Charismatic church conference in Mulhouse, France, linked to country’s largest coronavirus cluster

The Christian Open Door Church in Mulhouse, France, has been linked to what officials describe as the country’s largest coronavirus cluster, according to Reuters. Local officials told the news agency that the church’s annual five-day prayer conference, held in mid-February, has been tied to as many as 2,500 coronavirus cases worldwide. More than 17 members have reportedly died from complications linked to COVID-19.

Reuters reported that the cluster played a key role in Germany’s decision to partially close its border with France, according to people familiar with that decision. Attendees who traveled from around the world have reportedly taken the virus home to Burkina Faso in West Africa, Corsica in the Mediterranean, and Guyana in Latin America.

At the time of the conference, France had confirmed only 12 cases of the virus, none of them in Mulhouse, and the country had not yet restricted large gatherings. A church spokesperson said no attendee had reported flu-like symptoms when the gathering ended on Feb. 21. Jonathan Peterschmitt, son of the church’s lead pastor, Samuel Peterschmitt, told Reuters, “At the time, we viewed COVID as something that was far off.” A church spokesperson said Samuel Peterschmitt has also fallen ill with the virus. Peterschmitt said attendance at times reached as many as 2,500, and never fell below 1,000. “So we were in the same petri dish for a week,” he was quoted as saying.

The first case linked to the gathering was identified on Feb. 29, and health officials traced the contacts of infected people. Public health officials told Reuters the church cooperated fully and supplied a list of attendees, an act of honest dealing in a public health emergency (Proverbs 11:1). Officials first contacted people who had worked in the nursery during the conference. Michel Vernay, an epidemiologist with France’s national public health agency in eastern France, said health officials found that some nursery staff were already sick. “We were overwhelmed,” Vernay was quoted as saying. “We realized that we had a time bomb in front of us.”

According to Vernay, about a quarter of France’s cases as of March 20 were in the region where Mulhouse lies, and he stressed that a “very great majority” of cases in the Grand Est region could be traced to the gathering. On Corsica, a 70-year-old woman who attended the conference and contracted COVID-19, identified only as “Antoinette,” told Reuters that people were blaming her for bringing the virus to the island, where more than 200 people have been infected. “People have pointed their finger at me,” she said. “They need a scapegoat.” Peterschmitt said other members of the congregation had been verbally attacked by strangers and were now fearful.

The report notes that the Christian Open Door Church is not the first church linked to the spread of the virus. In South Korea, members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which the report describes as a secretive group, faced criticism and harassment from the government and society after infections surged among churchgoers. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a March report that some government measures “appeared to be driven by legitimate public health concerns, others appeared to exaggerate the church’s role in the outbreak.” The commission also noted that the government of Seoul locked down Shincheonji churches in the capital, and that some mainline Protestant groups had accused the church of deliberately spreading the disease.

Some have argued that government bans on large church gatherings could inhibit religious freedom. USCIRF Chairman Tony Perkins wrote in a tweet that holding public church gatherings during the pandemic “is not a defense of religious freedom — it is a defiance of common sense and the care of your congregation.” In the United States, some pastors and churches continued to hold services while many moved worship online. Florida pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, who leads Revival International Ministries and The River at Tampa Bay Church, was arrested on a Monday after holding a service the previous day in violation of public stay-at-home orders. He was charged with unlawful assembly and violating health emergency rules. Louisiana pastor Tony Spell held live services attended by hundreds the previous Sunday at Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, in defiance of bans on large gatherings.

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