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Nearly a dozen churches in cities around the province are offering Easter Sunday services, despite COVID-19 restrictions.
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Disregarding provincial health orders, some B.C. churches seem willing to risk sanctions and fines in order to hold in-person services on Easter Sunday.
A number of B.C. churches have signed on to the “We Will Gather” initiative of Liberty Coalition Canada. The website lists churches across the country that plan to hold in-person services on Sunday in defiance of local COVID-19 health restrictions.
One of the churches, Langley’s Riverside Calvary Chapel, has already been fined by the RCMP for offering in-person services after they were prohibited last November.
Riverside is also one of several churches challenging the province’s pandemic health order around gatherings and events, saying their rights are being violated.
Gloria Kieler, pastor of Living Water’s Mission in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and one of the churches that signed on to the “We Will Gather” initiative, said she didn’t think the government “understood how the Spirit operates.”
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“When we come together to pray and to worship, it magnifies the power of the Lord,” she said. “It magnifies the ability to get healing and be in the presence of the Lord. You can’t get that on Zoom.”
Living Water’s Mission regularly provides food to those who need it on Sundays, said Kieler, and was already “regulated” to be open, since she provides an essential service.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has reserved his decision on a request from the three B.C. churches that filed the petition challenging public health orders, saying he must give the case careful thought.
Currently, churches are permitted to hold in-person services of up to 25 people, outdoors, and with safety measures in place, through a “variance” to provincial health orders granted late last month.
Individual worship and drive-in events are also permitted under the orders, subject to conditions, while weddings, funerals and baptisms may include no more than 10 guests.
Liberty Coalition Canada supporters include a number of fringe politicians, including People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, disgraced former Conservative MP Derek Sloan, and an MPP from Ontario whose Twitter account was temporarily suspended for spreading misinformation about the pandemic and recently sparked outrage for implying Ontario’s pandemic restrictions are fascist.
— With a file from The Canadian Press
ngriffiths@postmedia.com
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