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Heather Clark<\/a> – April 21, 2020<\/p>\n CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. \u2014<\/strong> The mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee has agreed to allow drive-in church services after being assured by area pastors that the meetings will be conducted with appropriate social distancing measures in place. The about-face from his initial prohibition comes two days after a lawsuit was filed against the City by a local church that asserted the restriction violated its freedom of religion and assembly.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery week I sign a new executive order. I have spoken to pastors who assured me they could operate drive in church safely, with spaces between the cars and no collection plates. This week\u2019s order therefore permits drive-in church. Please observe safely,\u201d Andy Berke posted to Twitter on Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to reports, on April 9, Berke had outlined on social media that \u201cdrive-in services, \u2026 even in their cars with the windows rolled up, for any length of time will be considered a violation of our shelter-in-place directive.\u201d The post is no longer available as of press time.<\/p>\n The following day, the City of Chattanooga shared a statement from local faith leaders<\/a> that \u201c[a]lthough coronavirus will prevent us from worshiping in the same buildings this weekend, it will not prevent us from celebrating and observing these enduring [Easter and Passover] traditions together.\u201d It encouraged residents to check with area religious groups about plans for online services.<\/p>\n On April 11, attorneys for Metropolitan Tabernacle Church sent an email to the city attorney to contend that the prohibition on drive-in services violates the U.S. Constitution. Steve Ball, the pastor, had previously inquired of local police whether it would be permissible to hold drive in services and was told yes by a lieutenant.<\/p>\n https:\/\/christiannews.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Heather Clark – April 21, 2020 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. \u2014 The mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee has agreed to allow drive-in church services after being assured by area pastors that the meetings will be conducted with appropriate social distancing measures in place. The about-face from his initial prohibition comes two days after a lawsuit was filed against … Continue reading Chattanooga Mayor Reverses Course, Allows Drive-In Church Services Following Lawsuit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[14909,14907,175,177,125,14662,14908,14910,241,26,1136],"class_list":["post-18485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-white-horse","tag-andy-berke","tag-chattanooga","tag-christianity","tag-christians","tag-church","tag-coronavirus","tag-drive-in-church","tag-metropolitan-tabernacle-church","tag-persecution","tag-religion","tag-tennessee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-4O9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18487,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18485\/revisions\/18487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}