'This is Censorship'
Google suspends evangelical church's app for violating coronavirus 'sensitive events' policy
by Jon Brown
Washington Examiner
An app used by an evangelical church in Idaho to stream Bible lessons and sermons was suspended by Google when the tech giant deemed its content insensitive.
The ministers and staff at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, a college town about 80 miles south of Spokane, Washington, are weighing their options after Google refused to budge on its decision that the church's app violates the company's "Sensitive Events policy" amid the coronavirus outbreak.
".@GooglePlay suspended our app today," the church tweeted on Good Friday. Speculating that pastoral calls for repentance during the pandemic and "short lessons on responding faithfully to the COVID-19 crisis" could have singled them out, the church added a photo of the Google notification informing them, "We don't allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event." The Christ Church app was then scrubbed from the Google Play store, which leaves Android users unable to download it.
Christ Church later tweeted they had appealed Google's decree and had learned Google was suspending all apps related to the coronavirus.
Christ Church received a response to the appeal on Thursday, which reiterated that their app was deemed in violation of the Sensitive Events policy and would not be reinstated until all references to COVID-19 were removed. Google then directed them to a webpage offering examples of "common violations."
Ben Zornes, who has been an executive minister at Christ Church for four years, told the Washington Examiner, "So, essentially, merely referencing COVID-19 is putting us out of compliance with their 'Sensitive Events' policy. We are now evaluating the best way forward as we believe this is censorship, and wrong-headed.
We are not purporting to present any medical advice or information on the virus, we are simply presenting what we believe Scripture teaches in regards to how to face such crises in faith and love to our neighbor."
The church's suspension comes as tech companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are vigorously cracking down to suppress what they deem to be misinformation about the coronavirus, sometimes with the assistance of the World Health Organization. Twitter recently deleted tweets from Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Fox News host Laura Ingraham touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure. Facebook went so far as to remove a post from Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro claiming the anti-malaria drug was "working in every place."
The Christ Church app remains available to iPhone users in the Apple Store, and the church's channel is still up on YouTube, but as churches and synagogues move online and would-be worshipers are arrested for congregating in person, some are concerned about the power tech companies could wield over religious institutions, even unwittingly.
The purpose of the suspended app was to provide their quarantined congregation with "sermons and a couple podcasts helping our people think biblically about the coronavirus," Zornes explained. "What does the Bible have to say? How should we think about these things during this time, doing what we believe pastors and the church should be doing, which is helping people not live in fear and helping them to love their neighbor? And apparently, that was flagged somehow."
Zornes remains unsure whether the app was initially swept up by an algorithm or if it was removed intentionally. "It sounds like they're doing a lot of this just by algorithms, rather than actual staffers reviewing these things," he said. "At the same time, it does sound like the Google Play store cracked down on any apps that were advertising COVID-19 or coronavirus. If you search for it in the Google Play store, apparently, you just get official government apps related to the coronavirus. But what they didn't communicate to us is, are we just lumped in with a bunch of other apps that have been suspended for the same reason, or was this targeted in any way?"
Regarding the possibility the app was flagged deliberately because of the theological content of their coronavirus-related podcasts and sermons, Zornes said, "We just don't know," but added, "I think the thing that's of concern for us is what other topics could they suppress? Positions that the Church has held for years, and for millennia, derived from Scripture? If they just have a switch to kill our platform and to take away our microphone, it doesn't seem like they're very favorable for free speech."
Pastor Douglas Wilson, the senior minister of Christ Church, is no stranger to controversy, having written prolifically on many divisive topics. The 66-year-old Calvinist firebrand has waded repeatedly into heated cultural and religious debates with both fellow evangelicals and high-profile atheists, such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.
In a March 29 sermon titled "On Trampling the Courts of God," Wilson appealed to the Old Testament prophets to denounce what he characterized as national sins, such as the abortion clinics and pot shops that have been deemed "essential" by states such as California. Citing Amos 3:6, he further preached that like all calamities, the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences should be seen as "a threat delivered to us personally by the hand of God" to urge personal repentance.
"What's happening here is God is shaking everything," Wilson continued, referencing Hebrews 12:27. "He is shaking everything so that we would stop having faith in things that are so shakeable. We need to stop having faith in the things that we once thought were so secure. God is shaking everything so that we might trust in Him."
"We Americans have offended God," Wilson concluded. "That's it, that's the bottom line."
Rod Dreher, a Christian author, who is the senior editor of the American Conservative, and has tussled publicly with Wilson on several occasions, came to his defense after the Christ Church app was suspended.
"First, if Google really did boot Christ Church over Wilson’s comments connecting abortion and gay marriage to the judgment of God, then they may well kick off the platform any number of Christian churches for holding those views," Dreher said. "Few Christian churches are led by a pastor who is as combative as Doug Wilson, but if Doug Wilson has lost his platform over this, no traditional Christian church is safe."
"A time of national crisis is a time when we need to protect the contrarians and the wild-eyed prophets more than ever," he added, and worried "Google is using this crisis to exercise its immense power to silence voices it doesn’t like."
In response, Wilson wrote, "Rod makes the repeated (and very correct) point that the weapons that are being used on people that you might not happen to like may well be weapons that are going to be turned on you in about ten minutes. Throughout the article, Rod made it most apparent that whether he agreed or disagreed with me was entirely beside the point, and that Christians need to come to grips with the fact that religious liberty is the basic point here."
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