Like so many of the injustices and inequities revealed by the pandemic, evangelical Christianity’s deepest values have also been unmasked. Now that more and more businesses are requiring those who return to work to get the vaccine, people who have already decided not to get the shot, often by feasting on misinformation, have also decided that their “personal freedom” trumps any biblical injunction to be our sister and brother’s keeper. But that is not all.
When you gaze up into the night sky, perhaps from the sateen darkness of Glacier National Park, or the cozy vestibule of your backyard, what do you see? Pin-wheeling galaxies? Endless expanse of interstellar space? Familiar special neighbors such as Orion or Ursa Major?
“Man [Humankind] can’t become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him of all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.”
I’m thinking a lot about this moment. Under 70 days until the most important Presidential Election arguably of all time, close to six months into an unprecedented global pandemic, increasing racial uprisings, increasing inequalities, anxieties, looming questions, delayed and potent grief.
I write in the context of the twin global realities of Covid-19; and the increasing rejection of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and white supremacy – including a growing rejection of religions which are perceived as promoting and maintaining those poisons.
The world has shifted on its axis since my last article appeared in Progressing Spirit. As I write, the number of COVID-19 deaths has passed 400,000, a number that shrinks from the reality experienced around the globe. As countries attempt to reopen their economies, anti-racism protests are sweeping the globe. Immune to neither challenge, we in Canada are little more than a quiet simmer when compared to the legitimate rage being expressed across America and around the world.
One of the “ultimate questions” humans like to pose is this: Why are we here?
This might seem to be a particularly appropriate question to ask in a time of the coronavirus plague when so much is becoming uprooted, when so many are afraid and suffering and dying.
How will people of faith show up? Will the knee jerk reactions of shock and awe at the news that African Americans are dying at alarming rates elicit advocacy and activism for long-term strategies to correct structural and systemic injustices? Will people who claim to be Christians consider themselves “woke” because they write a check in support of a food pantry?
Since early March, a poem[i] by Kristin Flyntz has been circulating widely wherein she imagines what the Covid-19 virus might be saying. More than once it says, “Just stop. Be still. Listen. Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well. We will help you, if you listen.”
In a responsible response to the coronavirus outbreak, also known as COVID-19, church and worship services across the globe are canceled. Traditional Bible study has gone online. Sermons are watched on Zoom, and old videos of singing church choirs have popped up in my inbox. Our global engagement with one another right now is social distancing while staying connected, revealing our acts of spiritual communion.