“It grieves me to no end that they’ve been arrested and imprisoned,” Mr. Coates noted that the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hasn’t unveiled any plan or timeline to lift national mandates, and proof of vaccination continues to be required for air travel to the United States.įor that reason, he said he understands the willingness of the truckers currently blockading Ottawa to go to prison. While many Canadian states have lifted their regional restrictions, Mr. He added that GraceLife Church, which has continued to host Sunday services without mask requirements or size limits, has not had any COVID-19 infections beyond some “isolated cases” that obliged it to go online for two weekends last July. They picked the fight with us, almost like they wanted to make us an example to the rest, but it backfired.” “We never asked for a confrontation with the governing authorities. “The more time passes, the more I’m encouraged and satisfied we took the stand we did and I went through the experience I did,” Mr. “We didn’t tell people they had to come to church, we just said they could come if they wanted and wear a mask if they chose.”īut while the prison time was hard on his wife, Erin, and their two sons, now aged 12 and 18, he said he “would do it the same way again.” “We left it to everyone’s conscience,” he said. Coates, pastor of the GraceLife since 2010, said “about 200” people were attending Sunday services and “only a couple of them” were wearing masks when Royal Canadian Mounted Police began visiting on Sundays in December 2020. It’s up to the leadership of a local church to decide whether to comply with requests and how to reopen safely without putting people in jeopardy.” “The government doesn’t have the right to tell the church what to do. “Fundamentally, it comes down to the headship of Christ over his church and not wanting to surrender that to Caesar,” Mr. Government: Taking a Biblical Stand When Christ and Compliance Collide.” He co-wrote the book with Nathan Busenitz, a pastor at Grace Community Church in California. Competing rights and interests must be respected, accommodated, and balanced … Individual rights and freedoms are not absolute.He tells his story with a theological twist in the new book “God vs. “These claims are unsupported by and wholly inconsistent with the facts of this case,” Shaigec concluded. The judge dismissed an assertion made by Coate’s lawyers that the pastor was ticketed on the day he gave a sermon that was critical of the Alberta government in an attempt to censor him and to “impose a chilling effect.” He also said the decision to ticket Coates was made after numerous attempts by health authorities to get GraceLife Church to comply with public health orders. Shaigec said in his decision that the government was not targeting the church or its pastor, but responding to many complaints from the public. During his testimony, Coates called masking hilarious and said restrictions were part of “an agenda to transform the nation.” He argued provincial regulations meant to curb the spread of COVID-19 infringed on his and his congregants’ constitutional right to freedom of religion and peaceful assembly. He was released March 22 after pleading guilty and was fined $1,500.Ĭoates challenged the one charge he still faces under the Public Health Act during his cross-examination in May. He ordered that the trial reconvene at the end of June to decide on the constitutionality of Alberta public health orders that have limited attendance at places of worship.Ĭoates, who is a pastor at GraceLife Church in Spruce Grove, Alta., spent a month in the Edmonton Remand Centre after he violated a bail condition not to hold church services that officials said were ignoring measures on capacity limits, physical distancing and masking. “The question today is whether the purpose, manner, or effect of enforcement of that law on December 2020 violated James Coates’s religious freedoms. Provincial court Judge Robert Shaigec dismissed the application on Monday. Pastor James Coates made a charter application in relation to a ticket he received on Dec. A judge has ruled that the religious freedoms of an Alberta pastor who is on trial for violating COVID-19 regulations were not violated.
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