Billy Kennedy: Churches reopening on June 29 the news NI Christians have been waiting on

The four-month church closures were among the most frustrating and far-reaching affects of the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic, with worshippers of all ages, young and old, left adrift from their traditional Sunday and midweek routine in a pew, and, indeed, for children through the abandonment of Sunday school classes, and spring and summer youth activity.

The News Letter, as a newspaper totally in tune with its traditional core readership, is pleased that through the weeks of lockdown its vigorous campaigning will have exerted some influential on the political decision-makers to keep the church re-opening mantra firmly on the Executive discussion table.

On this highly read church page week after week, we felt the absolute need to vigorously campaign and pressurise the Northern Ireland Executive to give the same priority and consideration to the re-use of faith buildings as they were obliged to do for civic, business, sporting and leisure establishments,

Leaving hundreds of thousands of Christians of all denominations, and worshippers of other faiths, adrift from their natural place of worship may have been deemed a health necessity in the early weeks of the coronavirus, and we are pleased that the lifting of the closure, within the ambit of stipulated safety requirements, is now deemed both appropriate and justified.

The concept of our churches completely shut, while off-licences were open to sell large amounts of alcohol, was an appalling contradiction, considered incompatible with the deeply-held religious values and standards upheld by a great mass of people in this part of United Kingdom. Granted, opening of churches for individual personal prayer and solace was permitted weeks ago, but this had only a limited affect.

Main churches in Northern Ireland (Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic and Methodist) all operate on an all-Ireland basis, as do churches like Free Presbyterians and Baptists, and it appeared logical that when the Irish government decreed Monday, June 29 as the church re-opening date in the south, the doors were also bound to be opened north of the border. Therefore, Thursday’s Stormont announcement on June 29 was an inevitability.

Back on April 18, we warned that the virus crisis and church closures would hit finances considerably with greatly reduced freewill offering payments and collection money in congregations and parishes. The negative effect of this may not become fully apparent to church treasurers until the end of the year.

Then, on Saturday May 16, we felt it was right to declare “It’s time for all of churches to re-open”. This was a declaration that brought a huge welcome response from readers, with close on 7,000 reading the debate on the News Letter website.

Over the period, we were aware that the main church leaders were in direct consultation with Stormont Executive ministers about the dilemma they faced and last Saturday, we were able to confirm that a working party was set up to progress an early re-opening decision. Happily, that decision has now been made.