The South African Council of Churches (SACC) says prolonged lockdown and prohibition of mass gatherings will discourage many communities to worship in the future.
It says people are used to attending churches on a regular basis but they can not do it anymore.
The council has been reacting to the Alert Level 1 which was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday.
SACC General Secretary Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana says the functioning of churches has also been negatively affected.
“It is evident that many people will not see reasons why they should go [to church]. So it makes people fall out of the church. There would be a lot of people that will no longer be worshipping. That is the reality.”
“There will be people who will remain afraid of infections. The revenues of churches have already gone down seriously and quite considerably,” says Mpumlwana.
The audio below is the full interview with Mpumlwana:
During his address, Ramaphosa announced that Cabinet had decided to relax the lockdown regulations under which the 700 people are now allowed to gather indoors and 2 500 outdoors.
However, some medical experts have predicted that parts of the country will start to experience the fourth wave of the pandemic at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
