Last Christmas, services at United Methodist Church of the Resurrection campuses were entirely online. This year, despite a surge in Covid-19 cases fueled by the Omicron variant, all five of its campuses in the Kansas City, Mo., area will hold in-person services, with masks encouraged but not required.
The nationwide Omicron surge that is coinciding with Christmas is posing a dilemma for churches in what is typically one of their busiest periods of the year. Nearly two years into the pandemic, many that were closed last year are keeping their doors open this time—in some cases with precautions such as masks, in other cases without.
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“A lot of our people feel like they’ve done everything they can and they’re going to go on living,” said Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, adding that the most of his members were vaccinated. “A lot of them have said, ‘I really need candlelight Christmas Eve.’ ”
For members who remain cautious about Covid, he said, the church has set up a service on Tuesday night, which will approximate the candlelight Christmas Eve service, but with masks required.
The question of whether and how to hold services has exposed a theological divide among churches throughout the pandemic: More conservative congregations often stressed the biblical imperative to gather and worship in person, while more liberal ones often focused on the importance of not doing harm to their communities and members by spreading the virus.
“We need to be having honest conversations about what are the essential reasons to gather and what things are not essential,” said Laura Everett, a United Church of Christ minister and executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, an organization that represents more than 1,000 churches. “No pastor wants their congregation to be a source of sickness.”
Most Catholic dioceses—which early in the pandemic suspended the obligation to attend Mass—have ended that dispensation and are holding their usual advent services in person.
In the Northeast, where Omicron cases are rising most dramatically, some churches are being more cautious. On Monday, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an Episcopal church in New York City, said all Christmas services would be moved online in hopes of slowing the spread of the new variant.
At Calvary Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church in Haverhill, Mass., only the church’s seniors will be allowed inside this week. Everyone who will be on stage, whether singing or preaching, must take a rapid test when they come in. The Christmas play will be outside, no matter how frigid the weather.
“Some of the pageantry of historic Black churches has had to stop because of the pandemic,” said Kenneth Young, the church’s senior pastor. He can’t do his normal call-and-response preaching style with only a handful of people, all masked, in the audience. The choir has been reduced to just four or five people.
He said he wouldn’t return to full worship until “things die down…I have people in my congregation who have survived cancer,” he said. “I’d hate for them to survive cancer and succumb to Covid.”
Congregants, meanwhile, are making their own choices about whether attending church on Christmas is worth the risk.
Vernée Wilkinson, a member of Reservoir Church in Cambridge, Mass., said her family likely wouldn’t attend Christmas Eve services, in part because they were leaving on Saturday to visit her parents and didn’t want to risk bringing the virus with them. They did attend the Christmas pageant last weekend, which was outside.
“It was cold. It was blustery. It was uncomfortable,” said Ms. Wilkinson, 42 year old. The pastor grilled sweet potatoes, which she said served as effective hand-warmers. “I guess this was a little bit of a sense of the Christmas story, because Joseph and Mary were definitely uncomfortable on their journey.”
Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com
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