Covid church closures are not persecution - guest author: Amie Aitken
What Scotland can teach us all about our duty in a time of Coronavirus
Are we being persecuted in the name of public health? All over the world (sometimes in irrelevant minorities, sometimes in significant numbers), certain types of Christians seem to be rumbling and kvetching, saying that we are. Amie Aitken, a Scottish Baptist minister and regular Beer Christianity podcast guest, disagrees. Guest writing for Beer Christianity (the newsletter) she responds to Christians who claim their religious freedom is being threatened by the closure of Scottish church buildings under Covid-19 regulations. This is not about Scotland, but about how we define what church is and what it’s for.
The original article, detailing 200 churches urging Nicola Sturgeon in The Scotsman to reopen churches closed under Covid legislation (that prompted Amie to write an open letter in response) was up for a day before it was taken down. I contacted The Scotsman yesterday to ask why, and they told me a pastor pictured with the article had not signed the letter and had asked for it to be removed. And good for them. Hopefully the article is back up now, but if not, sorry!
UPDATE: The Baptist Union of Scotland has issued a statement on why this is not the time to mount a legal challenge to church closures. It’s good.
Guest author
On religious freedom and beliefs in lockdown
By Amie Aitken
Some church leaders from across the country have petitioned the Scottish government for the right to keep their church buildings open, providing worship services, which they consider essential to their community." While I have sympathy for some of their concerns, I would like to counter some of their claims. As a local church minister, I certainly have had to navigate the challenges set upon us by the restrictions and my church have been most gracious in their cooperation. The restrictions on worship gatherings were particularly difficult for us on Easter and Christmas, as never in our history have we been unable to meet on these days. However, I fully understand that the government have to put the health and safety of their citizens above all else, including public worship - a deadly virus has no respect for sacred spaces.
The open letter in the Scotsman was signed by some colleagues I know and respect. It highlights some concerns I share. Some of the measures offered in easing restrictions over the summer were incongruent. I have had to conduct several funerals through lockdown when only twenty family members in total could attend the service. However, pubs and restaurants were operating with significantly higher numbers. On one occasion at a funeral, some family members had to sit outside the crematorium watching the service by livestream, but were then able to join everyone at a tea afterwards, which was just nonsensical. In this case, the numbers permitted should have been proportional to the size and seating capacity of the building, not a blanket figure. I hope this would be addressed more carefully in the future as restrictions are eased again. However, it is hard to argue that the building closures have stopped us from serving the most disadvantaged people in our community. It is impossible to argue categorically that churches have not been a source of transmission.
While practically our buildings and some of our services have been closed, theologically, I contest the idea churches themselves are closed. Ours certainly ours never has been. The church is not the building, it is the worshiping community. Without the use of our building we have hosted our services online, providing led worship, prayer and communion for churches who do not have the capacity to do so, and have continued to support one another in prayer by phone and text, extending this social support to those on the edges of our fellowship and those who request it. The change in circumstance has provided us with some unprecedented opportunities to connect with the local community. In my own small church, we currently provide up to 65 meals per day to local families during the school holidays, and have developed more strategic partnerships with the local council and voluntary organisations to maximise our efforts. They have been most gracious in providing us financial assistance to the carry out the work that helps us to achieve a common goal. Many other churches have done the same and much more.
The lockdown restrictions put in place have not stopped us from holding or expressing our beliefs – they have simply challenged and limited the ways in which we can express them safely. In fact, thanks to the tidal wave of online services, we are expressing our beliefs far more publicly than ever before. We understand that meeting for worship is more than just a social activity, it is a biblical command and anchor for our faith, however, protecting the most vulnerable is paramount to biblical living. Loving our neighbour means taking every precaution within our power and using our freedoms wisely. The pressure that some would feel to attend physical services is an unnecessary unkindness.
In all of this, I hope that the way the Church at large has operated and behaved throughout lockdown will speak to who we are. I hope it has shown that, although our gathering for Sunday worship is vital, it is not our sole purpose. I hope that our proactive and creative approach to serving our communities, protecting our neighbours, and doing so with fervour, speaks to our country of the love and hope that we possess. I, and others like me, will not be asking to be an exception to the rules which are given for the preservation of human life. We serve a God who by His very nature is found in bringing beauty from the ashes. I am committed to ensuring that once all of this is over, the Church will be just as present in the aftermath, helping our communities to get back on their feet. We will comfort those who mourn, seek restoration among the ruins, and work towards the flourishing of our nation in the wake of all that we have overcome.
