Many Christian clerics are unhappy about restrictions on in-person services during lockdown occasioned by novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
However, a pastor has decided to go beyond the perfunctory complaints by turning his church into a bar to mock the ban on church services for over 10 persons in Argentina while bars are allowed to open.
The evangelical pastor, Daniel Cattaneo got his junior colleagues to dress up as waiters and set up tables inside his Comunidad Redentor evangelical church in the city of San Lorenzo.
But instead of carrying drinks, the pastors carry bibles on their trays in a mock service to get around Argentina’s coronavirus lockdown, which prohibits more than 10 people in the house of worship, the Guardian reported.
Cattaneo, who also dressed as a waiter and called his effort “worship bar”, said, “We are standing here today dressed like this, carrying a tray, because it seems this is the only way we can serve the word of God.”
“We want to exercise our constitutional right to practice our faith,” Cattaneo told the Guardian. “Bars can open, shops can open, why are they discriminating against us?”
According to New York Post, Argentina, which has recorded 28,764 cases and 785 deaths — mostly located in Buenos Aires — is in a staged reopening.
The province of Santa Fe has a very low number of cases and has reopened bars but churches are still subjected to rules of 10 people or less.