[Christian Blog]: We need Churches more than ever before – Should they be opened?

       Churches should stay open, says James Marston, especially as so much effort has taken place to make them safe amid the coronavirus outbreak – 

      I’ve been troubled this week and find myself torn between a rock and a hard place. As many of you will know I am a clergyman in the Church of England and a fairly newly minted priest. This latest lockdown doesn’t include the closure of communal worship – it remains, at the moment, legal for church services on a Sunday to take place. Yet for many parish churches – so often with an elderly and therefore vulnerable congregation – have decided to go one step further than government restrictions and close the doors. The doors of churches across our region have been closed for the foreseeable, undeniably for reasons sensible and timely. But the closure of the churches has left me, and others, somewhat concerned. Obviously I don’t think that anyone wants the churches closed. This right of freedom of worship is one we all hold dear, whether churchy or not, and indeed that freedom and the importance of church worship to so many has been recognised and upheld by government so far. Yet the fear and spread of coronavirus must be weighed up against the removal of what is a lifeline to so many, particularly perhaps those who live alone, and a source of much-needed hope and upliftment in tricky times. And without communal worship it is increasingly harder to sustain spiritually those caring for the vulnerable in our communities as an expression of their faith.

      In any other circumstances it would be inconceivable that the churches would close themselves.