This is Molly Hemingway, encouraging you to listen to my favorite podcast, issues, etc.

Every day you get in-depth interviews with host Todd Wilkin asking expert guests, substantive, thought-provoking questions on all of the important news and issues of our day.

The expert guests are in culture, law, ethics, philosophy, theology,

and apologetics. Expert guests? Expansive topics. Always extolling Christ. Issues, etc. We just crossed over the fifth anniversary of the beginning of what turned out to be a multi-year ordeal for the entire world.

Of course, I'm talking about the COVID pandemic.

While we hoped that it would be of short duration, it ended up being a very long duration,

and things got pretty dicey in terms of the free exercise of religion, especially with local or even state actors saying,

well, the casino can stay open, the riots can take place in the street, but the

church, you have to keep your doors closed or you have to keep it to a minimum of people with

that six foot distancing that was supposed to have helped so much. So what have we learned

after five years since the pandemic began? and why were some religious freedom organizations hesitant

to challenge the church closings and the worship restrictions?

Welcome back to Issues, Et cetera.

I'm Todd Wilkin, joining us to talk about recourse for Christians and churches in a future pandemic.

Ryan Tucker, he's Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.

Ryan, welcome back. Thank you very much for having me. Why were religious freedom organization

that's initially hesitant during the early months of the pandemic to challenge church closings,

worship restrictions, vaccine mandates, and other top-down COVID restrictions?

Well, I think first those were uncertain times. You know, we didn't know how bad the virus was,

how it was transmitted, what precautions made the most sense. So I think some Christian leaders,

or most Christian leaders, wanted to do their very best to ensure the health and safety of their flock and their community.

But obviously, a big, if not most important aspect of that was their spiritual health.

...