Church Members Placed on House Arrest Fight for Justice 

Liberty Counsel continues to battle KY Gov. Andy Beshear five years after his unlawful, anti-church edicts and actions. 

On Easter Sunday 2020, members of Maryville Baptist Church were put on the equivalent of two-week house arrest for attending a stay-in-your-own-car parking lot service.

Some lost their jobs, causing serious financial hardships in the midst of an already difficult time. Pastor Jack Roberts was forbidden to leave the state or even cross county lines. Even after two separate courts of appeals ruled against the governor, KY Gov. Andy Beshear remains defiant!

Five years later, Liberty Counsel is still fighting for justice for this small country church, its pastor, and its members. We will not allow the church to be silenced!

Defend the Church by supporting our legal fund today, and a Challenge Grant will DOUBLE the impact of your donation.

Gov. Beshear’s orders allowed everyone to gather in a liquor store parking lot or even inside a liquor store. But church and church parking lots were forbidden. A court in a neighboring county had already ruled that banning church was unlawful. But Gov. Beshear didn’t care. He decided to make an example of Maryville Baptist’s congregants. So, Liberty Counsel headed to court.

In two back-to-back 3-0 decisions, the Court of Appeals agreed with us, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky was freed from Gov. Beshear’s illegal and unconstitutional shutdown orders.

Unbelievably, Gov. Beshear is now demanding the courts allow him to return to his anti-church ways and enable him to once again shut down any house of God any time he chooses. And he refuses to pay for the damage he caused!

There has been a sickening uptick in attempts to silence the gospel these last several years.

Our client, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, was the first pastor to be arrested, booked, and jailed for opening his church after Hillsborough County issued a lockdown order at 10 p.m. on Good Friday 2020. Abortion clinics and big box stores were permitted to open but not places of worship. 

A slew of other state and local government assaults on churches followed. The mayors of Los Angeles and Chicago threatened to seize and destroy our clients’ churches. The pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Chincoteague Island, Virginia, faced criminal charges. Members of his church, as well as Calvary Chapel in Bangor, Maine, faced probation violations and a return to prison for attending their church rehabilitation programs. The list of American Christians punished for their faith during COVID is staggering.

Help us defeat anti-church tyranny!

But the tyranny did not end with COVID. There are still far too many willing to stop at nothing to prevent the Good News from being preached.

Make no mistake, Charlie Kirk was murdered for preaching the gospel — specifically God’s design for marriage and human sexuality. A gender-confused young man, who hated Charlie’s biblical messages on gender, tried to silence the gospel with a bullet through Charlie’s neck. 

But what the enemy meant for evil, our Lord turned to good. By 2022, Millennials and Gen Xers began flooding the churches. In fact, Gen X attendance increased by 8%, Millennial attendance increased by 18%. And a 2025 survey shows that Gen Z are more faithful churchgoers than any other current generation. Since then, we’ve seen massive revivals break out on college campuses across the country. Many churches, which once had empty pews, were packed to standing room only last Sunday, just days after Charlie Kirk was martyred.

This Sunday is “Back to Church Sunday.” In an age where government tyrants and gender-confused young men will do anything to silence God’s Word, the best possible thing we can do is to grab a friend and head to church this Sunday!

Help us keep churches open and the gospel spreading to the ends of the earth by supporting our legal fund today.

And please, keep praying in the spirit of 2 Chronicles 7:14.

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”