This is what it looks like when a pandemic collides with the culture wars in America.

The mayor of Louisville, Ky., warned churches that holding services on Easter Sunday would defy the city’s social distancing guidelines. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and Senate majority leader, answered with a stern letter, arguing, “Religious people should not be singled out for disfavored treatment.”

The Democratic governor in Michigan extended bans on certain outdoor activities to include using motorboats. Conservatives called her an authoritarian and caricatured her move as a slap at people who enjoy the outdoors. “You can’t go fishing,” a local activist lamented in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”

And even though firearms stores remain free to do business in most of the country, the National Rifle Association has a stark message for gun owners. “They want your guns. They want ’em all,” declared the country music legend Charlie Daniels in a promotional video he recorded for the N.R.A. from quarantine at his home in Tennessee.

The new patchwork of state and local policies designed to flatten the spread of the coronavirus is inflaming old passions over some of the most contentious issues in politics. Guns, abortion, voting rights and religious expression — concerns that would seem to have little to do with a virus that has likely infected more than a million Americans and killed more than 37,000 — have emerged as fault lines in the debate over how government is responding to the crisis.