Fearing persecution from the Roman Empire, early Christians huddled together in private homes to pray and study the Scriptures. Nearly two centuries later, the coronavirus pandemic and its sweeping bans on public gatherings may force the modern church underground.

Pastors in Florida and Louisiana face criminal charges after holding worship services in spite of COVID-19 emergency orders. In North Carolina, Christian pro-life activists were hauled off in handcuffs for praying outside an abortion clinic.

In the New Testament book of Matthew, Jesus tells disciples he's present wherever two or three are gathered in his name. While most churches are canceling in-person services in favor of streaming sermons and songs online, a handful are pressing their case for religious freedom.

"I got arrested because I stood up for the Constitution of the United States," the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne told the Tampa Bay Times. "To be honest with you, I actually feel like I became an American on Monday and paid the price."

Liberty Counsel, the right-wing advocacy group representing Howard-Browne, said The River at Tampa Bay Church used a $100,000 purification system, required staff to wear gloves and kept worshipers 6 feet apart to follow social distancing guidelines. That wasn't enough to satisfy local authorities.

"When balancing constitutional rights against public health and safety, the government must use a scalpel, not a chainsaw," Liberty Counsel said in a post on its website. "The government must narrowly tailor restrictions on (constitutional) rights. The Constitution does not disappear even in times of crisis."

In the Louisiana city of Central, the Rev. Tony Spell received a citation for holding a half dozen services at his Life Tabernacle Church. The Advocate of Baton Rouge reported that church officials took parishioners' temperatures at the door to prevent COVID-19 exposure. A high fever is one of the virus' primary symptoms.

North Carolina police arrested protesters outside A Woman's Clinic of Greensboro, charging them with violating a county stay-at-home order. Supporters say they were exercising their First Amendment rights of free assembly and free exercise of religion.

"Not even in communist China would police arrest three men for walking and praying on the street," Jim Quick of the North Carolina Values Coalition said in a news release. "Even during a fight against the virus, Americans have constitutional rights to pray and exercise religious freedoms."

Do the pastors and protesters have a case? Legal scholars say that hinges on whether they can prove religious groups are being singled out.

In a First Amendment Encyclopedia entry for Middle Tennessee State University's Free Speech Center, Professor John Vile explains that state and local governments can enforce limits on crowd size in the interest of public health. But rules that discriminate against houses of worship are unconstitutional.

If courts determine that the orders designating "essential" businesses and services exempt from public gathering restrictions include so many places other than churches, synagogues and mosques that the orders have a discriminatory effect, defiant preachers could find legal salvation.

Liberty Counsel is advancing this argument in the Tampa pastor's case, writing that home improvement stores are free to flout crowd limits and social distancing guidelines for "people purchasing such items as potted plants, fertilizers and garden hoes."

Everyone agrees that supermarkets qualify as essential businesses — without food, we starve. Big-box retailers sell a mishmash of products, some essential and some not. Yet the right to buy hardware or electronics isn't enshrined in the Constitution, and the rights to worship and protest are.

The more exceptions a COVID-19 lockdown order has, the tougher it will be to defend its enforcement against churches and expressive events like abortion clinic prayer rallies.

Courts have upheld some limits on religious freedom, such as bans on snake handling and the use of peyote in Native American ceremonies. The coronavirus crackdown on packed pews could give rise to a precedent-setting conflict.

The optics are stark, and at least in the court of public opinion, churches ought to prevail.

It's nothing short of bone chilling to see cops storming a worship service and forcibly taking a pastor out of the pulpit. That's the kind of scene you'd expect in a totalitarian country, a dystopian action movie or maybe in ancient Rome.

Corey Friedman is an opinion journalist who explores solutions to political conflicts from an independent perspective. Follow him on Twitter @coreywrites. To find out more about Corey Friedman and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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