The Government asks Christian Churches not to be “Christian”.

I have a Christian faith. Please don’t anyone think that is a claim of perfection – not even close – but probably better than I would have been otherwise.

The thing that drew me most to the faith was the nature of Jesus – reaching out to women, reaching out to children, reaching out to lepers. I was also drawn to his challenge of rule imposing authority (whitewashed tombs).

Great churches are open places for all: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me“

In the NZ Herald today Ardern openly acknowledged that she is creating two classes of people (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/liam-dann-we-are-a-polarised-country-the-qualities-well-need-to-get-through/G46MGNPJF3577NVWRCBQUASAMI/).

This is the government’s restrictive mandate for churches:

– Churches can have up to 100 people (counting all ages), based on 1metre distancing, but only if vaccination certificates are used – this means no unvaccinated people attending.

– If you want unvaccinated people attending, the gathering can only be up to 10 people. You will need to decide if you are happy to have singing or not.

The rest of the country will go to Orange once they reach 90% vaccinated and Auckland would go there sometime later once the covid case levels have reduced down. This means: No limits on the number of people attending, providing it is only vaccinated people.

– If you include unvaccinated the limit will be 50, with 1m distancing.

Those without vaccine certificates are about to become the new lepers. How abhorrent to ask churches to exclude them. Of course they should take massive care – but there is an enormous gap between that and creating a new set of pariah’s.

Although it is apocryphal that the Danish King in WW2 wore a yellow star. The Danish nation did stand together:

“The ability of the Danish government to run the internal affairs of the country was decisive for the absence of anti-Jewish legislation, which lacked the public support and votes to pass the Danish parliament. The Danish government did not require Jews to register their property and assets, or to give up apartments, homes, and businesses. The Danish authorities did not require Jews to identify themselves, with a yellow star or any other form of identification.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/king-christian-x-of-denmark