It's Sunday

There's a reason for the Trump camp's focus on church reopenings.

The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.

[...]

[A] person close to the campaign described an April survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, which showed a double-digit decline in Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals (-11), white Catholics (-12) and white mainline protestants (-18) from the previous month, as “pretty concerning.”

[...]

The polls paint a bleak picture for Trump, who has counted on broadening his religious support by at least a few percentage points to compensate for weakened appeal with women and suburban populations. One GOP official said the dip in the president’s evangelical support also appeared in internal party polling, but disputed the notion that it had caused panic.

  Politico

We understand.

As the coronavirus-related death toll approaches 100,000 and outbreaks emerge in locations where social distancing is more difficult, Laura Gifford, a historian of politics and religion at George Fox University, said it’s likely [to] become harder for the president’s supporters to embrace his plans for an accelerated reopening of the country. The more Trump contradicts health officials who have warned against reopening schools and nonessential businesses, she suggested, the less accepting his usual supporters might become of his overall response.

But his diehard supporters will stick with him until the bitter end, which may be coming sooner than later for some of them.

Guidelines released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about reopening certain establishments — including schools, public transit systems and child care facilities — did not mention how religious institutions should go about returning to in-person worship services and ministry opportunities. One senior administration official said the guidance was omitted due to concerns that the prescriptions CDC staffers planned to provide were too restrictive.

Scientists fear evangelicals, apparently. Or maybe it's just the guy at the top responsible for making that decision.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.