Churches in dilemma over Christmas reopening
BHUBANESWAR: A day after Odisha government allowed Christmas celebrations with limited participants on December 25, churches in the State are in a dilemma over reopening for one day only. As per the government order, the local administrations and civic bodies will ask churches planning to reopen their gates for guests for a day on Christmas to give an undertaking that they will allow people half the seating capacity of their prayer halls and ensure adequate social distancing among those gathered for the celebrations.
Though church authorities welcomed the decision of the government to grant special permission, they asked why they weren’t allowed to open in a graded manner. The issue has become delicate as several church authorities feel that it would be difficult for them to manage crowd and ensure social distancing without sufficient manpower and security personnel.
“If church is reopened on this special occasion, it wouldn’t be easy for us to prevent crowding as people will throng in thousands of numbers to offer prayers. We do not have that manpower to manage it,” said Smruti Ranjan Mohapatra, joint secretary of Odia Baptist Church, Sambalpur.
Some of the church officials also said Covid-19 negative certificate should have also been mandated for those entering churches as it has been done in the case of Shri Jagannath and Lingaraj temples to check spread of the virus.
Sources in the Union Church at Satya Nagar here said they are planning to live-stream the prayers and Christmas celebration. “As the Covid situation is yet to improve, we have planned to keep celebrations restricted to virtual mode only. The live-streaming will be done on our YouTube page,” said Pastor of the Church Ayub Chhinchani.