Louisiana Voice

On April 1, I posted my annual April Fool’s column on LouisianaVoice.

You can review the post HERE, but today I’m writing to say that once again, life imitates art, even when that “art” is published as parody. As has been said by wiser people than I, irony is wasted on some people.

I wrote about a fictional preacher named Rev. Howe Dewey Connem who appeared more motivated by the potential loss of love offerings than in the actual welfare of his parishioners.

It turns out that that had a tad more than a tinge of truth with the real-live travails of the minister of a Baton Rouge-area church who has defied orders by Gov. John Bel Edwards to avoid clusters while we are in the throes of a worldwide pandemic.

Three stories about Rev. Tony Spell, pastor of Central’s Life Tabernacle Church, caught my eye this week, two of them local and one a national story.

First, Spell was arrested on a charge that he nearly ran over a protester with one of the church’s 27 buses used to haul worshipers to services at his mega-church. The near-victim was protesting Spell’s insistence on continuing to hold full-blown worship services at his church in defiance of both the governor and a court order. Spell, of course, denied that he nearly ran over the person.

Then, on Saturday, it was learned that Spell had been placed under HOUSE ARREST after refusing to tell a state judge if he would continue to hold services or not.

One of the conditions of Spell’s release after the bus incident was that he “refrain from any and all criminal conduct, including but not limited to strictly abiding by all emergency ordered” issued by Edwards.

When given a deadline of 5:45 p.m. Saturday to answer the judge about his intentions, he responded instead with a Bible quote: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy are ye; and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled.”

No mention of any observance of common sense.

Spell posted a video from his home in which he vowed “to continue to do what I do,” adding that “This is not about me. This is about our religious liberties.” Then, as an ankle monitor was being attached by authorities, he said beginning at 12 noon on Sunday, “my voice will silenced for several months. You will not hear from me again.”

No explanation was given for that last statement, but to be sure, this most certainly is about him. It’s always been about him. If you don’t believe that, consider the CNN story was preceded the two stories in the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Last Sunday (April 19, Easter Sunday), Spell was quoted by CNN as asking his congregants to DONATE THEIR FEDERAL STIMULUS CHECKS to the church, prompting one reader to ask if those who do so would receive an anointed prayer cloth.

To Spell’s credit (I suppose), he at least offered the pretense that he was thinking of others (besides his church members who just might need that money). “We are challenging you, if you can, give your stimulus package to evangelists and missionaries who do not get the stimulus package.”

He didn’t mention whether or not he was eligible for stimulus money but he did reveal that his motives for defiance may rooted as much in a desire to keep the money flowing in as in any concern for First Amendment rights, which he continues to tout.

“This is not about me,” he said Saturday. “This is about our religious liberties.”

Louisiana has the 9^th-most confirmed cases of coronavirus and 1,267 people—about the same number who attended his church for Easter services last week—have died in the state. Still, Spell insists that the pandemic is “politically motivated.”

The whole thing reminds me of the John Denver-George Burns movie Oh, God! in which the televangelist in the movie, clad in an electric-blue leisure suit proclaimed to his congregation that when he talked about “LO-uve, (love), I’m talkin’ about the feelin’ you get when you dig DEEP into your pockets to support this min-is-try.”

You have to wonder if Spell has given any thought at all to the plight of his members who have been thrown out of work by the shutdown caused by COVID-19 or if he is even capable of thinking of others’ misfortunes as the Bible teaches us to do.