Churches are being urged to remember that, for some people, returning to church as the pandemic eases is still a difficult thing.
Carl Knightly, part of the leadership team at London City Mission and an Ambassador for Faith in Later Life, said: ‘Whilst vaccination rates are high and cases far lower than they were, many are still fearful of the implications of catching Covid and becoming unwell.
‘This particularly remains the case for those who are clinically vulnerable and for many (not all) older people.’
Kay Morgan-Gurr, co-founder at the Additional Needs Alliance, said: ‘There are thousands upon thousands for whom a ‘freedom day’ has never happened and is unlikely to, this being due to impaired immune systems through illness, age and much more.
‘This is not fear, it isn’t about a lack of faith either. It is a pragmatic decision made by people who know their medical history better that anyone else.’
But Maria Amoako-Britten, who works part-time as a women’s outreach worker for Grace Baptist churches in south-east England, said: ‘I am 52 and I have sickle-cell disease. Sufferers can experience a range of serious complications and susceptibility to certain infections.
‘My stress levels about the pandemic began to reduce when I seriously started to ask myself where God was in it all … That is when, out of my fear, holding onto what I knew about God I looked boldly and realistically at Covid-19 and started to accept some hard facts about it; like many other diseases, it could be here to stay. I could not shield from it forever.’
She started attending church again and added: ‘By November 2021 my husband and I had had all three of our Covid vaccines. Since December 2021 we have both had Covid with heavy cold symptoms and no need to see a doctor, and I have had other respiratory illnesses which have made me feel equally or rougher than Covid did.’
