I know, I know. I couldn’t believe it either.
In terms of shock value in the Twitter-verse, the Washington Post team buried the lede in a timely news piece that ran with this headline: “For Georgetown churchgoers, a coronavirus self-quarantine is embraced as necessary.”
This is an Inside. The. Beltway. Story and I am perfectly OK with that. So see if you can spot the shocking symbolic detail in this overture:
The longtime friends were looking forward to their regular game of bridge at Washington’s posh Metropolitan Club on Monday afternoon, a bit of welcome routine in a world slowly spinning out of control.
The three prominent lawyers, C. Boyden Gray, William Nitze and Edwin D. Williamson, were well aware that the novel coronavirus was spreading, and that it had just made an appearance in Maryland with the announcement of the state’s first three cases last week. They never imagined, however, that the District’s first confirmed case of covid-19 would arrive at their doorstep: the 203-year-old Christ Church Georgetown, an affluent Episcopal congregation co-founded by Francis Scott Key and attended by a bipartisan collection of well-known Washingtonians, among them Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
You can just hear the gasps from readers across America who do not understand the role that Georgetown plays in the DC political ecosphere.
Yes, Tucker Carlson and his family attend an Episcopal parish. If I remember correctly, they have been members of this parish for quite some time.
It’s a Washington thing. Lambs and lions (who is who depends on the biases of the observer) may occupy the same pews. It’s all about location, location, location. And as any editor inside the Beltway will tell you, the Episcopal Church retains its clout, serving as a kind of “NPR at prayer” (a label created by my Orthodox priest, a former Episcopal tall-steeple clergyman).
Why make a big deal out of this fact in the story? For a simple reason: Georgetown is the symbolic heart of DC cocktail culture. Short of a coronavirus blitz through the U.S. Senate cloak room, it’s hard to imagine a more symbolic first case of COVID-19. Thus, the next chunk of the story is a stunner:
On Sunday morning, the emails from the church arrived bearing the news that the Rev. Timothy Cole, 59, its beloved and affable rector, had fallen ill and been hospitalized and that services would be canceled for the foreseeable future.
Then on Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) issued a public health advisory aimed at the church, urging the more than 500 worshipers who may have encountered Cole as he presided over services March 1 and at other points in the past two weeks to self-quarantine for 14 days. Late Monday, Christ Church said its organist, Tom Smith, 39, also had been infected with the coronavirus.
This story is packed with details that will help outsiders realize the degree to which Washington, D.C., is going to be affected by this crisis.
I appreciated the decision to stay focused on the bridge players. That allowed a buffet line of practical details that will connect with a wide variety of readers, especially the older niche of American churchgoers who tend to occupy pews in the Episcopal Church and the other “Seven Sisters” of oldline Protestantism. Note this paragraph:
Activities scuttled by the Metropolitan Club bridge players included a meeting with a gubernatorial candidate, a trip to inspect an easement for a local historic preservation group, a ski trip to Utah with grandkids and a quick zip to an auto body shop in Northeast to get a bumper fixed. After conferring quickly, Gray, Nitze and Williamson decided that the Monday bridge game was out of the question, too.
Right up front, the story stresses that these affluent and older Americans have the income and connections that offer them quite a few options in this kind of crisis.
But there are other details that will hit home for many readers, details linked to questions such as these:
Did I receive my Communion host directly from the rector? Did I shake his or her hand at the exit door?
Did I share a hymnal with this or that person who now is showing symptoms of being “sick”?
Should I go to that Lenten retreat I was planning?
Do I stay for coffee hour, if my parish still has a coffee hour this Sunday?
Once again, I will ask a coronavirus question that I have been asking for a week or two here at GetReligion: Is the nursery still operating at this parish? Does it have a day-care center? Most Episcopal parishes are not packed with children these days, but it’s still a timely question.
Meanwhile, here is a letter from The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde of Washington, D.C., sent to her people after the announcement about Cole.
Stay tuned.