You remember Pastor Tony Spell. The head of Louisiana’s Life Tabernacle Church was first arrested in April of 2020 for aggravated assault against a protester. But he became notorious for holding in-person church gatherings and putting countless people in harm’s way. Despite being under house arrest, he defied the law to preach at his nearby church multiple times a week, even asking supporters to send him portions of their stimulus checks.
Earlier this year, after a judge denied his motion to dismiss the six criminal counts he faces, he told an assembled crowd outside the courthouse that the judge “just ruled against God.”
He appealed the decision… and last week, a three-judge panel ruled against him too.
So what does spell say about those three (Republican) judges?
They’re all heathens, apparently.
“I just want you to know tonight that we have a wicked government that is ruling our world today,” he continued. “I just want you to know tonight that when three Republican judges summed up a writ of denial on May the 25th and said that ‘We do not believe that the relator, pastor Tony Spell’s, free exercise of religion lies outside of the jurisdiction of government’s authority,’ when they say that, they are saying in no uncertain terms that ‘We do not believe the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.’ And I just want to serve notice to you three Republican judges — Mitch Theriot, Elizabeth Wolfe, and Chris Hester — that you are a godless judge. You have no right to sit on the seat in the United States of America and rule against Christians in America and tell us that we don’t have a free exercise of religion. Not only are you against God, but God is against you because when you come against God’s people, you come against God himself!”
How’s that for a justice system? In Spell’s world, non-Christians shouldn’t be on the bench and no judges can rule against anything a Christian does. If they do — because Spell is violating the law — then they’re the evil ones for saying so.
That’s the sort of cult Spell runs. Justice can only work in one direction and whatever he says is final. The sad thing is that the people gullible enough to attend his church don’t realize that even Christian judges can rule against your side without rejecting their God.
The government isn’t restricting Spell’s ability to lead a church, by the way. The question has always been whether he has the right to put the community’s health in danger because he’s too stupid to understand how viruses work. These judges, by the way, weren’t even ruling on the merits of the case. They were ruling on a procedural matter.
Not that Spell cares. Everything is persecution to someone who lives in a Christian bubble.
(via Right Wing Watch. Portions of this article were published earlier)
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