The Ugandan Government has banned Sunday school and night prayers even as it lifted a lockdown imposed on places of worship six months ago to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Updating the nation on COVID-19 on Sunday evening, President Yoweri Museveni said prayers and fellowships would be allowed to resume inside places of worship for the first time since 20th March. However, the government banned Sunday school activities and night prayers until the situation improves further.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. PICTURE: Courtesy of the State House, Uganda.
Under the new worship arrangements, the government also restricted the number of worshippers in any service in a church or mosque to only 70.
Museveni said the regular larger gathering of prayers and preaching on Sundays and Fridays will be considered at a later stage.
Before the pandemic struck, hundreds of Christians would attend church services in most of the places of worship in the capital Kampala and other urban areas. It is not clear how these numbers will be controlled under the new arrangements.
In his address, the President also said Christians could go to churches for individual prayers, confessions and counselling with the priests as long as they observed COVID-19 standard operating procedures, which include sanitising and wearing a face mask before being allowed into the church.
As of Sunday, the government said some 6,827 had been infected with COVID-19 with 63 fatalities.
Museveni noted that the lockdown had been effective in containing the pandemic. But he observed that despite its effectiveness, the country could not remain under the lockdown forever because the economy must be allowed to grow. “The lockdown is also not necessary now because we have shown you how to behave,” Museveni said.
While the government had started easing lockdowns in other sectors as early as May, places of worship had remained closed leading some clergy to protest against the continued closure by wearing sackcloth.
Sunday’s move to reopen the places of worship received mixed reactions from clergy and other Ugandans. Pastor Joseph Kabuleta told the Sight that opening the places of worship with a whole litany of restrictions is as good as not opening them.
“Why are, for instance, children not allowed to attend yet they are least affected by COVID-19?” he asked. “The sinister minds behind these so-called COVID-19 restrictions are just trying to kill religion. The roots of our faith are planted in our childhood, and if we hadn’t had the chance to hear about God at that early age, we wouldn’t be the believers we are now.”
He added that he would continue to push for an unconditional opening of the places of worship.
Similarly, Pastor Solomon Male, executive director of Arising for Christ – a Christian organisation whose leadership aims to restore the sanctity of Christ and rid the church of fake and corrupt pastors, told the Sight that the reopening is a political calculation.
“Many of the people who made the decision to reopen the places of worship are campaigning for political offices,” he said. “In such harsh times, reopening of places of worship defines lack of prudence.”
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But Associate Professor Mescharch Katusiimeh, dean of Faculty of Social Sciences at Kabale University and a Christian, said that reopening places of worship would help address some of the issues that have arisen during the lockdown.
“We have seen rising cases of defilement, divorce, teenage pregnancies during the lockdown and I believe that the reopening of these places of worship will help to expose victims to counselling services of priests for rehabilitation,” Katusiimeh said.
He added that the churches can also help the state in educating people about the dangers of COVID-19.
“People respect church leaders and they are likely to follow what they tell them,” Katusiimeh said. “So we are likely to see more compliance of people in terms of implementing COVID-19 SOPs [standard operating procedures].”
