The province has decreed that in-person worship services are suspended. Protestants may not attend Divine Service. Catholics may not attend Mass. Likewise synagogues, mosques and temples are closed.
Though actually that’s not quite correct. As Pastor Don Johnson of Grace Baptist Church in Victoria has pointed out, religious facilities may be used for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Just not religious events.
There is one further exception. Weddings, funerals and baptisms may proceed, so long as no more than 10 people attend. But worship services are not permitted.
These orders remain in place until Monday, when they might be extended.
We understand fully the need for additional lockdown measures, as the COVID-19 epidemic reaches its second peak. Nevertheless, there is an element of arbitrariness in shuttering places of worship, while leaving malls and shopping centres open.
Why is it more important that we be able to visit a hardware store than attend church?
By all means, religious facilities should be required to impose the same social distancing and sanitizing measures as business establishments. And yes, it makes sense to limit attendance to prevent overcrowding.
Choral offerings should be suspended. Singing increases the likelihood of spreading the virus.
But the underlying concern here is that our public health authorities have elevated secular interests above religious interests of seemingly equal importance. Indeed the latter, if anything, enjoy a higher constitutional standing.
Freedom of religion is the first of four fundamental freedoms enumerated in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The right to worship is protected.
Now that right, like all Charter rights, is subject to such reasonable limits as can demonstrably be justified in a free and democratic society.
Most of the legal experts we’ve talked with believe a constitutional challenge opposing the closure of churches would probably fail. The courts would likely defer to a government response that public health and safety are the pre-eminent interests here.
However, the question is not whether the province could win a court challenge. The question is whether, in the court of public opinion, the government has made its case.
If bike shops and liquor stores remain open, how can closing places of worship be justified?
To state the obvious, we are in the midst of an epidemic which has killed about 500 British Columbians, many of them elderly. Why should their loved ones not have the comfort that a religious service offers? If anything, at a moment of such crisis, the need for places of worship to remain open intensifies.
Three-quarters of Canadians claim one of the major religions as their faith.
That doesn’t mean 75 per cent of the population regularly attends church services. Faith takes many forms.
But it does mean that placing secular concerns on a higher plain than religious interests neglects a basic human need.
One of the challenges facing provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and her colleagues is how to balance competing claims when issuing shut-down orders.
And to their credit, her team is widely regarded, nationwide, as having done an excellent job in striking the correct balance. Yet there are growing signs of exhaustion, and with it frustration, at the far-reaching disruptions caused by the epidemic.
We are commanded, in the Bible, “to give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” But the second part of that quote is a reminder “to give unto God the things which are God’s.”
In that respect, the shuttering of churches feels like a bridge too far. It feels wrong.
On Monday, when this order expires, we would prefer that Henry reopen places of worship. There is every reason to believe they will follow to the letter whatever health and safety measures she might require.
