Recently Dream City Church, a megachurch located in Phoenix, AZ, made the headlines when a Facebook post on the church’s page went viral. In it, pastor Luke Barnett (son of founding pastor Tommy Barnett) and Dream City’s CFO, Brendon Zastrow, claimed to have installed an air purification system that kills 99.9% of floating coronavirus bacteria. Thus, attendees to the church need not worry, because thanks to the vigilance of its leaders, they were now “totally safe” to attend.

That Facebook post has subsequently been removed, but not before it received widespread condemnation and mockery on social media. Its central claim was quickly debunked as at best misleading and at worse a complete falsehood, both by scientists and experts in air purification systems. The simple fact is that air purification systems will not protect people in the event of person-to-person viral transmission.

Was the Facebook post in reference to an upcoming Dream City church service, now that things are opening back up after months of lockdown? As it turns out, no! The larger context of the post was this: it had been announced the Dream City would be hosting, of all things, a Trump rally in one of its facilities on the 23rd of June 2020. These facilities are apparently available for private-party rentals. But why should a church be hosting a political rally? Isn’t this a violation of the Johnson Amendment, which threatens to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status if it…