Church has its hymns silenced by council ban
A church has been banned from singing hymns that are too noisy, after its neighbours complained to a council.
All Nations Centre in Kennington, south London, could now be forced to close after Lambeth Council ordered it to turn the volume down.
The pentecostal church, which has a congregation of 600 people, has been told that it cannot amplify its music or sermons after a complaint was made to the town hall.
It means that worshippers will struggle to hear traditional hymns, such as Amazing Grace and Thine Be The Glory.
The council is the second to take action against a church over the playing of music, following an order that was served last week on the Immanuel International Christian Centre in Waltham Forest, north-east London. The congregation at the Immanuel centre has dwindled from 100 to 30 because of the restrictions, and leaders at All Nations fear that the same will happen to them.
They expressed dismay at the council's decision, which they said had been made without any justification for the noise ban.
"The complaint against us has nothing to do with noise and everything to do with our faith," said Victor Jibuike, 43, a pastor at All Nations in Kennington.
"It feels as if they're trying to harrass us and drive us out."
The congregation has been meeting at All Nations since the 1960s and Mr Jibuike said that they have never received a complaint before.
He said that the church began to face opposition from neighbours after it emerged that it was in negotation with the council to develop a disused school as a community centre.
A noise officer visited the church in June, but Mr Jibuike says that church officials did not hear again from the council until last month when the ban was introduced without any warning.
"We are horrified at the implications of this order which means people will no longer be able to worship," he said, adding that the church could lose the majority of its members.
All Nations, which is part of the Evangelical Alliance, would no longer be viable if this happened, he said.
The church is appealing the council's ban and is being represented by Paul Diamond, the leading human rights barrister, who advised Caroline Petrie, the nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for a patient and then reinstated.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, said that the church had had no complaints in the past and had served the community well.
"It is a lively, contemporary church which is trying to make Christianity relevant to 21st century Britain," she said.
"I fear the real issue behind this complaint is hostility to the Christian message, and the law is being used as a pretext to harass and silence Christian viewpoints not approved of by the State."
A spokesman for Lambeth Council said: "We only use this kind of enforcement as a last resort. We have received numerous complaints from local residents about the level of amplified noise and arranged several meetings with the centre to discuss a solution, but unfortunately the problem has continued so we have had to serve a noise abatement notice."
Meanwhile, the church in Waltham Forest can now only play music for 20 minutes on a Sunday between 11.30am and 11.50am after a complaint from Baha Uddin, who lives near the church.
He had complained that he was unable to use his garden at weekends and that his one-year-old daughter was regularly disturbed by the noise from services.
However, other neighbours have said that the noise is not a problem.
Dunni Odetoyinbo, pastor of the Immanuel centre, has claimed that the council had only told his church to keep quiet so as not to offend the local Muslim community.
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