The state Department of Health fined Legacy Church and Calvary Church $5,000 each on Monday after photos and video showed both churches violated orders limiting occupancy, mandating masks and practicing social distancing.<\/p>\n
Legacy Church officials accused the state of trampling on their constitutional rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken the pandemic seriously from the start, and have prudent measures in place. But when governments exceed their constitutional authority and contradict what we are called on by God to do, we answer first to His authority,\u201d the church said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Calvary Church\u2019s Chief Pastoral Officer Neil Oritz said it has \u201cexperienced a significant attendance on one of the most celebrated and sacred days of our Christian faith.\u201d In response to the gathering, the church \u201cchose not to break fellowship with any worshiper by requiring them to leave the gathering of their church family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ortiz said the church continued to urge people to follow guidelines, blocked every other row to practice social distancing, provided outdoor seating and gave masks to guests who were not wearing one.<\/p>\n
Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, said the leaders and congregation at the two churches violated state regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey endangered the lives livelihoods and health of not only their parishioners but their entire communities \u2013 and given how quickly this virus can spread, potentially our state as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 138,000 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 2,380 have died as of Monday, health officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
state Department of Health fined Legacy Church and Calvary Church $5,000 each on Monday after photos and video showed both churches violated orders limiting occupancy, mandating masks and practicing social distancing. Legacy Church officials accused the state of trampling on their constitutional rights. \u201cWe have taken the pandemic seriously from the start, and have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49639"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}