‘Being prevented from gathering to worship is more harmful than Covid’

A group of 27 Scottish church leaders has launched a claim for judicial review over Scottish government ministers’ handling of lockdown and decision to criminalise public worship.

Here, one of the claimants, Rev. Dr William Phillip, speaks to BBC Radio 4 about why the church leaders are taking this action. He said: “We believe the government has overstepped matters, because freedom of worship and the freedom to manifest religion is a very fundamental human right.”

When asked whether it was more loving to our neighbour to close churches to protect people from the spread of the virus, Rev. Phillip stated: “We take that very seriously. Since churches have been open since last summer, we’ve taken all kinds of measures to do just that, and in fact we have protected people.”

31 January 2021
BBC Radio 4