When several states are struggling to contain the spread of coronavirus following the religious congregation at West Delhi's Nizamuddin, a 176-year-old Baptist church in Assam's capital Guwahati, on Saturday, proved that mass prayers are possible even from a distance.
Many members of the Guwahati Baptist Church downloaded the Zoom cloud meeting app on their smartphones and joined the 30-minute-long daily prayers online from their homes or workstations. As the church members joined the prayers online at 4 pm, the prayers to get rid of the coronavirus havoc took the centrestage.
"Since we can't put our lives at stake and also can't stop the daily mass prayers, we decided to work out something. Initially, soon after the lockdown was clamped, we prepared small videos of our hymns and the Bible messages and shared them through WhatsApp. Then, we decided to have something which can enable all of us take part in the prayers together and live online," pastor of Guwahati Baptist Church Aziz-ul Haque told DH on Saturday.
The ancient church has even decided to observe the morning prayers at 9.30 am on every Sunday, Easter prayers on March 10 and the Good Friday prayers online.
The church, situated at Panbazar in Guwahati and close to the Brahmaputra river, shut its doors for its members on March 22 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi clamped the country-wide lockdown to contain the spread of deadly coronavirus.
The church, established in 1845, has over 600 active members now, many of whom take part in the daily prayers.
"All they need to do is to download the app on their mobile phones and join it by using the meeting ID: 5857953548 and the password: 168420. Once they are connected, they all can join the mass prayers together without visiting the church. Definitely, it cannot feel exactly like when we meet personally inside the church but we had to do this to maintain social distancing and other preventive measures to fight the coronavirus," Haque said.
"Now a days most have smartphones. But we are trying to do something for those who either don't have one or can't use it," he said.
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