UK police officers raided a church in Britain and shut down a legal online service after accusing the pastor of breaching coronavirus laws.
The police officers stormed into a Pentecostal Church called Kingdom Faith Ministries International Church in Milton Keynes, a town approximately 50 miles northwest of London in Buckinghamshire.
Pastor Daniel Mateola was hosting a broadcast service in his church being streamed to 150 online members when the authorities arrived on the scene.
When the Pastor attempted to tell the police that he was operating his house of worship in keeping with relevant government guidelines and that what he and his team were doing was legal, seven additional cops were called.
The pastor said the officers “escalated” the situation beyond what was reasonable and that it traumatized his wife and children.
And in a frightening move, officers later turned up on his doorstep to threaten court action after repeatedly refusing to believe he was operating within the lockdown rules.
Then later an official from the police force coronavirus response team, said that the intervention amounted to “a misunderstanding by our officers of the legislation in place in what is an ever-changing and complex area of enforcement.”
Also saying, “There has been a mistake in the issuing of this ticket and I would like to apologize for the distress I know this is likely to have caused.”
Peter Bone, a Tory member of the British Parliament, said the police action left him “flabbergasted.” “This looks like a police state — it’s the sort of thing that would happen in Communist China. You would think those police officers might have better things to do than persecute someone doing an online service,” he said.
In a statement following the police apology, Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which supported Mateola, said if someone had said at the beginning of the year that by November the police would be interpreting and enforcing government rules which involved closing down legal broadcasts from a church and prosecuting a pastor, nobody would have believed them.
“Yet this is the current reality for church leaders seeking to legally function and faithfully serve their congregation and communities in need under government covid-19 regulations,” Williams said.
“It is astonishing and disturbing in its own right to see nine police officers breaking up a church broadcast and treating its leader with such disrespect. But to then turn up unannounced at Pastor Mateola’s family home and prosecute him, is sinister and almost unbelievable.”
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