A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a...

For the past 27 days, a small Protestant church in The Hague has been conducting round-the-clock religious services to protect an Armenian refugee family from deportation.

By law, police officers in The Netherlands are not allowed to enter places of worship during religious services. So, reverends from around the country have taken turns holding services at Bethel Church to prevent officials from arresting the Tamrazyan family, who have been in The Netherlands for nine years. “By giving hospitality to this family, we could give them time and place to [demonstrate] to the secretary of state the … urgency of their situation,” Theo Hettema, chairman of the General Council of Protestant Ministers says.

Ha! It gets better:

Hettema says more than 300 Dutch reverends have volunteered to lead services at Bethel, and a petition calling on the Dutch government to grant more children’s pardons to refugee families has garnered close to a quarter of a million signatures.

Good for them! That’s church as it should be!

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