To state the matter bluntly, the question of the day is: Who went to church-temple-mosque this past weekend and who did not?
The related question: “Why?” Why did believers make the decisions that they made?
This is one of those cases in which it is impossible to write a story that captures the whole picture, since we are talking about one of the ultimate local, regional, state, national and international stories of our news lifetimes.
Journalists can try to produce a news-you-can-use list that hints at the whole. Check out this Religion News Service feature: “Coronavirus shutdowns disrupt America’s soul, closing houses of worship.” That list of bullets is so limited, because producing a representative national list would be impossible.
Thus, others will focus on the larger story by looking at the symbolic details. With the resources of The New York Times, that looks like this: “A Sunday Without Church: In Crisis, a Nation Asks, ‘What is Community?’ “ This is a fine story, although, yes, its anecdotes and examples seem mainline and limited. But, again, the true picture is too big to capture.
Journalists do what they can do. Here is the thesis statement, in magisterial Times voice, free of attributions:
This week, as the coronavirus has spread, one American ritual after another has vanished. March Madness is gone. No more morning gym workouts or lunches with co-workers. No more visits to grandparents in nursing homes. The Boston Marathon, held through war and weather since 1897, was postponed.
And now it was a Sunday without church. Governors from Kentucky to Maryland to North Carolina moved to shut down services, hoping to slow the disease’s spread. Catholic dioceses stopped public Mass, and some parishes limited attendance at funerals and weddings to immediate family. On Sunday morning the Vatican closed the coming Holy Week services to the public.
The number of Americans who regularly attend a church service has been steadily declining in recent years. Many have left the traditions of their childhood, finding solace and identity in new ways. But for the one in three adults who attend religious services weekly, the cancellations have meant a life rhythm disrupted. And for the broader country, canceled services were another symbol of a lost chance to be still, to breathe and to gather together in one of the oldest ways humans know, just when such things were needed most.
For a similar take from a smaller newsroom, consult this multi-source National Catholic Reporter piece: “Worshippers go online, those at services keep a distance.”
My friend Rod “Benedict Option” Dreher stayed home (as I did) and watched a live stream of the Divine Liturgy from his Orthodox Church in America parish in urban Baton Rouge, La. In other words, one computer screen stands for legions of screens elsewhere. See: “View From Your Pandemic Online Church.”
But I was haunted by one passage in one story — another example of how The Age of Donald Trump has infected everything, when it comes to news. The fact that the story was valid only made it worse. I am talking about this story in this tweet.
Here is the killer passage from this Washington Post feature, in which religion-desk skill comes into play:
In Arkansas, the Rev. Josh King met with the pastors of five other churches on Thursday to decide whether to continue holding service. Their religious beliefs told them that meeting in person to worship each Sunday remained an essential part of their faith, and some of their members signed on to Trump’s claims that the media and Democrats were overblowing the danger posed by the virus.
“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” said King, lead pastor at Second Baptist church in Conway, Ark.
But King and his colleagues were concerned: They believed the virus was a serious threat, and mass gatherings such as church services could spread it. He and the other Arkansas pastors ultimately decided that they would hold services as usual this Sunday, with some extra precautions. …
“In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism, or buying into the hype,” said King, whose church draws about 1,100 worshipers on a typical Sunday.
Lord have mercy.
It is easy to read that passage and slide into the cursed politics/ideology equals religion/doctrine trap. However, it is clear that politics is playing a key role in this phenomenon.
But it’s crucial not to oversimplify the situation. “All” evangelicals — even white evangelicals, even white Trump-voting evangelicals — are not doing the same thing in this crisis. They are not responding the same way. The same is true of Catholics, Mainliners, the Orthodox, etc. This may be a case where politics is trumping doctrine, in many pews, in some pulpits and at some altars.
That tension is a key part of the larger story. There are mysteries here. Alas, who has the resources to chase that massive story?
Meanwhile, check out the thread with this tweet from Ryan Burge, a political science professor and mainline Baptist pastor:
Writing for Christianity Today, Burge (a GetReligion contributor) dug into the politics of all of this — without oversimplifying the religion details. Get ready for crucial sentences containing words like “some” and “many.” The headline: “Faith Over Fear? No, It’s Political Ideology that Keeps People Unafraid of COVID-19.”
Backing up into some related pre-coronavirus data, he noted:
In recent years, Americans across religious traditions have become more worried about the potential for a major epidemic, the kind of hypothetical question that has become all too real in the past few weeks.
But the earlier data shows fears around the spread of disease tend to be lower among Protestant Christians who identify as politically conservative and attend church weekly. This may explain why some conservative leaders, including a couple of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisers, hesitated to cancel in-person worship or on-campus classes amid the current coronavirus precautions.
There’s more:
… There doesn’t seem to be a significant difference between Protestants and Catholics, except that Protestants who go to church weekly have a much lower level of fear over epidemics (24.9%) than weekly Mass–attending Catholics (42.6%). Their level of fear also falls lower than fellow Protestants who attend more or less than they do.
The concern around the severity of COVID-19 can depend on political orientation. For instance, a recent Quinnipiac University poll, conducted the first week in March, found that 63 percent of Republicans were not especially concerned about the virus, compared to 31 percent of Democrats.
In the Chapman Survey, when looking just at regular churchgoers who described their political ideology as conservative, a clear outlier emerges. Politically conservative Protestants who attend church frequently are far less concerned with a major epidemic than conservative, devout Catholics.
So the problem here is Trump-supporting, conservative, church-going, white evangelicals in pews? The answer appears to be: Many times “yes” and sometimes “no.”
Let’s end here, as Burge notes that the crisis may be pushing some people out of a political response and into one that mixes faith and concern for their flocks and their neighbors.
In some evangelical Protestant traditions, fear can also be seen as a betrayal of faith. A group out of Bethel Church — including aspiring politician Sean Feucht, who led worship in the Trump White House last year — is releasing messages online in response to the spread of coronavirus, aiming to “silence voices of fear.” Bethel leader Bill Johnson told followers, “This whole maneuvering in fear is crazy. I've never seen the spirit of fear spread so quickly. Internationally, things were many, many, many, times worse.”
But while many politically conservative Protestants may have historically been less likely to worry about an epidemic, the daily updates in the US are rapidly changing their approach. More conservatives and evangelical leaders are taking a hardline stance on the coronavirus response, particularly as many rallied Sunday for the President’s National Day of Prayer.
Keep your eyes on denominational wire services and websites. At some point, many bishops and pastors are going to have to go on the record and make decisions about how to handle the big question — Easter.
P.S. Right after I posted, Burge added: