Greenville, MS police issue $500 citations to drive in churchgoers

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The phone rang at the mayor’s office earlier this week and the voice on the line said, “We’re having church on Wednesday, no matter what.”
The caller, according to Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons, claimed to be the pastor of Temple Baptist Church on Reed Road in Greenville.
The parking lot of the church was full Wednesday night with members of the church who gathered in parked vehicles to listen to Pastor Arthur Scott’s sermon broadcast on a low-power FM frequency radio.
The church, according to member Lee Gordon, has been using the radio broadcast for the last three weeks as part of the social-distancing recommendations from federal, state and local governments during the COVID-19, coronavirus epidemic.
Those social distancing mandates were strengthened with Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves shelter-in-place order on April 3 and further strengthened with Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons’ executive order on Tuesday that all church buildings are to be closed for both in-person and drive-in church services

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The executive order further halted drive-in church meetings and encouraged those churches to use other means to communicate their message.
That’s what the membership of Temple Baptist Church thought they were doing on Wednesday, but Simmons said their meeting in the parking lot of the church is in direct defiance of the executive order.
“We’ve done these orders for the safety of our citizens,” Simmons said.
Simmons pointed to reports from the Mississippi Department of Health and news from the governor’s office outlining church meetings and other gathering places as epicenters for the increased numbers of cases seen in the state.
Gatherings of 10 or more people have been banned in the city for more than three weeks now, even before the governor’s shelter-in-place order.

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Gordon, whose been a member of the church for 23 years, said he thought the congregation was doing the right thing by coming to the church and staying in their cars with the windows rolled up.
“The preacher is in the church at the pulpit and we are streaming the service live as well,” Gordon said. “But a lot of our membership is elderly and doesn’t have access (to technology needed to stream the service).”
Gordon, who is also a representative for the Washington County Board of Supervisors, was in the parking lot Wednesday night and both he and his wife were issued $500 tickets.
“The police were respectful and just doing their job,” Gordon said. “They asked us to leave first and those who stayed got a ticket.”

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Gordon pointed out a gathering not dissimilar to the one at the church happening close by. “There’s 25 cars 200 yards away all in the same place at the Sonic Drive-In,” Gordon said. “What we’re doing endangers nobody.”

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