Rev Amie Aitken is minister of Leslie Baptist Church in Fife, Scotland. She is an Ambassador for and on the Scottish Advisory Board of Home For Good, a Christian body that advocates among churches and at a systemic level to encourage fostering and adoption. She is a former member of the Baptist Union of Scotland Council and of its Mission Initiative Group. Rev Aitken is the host of the Conversation Series podcast.
A Jonty angle
Do we really need proximity for meaningful community?
When I was talking to Amie about this piece, we disagreed on some things. She’s theologically educated and I am not, so I’m sure she’s probably right, but I don’t believe that there is something fundamentally missing from a community that cannot gather in person. I would say this is because I’m a real Protestant, but she’s a Scottish Baptist so I think she probably wins there too.
To be clear: many reasonable Christians friends realise that we must close our churches to large gathering for the sake of preventing human suffering that would result (in much the same way that lights on church signs and illuminating crosses and evangelistic messages were turned off during the Blitz) and still believe that we are called to meet together physically where possible. I myself miss the experience of worshiping with my Hillsong Oxford community terribly (I miss it terribly, I don’t worship terribly)(actually, I can’t back that up). I long to go back. Without it, I feel like my soul is thirsty. But I also cannot believe that our universal faith is so bound to the local and the limited and particular, or that it can’t ‘work’ at a distance, however lovely closeness is.
And perhaps this is a helpful way to understand some of the opposition that church closures have inspired. It’s not just the eternal victimhood of once powerful churches crying persecution at every loss of exceptionalism and privilege (though that is certainly a part of it). There is something special that we get from being physically present, because our bodies are good and this physical world of space and matter is good, too. And a threat to that feels like an egregious loss.
But the fact is that some losses are good and necessary sacrifices. And I think we must challenge the absolutising of the physical, however good it is.
I don’t believe genuinely persecuted secret followers of Jesus (or those in Christianised countries whose communities are politically and ethically alienating that they feel they cannot worship with fellow believers comfortably) are lacking something fundamental if they can still pray and worship and encourage fellow believers. There is something wonderful about physical presence, but as we are learning in work situations, remote communication (if used to its full potential) can create deep bonds of community and understanding. Digital natives whose identity, friendship groups and communities of interest are online still maintain real relationships of social and spiritual significance, just as much as a telephone prayer chain is a powerful tool and letters to 18th century missionaries (or 1st century churches in Corinth and Rome) can have resounding spiritual power. Jesus did not have to be present to heal and we do not have to be able to touch each other to be sisters and brothers. Sometimes the distance may even help.
I worry that a mix of fuddy-duddyness (fuddiduddity?) and technophobia, with a healthy dose of of affirming our created bodies and love of the local community can lead us to write off the remote, the abstracted and the technologically mediated as less worthy, spiritually. And I don’t think they inherently they are.
But damn, I miss being surrounded by strangers, singing and bumping into me, spilling my coffee and tilting their heads while listening to sermons and bustling and preening and fidgeting about in the presence of something special happening right here and now. I hope we can go back to it soon.
But I hope more that we can all agree on this: going back while we pose a high risk of spreading a deadly virus (and friends, we really do), is not showing love for our neighbours and it is not putting God first. It’s selfish, vain and petty, however deeply we mourn the loss of that particular form of community. Should we hold governments to a high standard of logic? Yes. But should we be campaigning to be on the leading edge of risk to others? I don’t think so.
Whatever we disagree on, I hope we can unify around a principle that loving people and being careless with their lives are incompatible positions for a Christian.
Of course, you may disagree. Cool! Drop us a line to tell us your thoughts at beerchristianity@yahoo.com or comment using the button below.
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On the Beer Christianity podcast
We released two great episodes last week! Catch them on your favourite podcast platform or on our slightly ropey Beer Christianity podcast page.
Episode 43: You’ve read her polite words, now listen to her only slightly less polite voice! We talk Covid church closures as well as the right wing attack on the American Capitol.
Find download links, platform links and other details for this Beer Christianity podcast here.
Episode 42: In which we get hella theological. WARNING: this episode features atonement theory, old Tom Wright and new Helen Paynter.
Find download links, platform links and other details for this Beer Christianity podcast here.
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