Read the full story on Religion News Service.
But to John Greiner, who pastors Glorious Way Church in Houston, this measure is crucial. Last year, Greiner joined three other pastors in filing a petition with the Texas Supreme Court calling for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s order — that banned closed churches in the midst of COVID-19 — to be deemed unconstitutional.
From the pulpit, Greiner has preached about the importance of voting in favor of Proposition 3. And through his My God Votes campaign, Greiner wants to empower faith leaders to take a stand on issues surrounding religious freedom.
“We’re trying to let people know that the church ought to provide voting guidance for people and help them make an educated Christian decision when they go to the voting booth,” Greiner told RNS, adding that in this case it means voting “Yes” on the measure.
“When everyone else was closed, we got a tremendous response from the faith community because many of them were very upset that their pastor closed their churches and limited their services to livestream,” he said. “We had a lot of people that came to our church while theirs were closed and some of them never went back. Some of them stayed with us.”
To Greiner, individual churches and people who go to church “should be in charge of their own health care decisions, their own risks to reward behaviors.”
“The church should be the place where people go to get healed. There’s lots of churches and some don’t believe in healing. … They should be free to close if that’s what they want to do, but I don’t think that the government should impose that upon any group at all,” Greiner said