(ETH) – Liberty Counsel has reportedly filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Andrew Wommack Ministries International (AWMI) against Colorado Governor. Jared Polis and the Colorado state and local public health departments for discriminating against religious gatherings.
The lawsuit seeks an immediate temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing Governor. Polis from illegally and unconstitutionally persecuting religious Coloradans who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to religious freedom. According to the report, AWMI is a Colorado nonprofit charitable corporation and religious ministry that provides Christian, Bible-based conferences, seminars, events, and other religious gatherings and also has an affiliated ministry, Charis Bible College, providing in-person and online education courses.
Under the governor’s orders, AWMI volunteers may conduct nonreligious services of almost any kind, including education, counseling, social services, and other “necessities of life” type subjects with unlimited numbers of attendees as long as social distancing is practiced. However, when AWMI or Charis open the Bible, give a sermon, or even pray, all but 175 people must leave the building or the ministers, teachers, students, and attendees can be criminally charged.
The suit points out that Governor. Polis has exempted 82 nonreligious categories and still allows mass gatherings of protesters throughout the state with neither size restrictions nor social distancing enforcement. The argument is that the virus does not favor one gathering over another and that the Governor has an ulterior agenda dressed up in health and safety enforcement.
There is no “pandemic pause button” to the Constitution, nor can governors or other officials discriminate in the application of public health orders. This Ministry is not the first Ministry in the crosshairs as the first church in America threatened to have its power and water turned off by a city for holding church is Harvest Bible Chapel. Liberty Counsel points out that “the silencing of our client Pastor Ché Ahn’s Harvest International Ministries silences a ministry to the over 65,000 international churches affiliated with Harvest.’
‘And now one of the most prolific Christian writers and teachers in the world along with his ministry, our client Andrew Wommack International Ministries (AWMI) and Charis Bible College, are under attack. Wommack and his ministries have reached over 1 billion people. Silencing AWMI is silencing a Christian voice that has reached one-eighth of the entire world population.”
