closed church
This piece is written exclusively with Christians in mind. Atheists and those of other religions are of course welcome to peek in through the window, and in fact part of me suspects that many who do, though disagreeing with the theology, will perhaps see the points being made more clearly than many of our national church leaders.

Never before in the history of the church have so many churches been shut for this long. Never before in the history of the church have God's people failed to meet together in such great numbers for so long. Never before in 2,000 years of church history has the Lord's Supper been suspended for so long for so many.

After weeks of this startling situation, we have started to hear a few murmurings from one or two prominent church leaders. However, most of it is so insipid that it bears the same sort of resemblance to John and Peter's declaration to the Sanhedrin in Acts 5 — "We must obey God rather than men" — as Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock's arbitrary and irrational rules bear to the Declaration of Independence.

For instance, in a recent Tweet, John Inge, Bishop of Worcester had this to say:
"The risk to a person sitting quietly to pray in a church which is properly cleaned and supervised is surely not greater than a trip to the supermarket? The benefits to that person and countless others will be much greater, though. I wonder why churches not being allowed to open?"
Ironically, he answered his question in his own statement. Not only does he reduce Christianity to some private, individualistic contemplative affair, but he does so wholly accepting the Government line that its measures were essential to avoid being decimated. Which they were not (more on that here and below).

Let's look at this in more detail. In answer to the Bishop's question — why are the churches not allowed to open? — I would give three basic reasons:
  1. For many Christians, corporate worship is seen as non-essential & something like a social gathering, rather than a command from God.
  2. The church has fallen for the notion that quarantining healthy people for weeks (contrary to biblical teaching), for the first time in history, was vital.
  3. We have lost our sense of proportion.
So let's deal with these one by one.

The Centrality of Worship

Worship, for the Christian, is — or at least should be — central to all we do. It is the hub around which our lives revolve, it is the engine that makes the car go. The Bible commands us to worship God Lord's Day by Lord's Day, together with a body of believers with whom we are in fellowship with, and to whom we are accountable:
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." (Hebrews 12:24,25)
Christianity is not, and never has been a private affair. It is a public declaration that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the World, that he died on the Cross as the atonement for sinners, that he rose bodily from the dead, and that he ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he shall reign until he has put all things under his subjection. And because it is this, we do not go to church on a Sunday as an extension of some private religion, nor as a social gathering, but primarily to give glory to the Triune God:
"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth,
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!" (Psalm 100:1-3)
We are to do this physically together, with great joy and thanksgiving:
"Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!" (Psalm 95:1-3)
And we are to do this physically together with reverence and awe:
"Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-29)
What, then, is Bishop Inge talking about when he speaks of churches reopening for someone "sitting quietly to pray in a church which is properly cleaned and supervised"? We don't need to go to a special building to pray, and it's not like we don't have any instruction on this from the author and finisher of our faith. Here's Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:
"But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:6-7).
According to Jesus, you don't need to go to a special place. You don't need to find some so-called holy space. You go into your room and get down on your knees and you pray. That's it. And if you can't do it in your room, you can do it anywhere else you like.

What you cannot do alone in your room, or even together by Skype or Zoom, is worship him in the way that the Bible instructs, which is to gather together in the same physical location as other believers in a local body of Christ, striving to reflect something of this reality:
"But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel." (Hebrews 12:22-24).
Unfortunately, it seems that many in the churches either don't understand or don't believe this. And it is because they don't understand or believe this that they are not nearly as bothered as they should be by the fact that we have not been doing this for nearly three months, and continue not to do it. And it is precisely because they are not that bothered by it that the churches have remained shut. I am of the view that God is testing his church at this time, and one of the tests he is giving is to see how much we really desire to worship him as he intended. Thusfar, I can't see that the church in this country has exactly covered itself with glory on this — at least I have not heard of any great crying out to God that he might restore us, so that we can go and worship him together each week.

The bottom line is this: if Christians treat gathering together physically as non-essential, why would the leaders of the nation treat it as if it were essential?

The Church has accepted the lockdown as essential when it is not

"But," comes the response, "the churches are closed because there is a global pandemic, and it has simply been too dangerous to meet up. The churches have just followed the law set out by the Government."

Leaving aside whether the actions taken by the Government have actually been lawful — something which the businessman Simon Dolan is taking to the High Court — this simply is not the case. I don't want to labour the point too much, as I have written about it in numerous pieces over the last few weeks, but here are a few brief things to note:
  • After being in the population for at least 6 months, and probably more, according to official figures, the virus has killed around 0.06% of the population. These are simply not the sorts of numbers that could justify the measures put in place (in any case, that figure is likely vastly inflated, due to the change in the way of recording Covid deaths, which was sneaked into the Coronavirus Act so that any deaths of a person *with* C-19, and not necessarily *from* C-19 are recorded).
  • The Infection Fatality Rate has been shown by numerous studies, including one from Stanford University and even recently the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to be around 0.26%, which is far below some original estimates and not far above a bad seasonal flu.
  • It has been well known for some time that Covid-19 is potentially deadly for only a very small proportion of the population, and most people who get it do not suffer greatly.
  • There is no evidence whatsoever to show that quarantining perfectly healthy people has reduced deaths, as the chart below — including Sweden, which did not "lockdown" or close its churches — shows:
Weekly COVID-19 deaths
The churches were not shut during the far worse outbreaks of HSN2 and H3N2 in 1957 and 1968. There was also no widespread closure of churches during the 1918 Spanish flu, which was immeasurably more deadly than what we have today, and most remained open "on the grounds that during a crisis people should turn to religion, not be excluded from it." Of course, the argument could be made that taking such action may have prevented deaths in 1918, but as stated above, there is no evidence from anywhere in the world that can be used to back up the claim that the Covid-19 shutdown has actually saved lives, since there is no correlation between "lockdown" and reduction in deaths to be seen in the data.

