An Anglican Minister from the United Kingdom has taken a bold stand against Governments looking to reinstate lockdowns and lockouts.
Responding to media and bureaucratic panic over the “Omicron” variant Buckingham Parish Rector, the Reverend Will Pearson-Gee, told his congregation:
“We are not a cinema. We are not the O2 arena. We are not a football match. We’re not going to pay by those rules. We are a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who come together on a Sunday to worship the living Jesus Christ. Not a football match. Not a film. Nothing like that.”
He declared:
“I am not going to close our services until I am ordered by law to do so; and even if that happens it will be screaming and kicking, because we’re not an entertainment venue.”
The Reverend then asserted:
“We are here to worship the God who is sovereign over all of this mess – over all the ineptitude that the government can throw at us – and it is all the more important that we gather together as brothers and sisters in Christ to worship God.”
The U.K. Reverend’s line in the sand shares a kinship with Grace Church pastor John MacArthur’s infamous “we will not bow” in July 2020, and Australia’s The Ezekiel Declaration, now signed by over 3,000 church leaders, alongside 26,000+ members and attendees.
Asked why he was taking a similar stand, Reverend Pearson-Gee told Caldron Pool:
“Our government, and the scientists they choose to listen to, have successfully whipped up such an atmosphere of fear that people are now genuinely frighted to do things which pose only a minimal risk to them.”
The Reverend clarified:
“I’m not talking about those with vulnerabilities, but ordinary folk who are unlikely to suffer much from getting Covid. This panic is like a vortex sucking in our liberties and freedoms and causing even more disunity that Brexit ever did.”
The Church needs to take a stand:
“God is sovereign over this situation. The church must not be silenced or closed but stand as a witness to the enduring truth of God and to provide succour to his people. We must not live in fear and not to be seen living in fear.”
Asked how he would reconcile Romans 13:1-5, a scripture used to justify blind compliance with CCP-19 policies and politics, he inferred responsible interpretation.
Pearson-Gee explained:
“It would be impossible for God to have wanted German Christians in the Second World War to obey the Nazis and exterminate millions of Jews. The context is vital.”
On the “vaccines”, the Reverend stated that he ‘believes the experimental vaccines have played a major role in preventing hospital admissions and therefore easing pressure on health providers.’
However, he is ‘deeply concerned that any sort of discussion about the vaccine’s dangers just gets shut down. There is no transparency and no debate – just fear driving events.’
Expanding on these concerns he said:
“Any mention, of those suffering from adverse reactions is silenced. I am [also] particularly concerned that all the other metrics (such as a rise in mental health issues, suicide, joblessness etc …) are never factored in when decisions are made.”
As for what the parish’s civil disobedience may look like under his leadership, he was adamant, declaring:
“We would remain open as a place of prayer and meeting. We will never close again. We’ll follow protocols but will not close the doors. We will also resist any attempt to enforce vaccinations on people.”
The ex-army, father of 4 is also firmly opposed to segregation, telling Caldron Pool:
“The segregation of those who have had the vaccine and those who have not is apartheid. The church cannot differentiate between people on this basis. We are always to welcome people whatever their status. There is already enough division in society without introducing this sort of binary division.”
Pearson-Gee joins the great tradition of Anglican dissenters.
Illustrated by the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell in his long since out of print, ‘Christianity and World Order,’
‘It is not the Church’s function to say “ditto” to the State.’
Bell wrote this in 1940. His words carried with them the added warning:
“The citizen of a democratic state may be deprived of his freedom, by the subtle influence of the universal provision of social services, from the ante-natal clinics to euthanasia couches, just as effectively as the German subject is robber of his liberty by the system of spies and concentration camps.”
Try as the world might, the 20th Century’s mass graves teach us that it is impossible to have God’s kingdom without God in, and over it.
To think Western Democracies are immune from the impact left behind after government surrenders to what old school Democrat, J. William Fulbright diagnosed as the arrogance of power, is to assume too much of the fallible, finite and feeble condition of the human hearts at the helm of our great ships of governance.
Note here Bell’s indictment,
“Systems have to be worked, not by angels, but by men and women. And men and women are moved by passions, prejudices, ambitions and vices – ignore this human factor at your peril!”
These are lessons from the past written on memorials and remembered every year so that they are not forgotten.
The more powerful the state, the less free are its people.
The more deified the state becomes, the more unaccountable and inhumane are its diktats.
As a consequence, the harder and more costly it is to bring the deified state to justice.
Government as God is government gone wrong.