In an article published recently in Religion Unplugged, Paul Marshall, Senior Fellow and FORIS Scholar with the Religious Freedom Institute, explores “The most contentious of the religious freedom issues raised by the coronavirus pandemic … outright bans on religious gatherings … [and] the now more common stringent limits on most religious gatherings.”

The policy challenges COVID-19 has brought about point to deeper questions about how religious institutions and governments do, and should, interact. Marshall writes, “…religious bodies and states are nearly always intertwined, otherwise there would not be so many disputes about their relationships and respective authority.”

After outlining a number of instances in which the domains of governments and religious institutions intersect, Marshall concludes, “[C]hurch and state may have authority over one another according to their respective missions as long as they do not seek to usurp the proper role of the other.”

Read the full article: Should Churches Like John MacArthur’s Resist COVID-19 Restrictions?