Megachurch pastor diagnosed with COVID after attending White House party with daughter
The senior pastor of Free Chapel, a megachurch based in Georgia, has tested positive for COVID-19, the church announced Sunday.
Pastor Jentezen Franklin tested positive after coming into contact with someone with the virus, Javon Ruff, another pastor at the church, announced during Sunday’s live-streamed service in Gainesville.
”He is doing perfectly fine. He’s doing great,” Ruff said in front of a crowd of churchgoers. “He went and got tested, his test came back positive, and so he’s doing the right thing to do to quarantine and continue to be distant.”
Free Chapel, which is based in Gainesville and describes itself as a “local church with a global vision,” has seven campuses in three states, its website says.
Several people in attendance Sunday could be seen in the livestream not wearing masks. The church began holding in-person services outdoors in August and indoors in September, 11Alive reports.
Franklin was “exposed to an associate of the congregation ... on Thursday who turned out to be infected,” Tracy Page, a spokesperson for Free Chapel, told McClatchy News in a statement.
He is experiencing mild symptoms and is “in consultation with his personal physician, self isolating and abiding by all relevant CDC guidelines,” Page says.
Ruff said during the service that the church’s candlelight service will be held online instead of in person on Christmas Eve out of an “abundance of caution.”
“Due to the rise in Covid-19 cases in our area, Free Chapel will be moving their East Coast 5pm candlelight services to an online digital experience that can be viewed on freechapel.org,” the statement says.
Franklin posted a photo on his Instagram days earlier of him and his daughter at a White House Christmas party.
“When she was a little girl, I use to take her on dates with me,” his post says along with the photo of the two of them. “Now that she is a mom with two little girls of her own, I enjoyed immensely taking her on a father daughter date to the White House. Love you @courteneybence!! Thank you @flotus and @realdonaldtrump for inviting us. It was gorgeous! Merry Christmas everyone!”
Trump has been criticized for holding several holiday parties at the White House as the pandemic worsens across the country and despite public health warnings against large indoor gatherings.
The president defended the parties when a reporter asked him about them earlier this month.
“Well, they’re Christmas parties, and frankly, we’ve reduced the number very substantially, as you know,” Trump said, according to The Guardian. “And I see a lot of people at the parties wearing masks. I mean, I would say that I look out at the audience at those parties, and we have a lot of people wearing masks, and I think that’s a good thing.”
While many have been seen wearing a mask at the parties, others have been seen maskless, and photos have shown attendees crowded together, according to The Guardian.
Franklin also attended the September nomination ceremony for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the White House Rose Garden ceremony, which was later identified as a superspreader event after several people in President Donald Trump’s administration, including the president and first lady Melania Trump, tested positive for the coronavirus. Franklin tested negative following the ceremony, WQAD reports.
He has been an ally of the president’s and has served as an evangelical adviser to him. He spoke at the Trump campaign’s event “Evangelicals for Trump: Praise, Prayer, and Patriotism” in Atlanta in July.
Several in Trump’s inner circle have tested positive for the virus in recent months.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney who had led his campaign’s efforts to challenge to outcome of the election, tested positive earlier this month.
Giuliani’s son, Andrew Giuliani, and Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons, tested positive for the virus in mid-November, along with with several others, according to The New York Times. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and David Bossie, an adviser leading the campaign’s lawsuit efforts, tested positive earlier in November.
This story was originally published December 20, 2020 at 12:42 PM with the headline "Megachurch pastor diagnosed with COVID after attending White House party with daughter."
