So far, North Carolina has done a better job of handling the coronavirus pandemic than most states south of the Potomac and south of the Ohio. That’s what makes a recent super spreader in my hometown of Charlotte all the more unnerving. A large event held earlier this month at a Charlotte megachurch has triggered the city’s first bona fide super spreader.
The United House of Prayer for All People held a “holy convocation” on the week of October 4-11 at its main church in Charlotte, located just north of downtown. Within two weeks, at least 68 coronavirus cases were linked to the event.
As of the close of business on Monday, that total has skyrocketed to 143—137 in Charlotte itself and surrounding Mecklenburg County, and six in three suburban counties. Out of that total, at least seven have been hospitalized, some on ventilators. Five people have died. And even that number may be too low. Mecklenburg County health officials are trying to find 192 close contacts of those 143 positive cases, and the convocation attracted people from five states.
And yet, even in the face of those numbers, church leaders were still planning to go ahead with a big revival that would have started yesterday. This left Mecklenburg County officials with no option but to issue an abatement order that banned all in-person events at the three United House of Prayer churches in Charlotte, including the one at the center of the outbreak, for at least two weeks.
Conventional wisdom would have suggested that what passes for leadership at this church would have gone screaming to the likes of Liberty Counsel, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the American Center for Law and Justice. But Sunday came and went with nary a peep from the church. Indeed, unless I’m very wrong, there have been no peeps of protest from the religious right or anyone associated with the United House of Prayer.
I initially thought that it was because what passes for leadership at this church realized it didn’t have a leg to stand on. After all, county health officials bent over backwards to work with them and get them to help get to the bottom of the outbreak. But church leaders flatly refused to provide basic details such as contact information for those who attended the gathering, and refused to cooperate with investigators and contact tracers.
But if a report from WCNC-TV in Charlotte is to be believed, it may be even more hideous than that. According to several United House of Prayer members who understandably want to remain anonymous, church leaders were well aware they had a COVID problem in their midst—and did absolutely nothing.
"Many of the members were not ok with the convocation proceeding on as normal," a member who did not want to be identified told WCNC's Billie Jean Shaw.
According to the members, Charlotte's convocation was a part of a continuous 12- week event which started in July in Buffalo, New York.
Members including those from Charlotte traveled in large groups to convocation held at different churches across the east coast, even in states where the cases were the highest, like New York City.
The members we spoke to say the church began dealing with COVID-19 cases at that time and leadership never directed services to stop.
Process this for a moment, folks. Church leaders knew that people were getting sick during what can only be described as a convocation caravan, and yet didn’t have the basic decency to call it off? If this is in fact true, every top leader in this church better have lawyers on speed dial. And that goes all the way up to Bishop C. M. Bailey, who leads the church from its headquarters in Washington. After all, the members who are speaking out in defiance of church leadership’s orders to keep quiet are describing something that, if even half true, is firmly in “what did they know and when did they know it” territory.
This may explain why no one from the United House of Prayer is screaming “persecution!” like we saw from a number of churches when most of the country was under stay-at-home orders this past spring. What lawyer with an iota of decency would go near a case where a church not only flatly refused to cooperate when it was apparent it caused a super spreader, but may have known people were getting sick and kept right on going? If that’s what happened, not even Mat Staver and Jay Sekulow would be that stupid.
According to another anonymous church member, this situation is “hurtful, painful, and on top of it, embarrassing.” That’s being way too kind to it. Speaking as someone who grew up in a neighborhood a mere three stoplights from the church as you drive north of downtown Charlotte, it’s incredibly reckless and dangerous. They put innocent people, including a lot of people with whom I grew up and who live in my old neighborhood, at undue risk.
And that’s before you consider that church leaders may have known they were sitting on a ticking time bomb and didn’t do a damn thing about it. This absolutely needs to be investigated. And if there’s anything to this, people absolutely need to go to jail.