries were still open on the sabbath. “A small number of religious communities, specific churches and specific synagogues, are unfortunately not paying attention to this guidance even though it’s so widespread," he told reporters Friday. "I want to say to all those who are preparing for the potential of religious services this weekend: If you go to your synagogue, if you go to your church and attempt to hold services after having been told so often not to, our enforcement agents will have no choice but to shut down those services.”

That, people could understand. It was what came next that has Americans everywhere up in arms. If the city’s houses of worship don’t comply, the mayor threatened, New York officials will “take additional action up to the point of fines and potentially closing the building permanently… You’ve been warned.” Where are we? Communist China? As frustrated as de Blasio is with the situation, this is a completely disproportionate response — not to mention an unconstitutional one. No mayor has the authority to permanently close the doors of a city’s churches and synagogues. And if he tried, there’s a little thing called the First Amendment that would have something to say about it.

“I understand how important people’s faiths are to them," de Blasio tried to explain, "and we need our faith in this time of crisis. But we do not need gatherings that will endanger people.” On that point, he’s right. But this kind of intimidation tactic is only going to make things worse. If anything, it gives faith leaders who were already digging in an excuse to become even more defiant. To them, it only confirms the state’s heavy-handedness, which is one of the reasons some rabbis and pastors aren’t complying. From the beginning, some people have been suspicious that the government is using this crisis to restrict their religious freedom. And when Bill de Blasio comes out and promises to put houses of worship out of business, he’s only proving them right.

Of course, there are some who will say that de Blasio was misunderstood. Surely, he only meant that he would close the churches and synagogues until after the worst of the virus had passed. If that’s the case, he ought to consider a clarifying statement. Because, let’s face it: the other thing he can’t permanently close is the courts. And if he doesn’t back down from this threat, plenty of groups would make sure the mayor is inside one when this is all over.

Originally published here.

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Farewell, Tom Coburn

If there’s one thing everyone admired about Senator Tom Coburn, it’s that he was a fighter. He fought for America, for what was right, and — since he was 28 years old — for his life. The longtime doctor lost that battle over the weekend, finally succumbing to the cancer he’d managed to beat so many times before. At 72, he lived 40 years longer than most people gave him. But then, the biggest mistake anyone ever made was underestimating the gentleman from Oklahoma.

“If you’re ever seriously ill," John Fund writes, "Coburn’s life is itself an inspiration. He contracted melanoma when he was 28 and working as manager of his family’s optical-lens factory. He was given only a 20 percent chance of living. He beat the melanoma, and his struggle convinced him to enter medical school and become a doctor. Years later, he contracted colon cancer and conquered that, too. In 2008, he had brain surgery to remove a benign brain tumor.

Then in 2013, he was told he had a rare form of prostate cancer, one that only one in 100,000 prostate-cancer patients suffer from. While the disease convinced him to retire from the Senate in early 2015, he remained optimistic.” He told a local newspaper that if his treatment worked, he’d live another “five or 10 years.” He lasted almost seven.

Beloved for his limited government, debt-reduction crusade, Senator Coburn was the voice of reason when no one else had the spine to be. Famous for his annual “Wastebook,” a collection of absurd pork projects that highlighted trillions of misspent government dollars, the three-term congressman and two-term senator “blocked more bad ideas and lousy legislation,” the Wall Street Journal once wrote, “than most Americans will ever know.”

A fearless champion of the family, even serving a stint on the FRC board, Tom Coburn spent decades bringing babies into the world as an obstetrician and five terms protecting those who weren’t yet born in Congress. He was a tireless advocate of parents, marriage, religious freedom, and conscience. And he did it all by putting his convictions ahead of political gain. While other members of Congress would do anything to get reelected, the senator once told Tim Carney that he believed in “holding the office with an open hand.”

But despite his fierce beliefs, Senator Coburn never lost sight of what was most important. When he was asked how he worked with people he disagreed with, Tom replied simply, “You need to separate the difference in political philosophy versus friendship. How better to influence somebody than love them?”

Our prayers go out to the entire Coburn family, as they mourn the loss of a true conservative giant. May they be comforted in the tremendous legacy he’s left behind.

Originally published here.

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This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.