Mississippi Burning: Church That Challenged COVID Lockdown Set on Fire

First Pentecostal Church in Holly Springs, Mississippi, after an unknown person(s) set it on fire (Image: Tate Reeves Twitter)

Yesterday, a Mississippi Pentecostal church was burned to the ground after it had been trying to open services amid the state’s coronavirus lockdown. The fire is being investigated by police as a suspected arson attack.

First Pentecostal filed a lawsuit last month against the city over its public health order on in-person worship services, the station reported.

Based on some initial evidence, it’s suspected that the attack may have been carried out by pro-lockdown fanatics, possibly distraught over the congregation’s attempts to legally hold church services.

The arsonists taunted church members after torching the building by spray painting, “Bet you stay home now you hypokrits” in the parking lot adjacent to the church, according to Maj. Kelly McMillen of the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department.

Last month, the First Pentecostal Church had filed a lawsuit against the city of Holly Springs, arguing that the municipality’s “stay-at-home order” had violated First Amendment rights of the church and its members’, including the right to free speech and assembly, and the practice of religion.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves took to social media, saying that he is “heartbroken and furious” by events.

I am heartbroken and furious. In Mississippi, a church was just burned to the ground. They had been trying to open services. There was graffiti on the lot which read “Bet you stay home now you hypocrites.”

What is this pandemic doing to us? We need prayer for this country. pic.twitter.com/TdGHqs9evv

— Tate Reeves (@tatereeves) May 21, 2020

NBC News reports…

“This is not who we are,” the governor said at a daily news conference on the coronavirus epidemic and the state’s response.

“Obviously, we have to ensure that this investigation is done and that it is completed,” Reeves said. “But if this is in fact what it looks like, I want you to know that we’re going to do everything in our power to find whomever burned this church down.”

Stephen Crampton, attorney for the church, told WMC that he has no doubt that the fire was connected to the lawsuit.

“To find that that graffiti is spray painted in there — ‘I bet you stay home now, you hypocrites,’ right — seems very clearly directed at this particular lawsuit and the church’s stand for its own Constitutional rights,” he said.

Church leaders had tried and failed to receive an injunction to the city’s emergency lockdown decrees. New York Times reports:

In a blistering opinion filed last week in response to the lawsuit, Judge Michael P. Mills wrote that he feared that the church was “proceeding in an excessively reckless and cavalier manner and with insufficient respect for the enormity of the health crisis which the Covid-19 pandemic presents.”

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