Lafayette Government Joins Movement to Open Churches

On April 30th, Louisiana's Attorney General, Jeff Landry, fired off a letter to Governor John Bel Edwards. General Landry's request was simple. He was asking the Governor to reconsider the restrictions placed on houses of worship during the Stay-at-Home order. Landry's letter even offered some suggestions on how that might be accomplished.

Now Lafayette Consolidated Government is joining General Landry in support of his request. Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory told KLFY television,

If we can find ways to safely reopen our stores and businesses, we ought to be able to safely reopen our churches.

I think most of us would agree with the Mayor-President. The keywords are "open safely". I for one, think that can be accomplished. In fact, I know it can.

As of now, houses of worship are held to a restriction of no more than ten people inside. I am not a math major but I bet if you took the seating capacity of most churches and applied social spacing guidelines you'd be able to fit a lot more than 10 of the faithful in those pews.

My thought is this if we can allow a restaurant to have 50 people on a patio, granted it's outside, but in a confined area much smaller than say First Baptist Lafayette or The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, then common sense should dictate that more than ten people, practicing social safeguards, should be allowed to join together in worship in a space designed for hundreds.

Mayor-President Guillory again,

Look our pastors are smart. Our parishioners are smart.

I think if we are going to have a rebirth in our economy we should also be allowed to have a similar spiritual rebirth to nourish our souls. This way we might go into our community with a giving heart filled with hope and charity. Two things that I think this community could really use.

Maybe we won't hug in the lobby or shake hands when we exchange the Peace, but it would sure be nice to stand six feet away from friends while we raise our voices in song. There are many people I know that would probably agree that my singing is improved when I cover my face with a mask.