Places of worship can reopen with limited capacity. What are plans in Sacramento area?

With California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision this week to allow limited resumption of in-person religious services, many houses of worship appear to be holding off on an immediate reopening while there are still concerns about coronavirus.

At Bethany Slavic Missionary Church, which Sacramento County officials say had an outbreak of 71 coronavirus cases linked to members, family and friends despite the church’s closure in March, administrator Viktor Lyulkin said there are no current plans to resume in-person services at the church, the largest Slavic congregation in the nation with an estimated 3,500 members.

“Our services are online only at this time,” Lyulkin said Thursday.

At Sacramento’s Faith Presbyterian Church, which had two members die from COVID-19 and six others test positive for it, Pastor Jeff Chapman said he is taking a cautious approach and consulting a team of three church members with backgrounds in public health, infectious diseases and medicine.

That group originally advised him to shut down the church March 12, one of the earliest closures in the area, and Chapman said Thursday he is not rushing to resume in-person services.

“We are working with our leadership and the advisory team that we set up to develop a plan for reopening,” he wrote in a text message. “We should have that (plan) in place by next weekend. ... I suspect that we will be very conservative in our move to reopen. We will abide by all the public health official guidelines.

“My guess is that we would not have in person services until July at the earliest.”

Similarly, websites for other churches, temples and houses of worship indicate no rush to return to in-person services, even with the governor’s declaration that services can resume with 25 percent of a building’s capacity or with up to 100 participants, whichever is lower.

Catholic diocese in Sacramento to reveal reopening plan Friday

The California Catholic Conference says a decision on reopening will be up to each of the state’s 12 dioceses, and that only the diocese in Orange County has set a date for reopening: June 14.

“Every diocese has been formulating plans, working with infectious disease experts and others in developing safeguards to keep people safe,” spokesman Steve Pehanich wrote in an email.

Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto is expected to announce plans Friday for when churches may reopen, the diocese said Thursday, and churches are preparing in the event the bishop gives them approval to move forward.

“We are still waiting for Bishop Soto to tell us when we can reopen,” Pastor Eduino Silveira of Our Lady of Assumption Parish in Carmichael wrote in response to questions from The Sacramento Bee on Thursday. “The bishop is working with the county’s health authorities on a plan to reopen when it is safe.

“We will follow the governor’s guidelines and county’s requirements. We are not sure when we will reopen but are already getting things ready like removing books from pews, disinfecting the church and getting supplies like sanitizers, etc.”

Some houses of worship to remain closed until summer

At Congregation B’nai Israel, Rabbi Mona Alfi says a resumption of services may not come until later in the summer.

“We are not likely to reopen for worship in June,” she wrote in an email. “In order to do so we would need to have a number of things in place in order to be sure that we are doing all we can to keep our members, guests and staff safe.

“In Judaism the value of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) trumps almost everything else. More important than communal prayer is the belief that we all have an obligation to guard not only our own lives, but the lives of others as well. Neither God or community are confined to the interior of a building. We will continue to pray, study and socialize, just not in our sanctuary right now.”

Capital Christian Center also announced Thursday that it plans a slow, phased-in approach.

“After a significant amount of prayer and preparation, we will slowly resume ministries that can benefit from remaining within the 100-person maximum prescribed,” the church said on its website. “We’re committed to creating an environment that meets government recommendations for safety.

“To make that possible, our spaces have been redesigned to create a sanitary, touchless environment that allows for physical distancing.”

The church’s first in-person meeting will be a Celebrate Recovery session on June 5, but there is no set date for resumption of Sunday services in the church yet.

“At this time, we are not planning to open the Auditorium on a Sunday morning due to the limit of a maximum of 100 people,” the church said. “We will continue meeting through online services which can be accessed through Facebook, Youtube, or our website.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also is taking a slow approach, and has not scheduled any temple reopenings in California.

Sacramento County will not monitor churches for violations

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be services this weekend, and Sacramento County is not planning to monitor churches for potential violations, county spokeswoman Janna Haynes said.

“In every situation, we are taking the stance of education, not enforcement or citations,” Haynes wrote in an email. “Our goal is to ensure every sector understands the regulations and is complying with them.

“Anyone can report a business or organization violating the health order by calling 311.”

Governor’s order on churches spawned lawsuits, protests

Newsom’s original ban on in-person services has been one of his most controversial moves during the coronavirus shutdown, spawning protests and lawsuits. So far, federal judges have upheld his orders, but churches are continuing legal efforts aimed at challenging them.

More than 1,200 pastors, many in Southern California, have signed a petition saying they will reopen this weekend regardless of the governor’s limits on in-person worship.

And one day after Newsom announced his guidelines for churches to reopen, the Orange County Board of Supervisors passed a non-binding resolution declaring churches as “essential.”

“I know amongst the 1,200 that signed the petition there were definitely some medium-sized and mega churches on the list, and for them it would be virtually impossible to meet those limits unless a lot of their congregation didn’t come back,” said Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy in Escondido and an attorney suing Newsom over his order on churches.

Some churches have been open for weeks

Some churches, meanwhile, have been operating for weeks in defiance of the order. Pastor Tim Thompson of 412 Murrieta Church in Riverside County told The Bee on Saturday in front of the state Capitol that he resumed services a month ago.

And Abundant Life Fellowship Church in Roseville, which drew harsh online criticism for holding a Palm Sunday service last month despite the governor’s order, posted photos on its Facebook page Sunday of an in-person service that included social distancing and hand sanitizer at the door.

The Cross Culture Christian Church in Lodi also is planning to resume services on Sunday, said Broyles, who filed suit on behalf of the church after Lodi police halted its plans for Palm Sunday service last month.

Pastor Jonathan Duncan did not respond to a message seeking comment, and Broyles said it is not clear where the church services may be held because the church’s landlord changed the locks after the dispute with San Joaquin County officials erupted.

If services do go forward, they will fall within the governor’s guidelines because the congregation consists of only 30 to 50 people, Broyles said.

But he made it clear that the church’s lawsuit is not being dropped.

“The lawsuit’s continuing because of the constitutional violations,” he said.