Thousands gather for Christian music concert at California Capitol, breaking COVID-19 rules
Neither coronavirus restrictions nor record-smashing heat could stop a large crowd from assembling outside the Capitol in Sacramento for a Christian music concert Sunday evening.
Almost none of the thousands attending wore a mask during the hours-long event, and spectators were packed in about as tight as could be, photos and video from the concert/protest demonstration show. That prompts concern amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected close to 20,000 people in Sacramento County and killed over 330 residents, including 190 deaths in the capital city.
Christian musicians and speakers, including the state senate’s Republican party leader, nonetheless took the stage on the west steps of the Capitol for what organizers called a “Let Us Worship” rally. Events branded under that title have toured West Coast cities in recent weeks, including Redding, Fresno and Pismo Beach.
“We are gonna worship like we’ve never worshiped before, and I declare that after all of this is over tonight, the remnant, the residue of this worship will saturate this ground and seep into that building,” said Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, the Senate’s minority leader and one of the first speakers invited to take the stage. “And when it goes into that building, it will touch every heart that enters. God bless you, let us worship!”
Grove isn’t supposed to be at the Capitol. She and nearly all of her fellow Republican state senators were ordered into 14 days of quarantine, from Aug. 27 through this Thursday, after state Sen. Brian Jones, R-Santee, tested positive for COVID-19. Only one Republican, Sen. Jim Nielsen of Tehama, was spared from the restriction because he missed a caucus lunch that Jones and all of the others attended.
At the helm of the musical prayer-protest movement making its way through California and beyond is Sean Feucht, a self-described “missionary, artist, speaker, author, activist, and the founder of multiple worldwide movements” with ties to a controversial Redding megachurch whose members believe they can heal the sick and raise the dead.
The Let Us Worship rallies come in response to government-issued restrictions that have closed churches for indoor worship during most of the pandemic.
Starting around 5 p.m. Sunday in Sacramento, spectators listened to impassioned preaching and joined in prayer and song, live-streamed video of the event shows. Grove at one point Sunday evening led a call-and-response chant, asking the crowd to praise California, its counties, its cities and its residents. Feucht played guitar and sang along with locally based Christian musicians, interspersed with preaching in which he repeatedly said God hasn’t given up on California.
“What if just for a moment we refused to buy in to the pessimistic, skeptical media? What if for a minute, we just decided to look in this book,” Feucht shouted, holding up a bible, “and prophecize the promises of God?”
Downtown Sacramento reached 109 degrees Sunday, matching a record for September in the capital city, the National Weather Service confirmed. Feucht wore a white T-shirt and shorts, and early in the event, he urged the crowd to stay hydrated. But he also pointed out that worshipers’ drive to assemble and pray together couldn’t be stopped by the extreme heat, which he hyperbolized as “100,000 degrees.”
Feucht boasted on social media that Sunday’s concert drew more than 11,000 people to California’s Capitol. A CHP spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Bee’s request for comment including an estimate on crowd size, but images from the event show it reached at least several thousand, exacerbating COVID-19 concerns even further. CHP said late Monday it allowed the protest to go ahead because it was a relatively short event.
It’s exactly the type of gathering Gov. Gavin Newsom urged residents to avoid ahead of the Labor Day weekend.
“Yes, it’s Labor Day weekend. No, that does not mean #COVID19 has gone away,” he tweeted Friday. “BE SMART. Don’t gather in large groups. Practice physical distancing. Wear a mask. Your actions this weekend can literally save lives.”
Newsom and the state’s health office have said throughout the pandemic that large crowd events such as concerts, graduation ceremonies, professional sports and others that bring thousands of people together represent by far the biggest risk of spreading COVID-19, and will therefore be the last activities permitted to resume in the statewide reopening process. Events with singing or chanting are of particular concern, because both activities increase the output and range of respiratory droplets that health experts say are the primary transmitter of the coronavirus.
But the issue is complicated by some public outcry and lawsuits, including some from or on behalf of churches, claiming that preventing certain types of events is a violation of First Amendment rights.
“(O)ur freedom to worship God and obey His Word has come under unprecedented attack,” reads an event description on the Let Us Worship website. “Powerful politicians and social media giants have engaged in unchartered abuses of religious liberty ... It’s time for the Church to rise up with one voice and tell our government leaders and the rulers of big tech that we refuse to be silenced!”
According to the California Department of Public Health’s COVID-19 guidelines, state directives “do not prohibit in-person outdoor protests as long as you maintain a physical distance of 6 feet between persons or groups of persons from different households at all times.” Local health offices may institute outdoor attendance capacity limits, the state says. Sacramento County’s public health order does not do so.
The California Highway Patrol says in its current permitting guidelines that it has lifted the “numerical cap for outdoor attendance” at protests and other First Amendment-protected events “designed for political and religious expression.”
Earlier in the pandemic, the CHP, which is the law enforcement agency for the Capitol grounds, stopped issuing permits for protests after demonstrators defied Newsom’s stay-at-home order preventing large gatherings, which has been in effect since March. One early May protest at the Capitol calling for the removal of the stay-at-home order resulted in 32 arrests.
The CHP rescinded its ban in June amid lawsuits and resumed issuing permits, but said events need to “follow health and safety guidelines relating to the wearing of masks and physical distancing.”
Participants at Sunday’s concert blatantly violated both of those protocols. The crowd was packed tightly, as seen in video of the event posted to social media and on the Let Us Worship website, and almost no one appeared to be wearing a mask, as social media users were quick to point out in comments.
The CHP’s webpage outlining COVID-19 rules for permitted events, though, phrases face coverings only as “strongly recommended,” though they’ve been mandatory in many public settings statewide since mid-June, including any outdoor scenario in which social distancing from others is not feasible.
Maintaining physical distance of 6 feet from others outside of one’s immediate household is described as mandatory at events on the Capitol grounds, the CHP says.
“Failure to maintain adequate physical distancing constitutes a violation of the permit and attendees are required to vacate state property,” the CHP website says.
This didn’t happen Sunday evening, and CHP officers didn’t enforce distancing requirements — which, given the size of the event and its packed nature, effectively would have meant shutting it down entirely.
A representative of Newsom’s office deferred response to the CHP, which did not immediately respond to The Bee’s requests for comment Monday morning.
Feucht thanked the CHP, whom he erroneously referred to as the “Capitol Hill police,” for “allowing us to exercise our First Amendment right to worship.”
According to Feucht’s website, the Let Us Worship series includes stops planned next week in Minneapolis and Kenosha, Wis. — cities that were the sites of the high-profile police killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake, respectively, prompting months of nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice.
In late August, as peaceful daytime protests in response to the Kenosha shooting gave way to more destructive demonstrations at night in Sacramento, a huge law enforcement presence guarded the Capitol, keeping demonstrators off the grounds.
This story was originally published September 7, 2020 at 10:17 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that both George Floyd and Jacob Blake were shot by police. Floyd was killed by police while being restrained on the ground, and was not shot.