Although I don't think the data has ever supported "lockdown" as a sensible and proportionate response, an argument might have been made for a precautionary "lockdown" right at the start. However, such days were weeks and weeks ago. What is especially alarming, is that for the last few weeks we have seen mass gatherings of people, firstly in the scenes of crowded beeches on the May Bank Holidays, and more recently in the mass protests being held in cities throughout the country. On the former, there was hardly a peep from our Parliamentarians, and on the latter many of them tweeted and spoke out in support. These are the same MPs who have supported and still support the restrictions on our liberties and the closure of churches as a necessity. And whilst it might be reasonable to call out the hypocrisy going on here, to do so would be to miss the real point, which is this:
They don't actually believe their own pandemic propaganda. If they did, they would have been pleading with people not to meet up and risk lives, and they would have been calling for the police to intervene to stop them going ahead. Either there is a deadly virus which needs to be dealt with by the measures imposed; or it's not as deadly as they say. If it's the former, they are utterly irresponsible and show that neither black or white lives actually matter to them; if it's the latter (which it is), then why exactly are we all still living under their absurd impositions? One or the other, but not both!
For the churches, the irony is enormous: people can now apparently gather together in large numbers to remember a man in Minneapolis whose death — tragic though it was — has no real bearing on this nation; yet we cannot legally gather together to remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our salvation, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. I'm not sure our forefathers would have been as ready to tolerate such a situation as we apparently are.

We have lost our sense of proportion

I am at a loss to understand why Christians, of all people, have reacted in the way they have to this virus. Please understand, I'm not downplaying the potential threat for those who may be in a vulnerable category (i.e. generally over 70s with underlying health conditions), for whom sensible precautions would be advisable. I am also not speaking as someone who has nothing to worry about. On a personal level, I may well be in a "vulnerable" category myself, since I was diagnosed at the start of the year with vitamin D insufficiency, which some studies, such as this one conducted by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, Tulane School of Medicine, and Texas A&M College of Medicine, have suggested could be an underlying driver of COVID-19 severity.

But the Christian faith teaches us not to be unduly unsettled by such things. It doesn't teach that we should throw caution to the wind, or to be reckless — Trust in God and keep your powder dry is a great rule of thumb — but it does teach us that our faith is to overcome our circumstances, even if that means suffering for Christ's sake. Read this great description of what faith does, and notice how it pivots halfway through, from faith that brings victory and triumph, to faith that brings suffering and affliction. Yet it is the same faith in the Triune God that brings about, or endures, both:
"And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets - who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated - of whom the world was not worthy wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." (Hebrews 11:32-38)
This is a faith that conquers. It is a faith that triumphs. It is a faith that is prepared to put our lives on the line. It is not a faith that refuses to take risks. It is not a faith that thinks we can make our lives risk-free. It is bold. It is courageous. It is fearless. As General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson said in answer to a question of why he remained so calm on the battlefield:
"Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.... That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."
Easier said than done, of course, but it is at least something to strive for.

I can imagine some people might misunderstand what I'm saying here, and will claim that I am setting faith up against science. Nope. We should study the data; we should look at the risks; we should act accordingly. If this were the Bubonic Plague, which killed around 60% of the populations it entered, we wouldn't be exercising faith by meeting together in a closed building — we would be exercising sheer folly (though as an aside, in times of the plague, outdoor services did often continue, with appropriate measures taken). But this is not the Black Death. Nor is it Spanish flu. It is a virus with an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.26% (slightly higher than bad seasonal flu), which has killed just 0.06% people in the UK, which is deadly to less than 1% of the population, and which the authorities who have put us into lockdown clearly don't believe is as dangerous as their propaganda would suggest, as evidenced by their silence or support when mass gatherings were held. And so why are we still not meeting together week by week? Because the Government says so? The same Government that is happy to allow mass gatherings in cities?

In Conclusion

My biggest grief in all this is not that the Government has shut the churches, but rather that so many in the churches don't seem to have been nearly as bothered by it as they should have been. If worshipping together is essential — which Christians must surely believe it is — then whether you agree with me that the closure of the churches was an unnecessary action, or whether you disagree with me and think it was vital, the result should have been the same: a crying out to God for deliverance and restoration of weekly worship together, and of life being able to continue with some normality. Something like this:
"And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, and said, "O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, 'If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you — for your name is in this house — and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save." (2 Chronicles 20:5-9).
Forgive me if I am being too harsh, but I've really not noticed much of that going on. Instead, a deep complacency seems to have set in, which I think stems from decades of what the great theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer termed, "Personal Peace and Affluence". But here's a question to end with, which I think Christians need to be asking themselves: with the authorities openly making a mockery of their own arbitrary rules with their tacit or open support for certain mass gatherings, and with shops about to open, including a total relaxation of Sunday trading, do you think that we are maybe being taught something about our priorities when we are still forbidden by law from worshipping together, as Christians have done for 1000s of years?