I realize that I have said this many times at GetReligion through the years, but the coronavirus crisis makes this old Baylor University church-state seminar talking point relevant once again.
The First Amendment offers an amazing amount of protection, in terms of the freedom of religious belief and practice. If you want to understand the limits, remember these three factors that allow state officials to investigate whether religious practices are protected — profit, fraud and clear threat to life and health.
That third one is clearly in the news right now. Come to think of it, some old televangelists are yanking No. 2 into play, as well. Can you say “Jim Bakker”?
This brings me to key themes in a few recent stories linked to the impact of coronavirus concerns on religious worship and practice. How widespread are these concerns? This New York Times piece looked at the global picture: “In a Pandemic, Religion Can Be a Balm and a Risk.”
Believers worldwide are running afoul of public health authorities’ warnings that communal gatherings, the keystone of so much religious practice, must be limited to combat the virus’ spread. In some cases, religious fervor has led people toward cures that have no grounding in science; in others, it has drawn them to sacred places or rites that could increase the risk of infection.
In Myanmar, a prominent Buddhist monk announced that a dose of one lime and three palm seeds — no more, no less — would confer immunity. In Iran, a few pilgrims were filmed licking Shiite Muslim shrines to ward off infection. And in Texas, the preacher Kenneth Copeland braided televangelism with telemedicine, broadcasting himself, one trembling hand outstretched, as he claimed he could cure believers through their screens.
That’s the context for an important Associated Press report that ran the other day with this headline: “Coronavirus gathering bans raise religious freedom questions.” Here is the key summary paragraph:
Churches and other religious institutions that have chafed at public health experts’ calls to fight the virus by avoiding gatherings are under heightened scrutiny as those experts’ pleas become edicts from government officials, including Trump. In a nation where faith can be as politically polarized as any other part of life – and where freedom to worship has become a rallying cry on the right – some conservative religious institutions are acknowledging that the government’s word comes first during a pandemic.
First of all, the First Amendment doesn’t just protect “freedom of worship.” This is the United States of America, not the People’s Republic of China.
Yes, worship services are getting the most ink in the current crisis, and the rights of dissenters should be taken seriously (I remain a First Amendment liberal of the old school). But “freedom of religion” is much broader than mere worship services.
At the same time, Americans are clearly in a “clear threat to life and health” situation here and the overwhelming majority of our religious leaders have recognized that. (Click here for my own syndicated column on this subject.)
Thus, I think the biggest weakness in this story is that the valid coverage of the dissenters is not balanced with strong statements backing the end of large-scale face-to-face worship services. At the very least, it would be important to quote leaders of the largest religious flocks in America, such as the U.S. Catholic bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention and the (at this point) United Methodist Church.
It would be easy to assume, from reading this story, that there is more dissent among evangelical Protestants, for example, than there is cooperation with government efforts to slow the virus.
There is tension — by all means. Most of this tension is between laypeople and their leaders who have issued instructions to move worship services into digital spaces (with clergy and a few laypeople conducting rites that are then watched by the congregation on their home computers). There are real challenges ahead, linked to weddings and, most of all, funerals. And don’t forget that Holy Week'/Easter, Passover and Ramadan loom ahead (“Crossroads” podcast here).
I was worried that AP’s treatment of the legal arguments linked to this story would be unbalanced, with only “progressive” and or secular voices included. But note the contents of this strong chunk of material:
Religious organizations could make a constitutional claim to being singled out by a law that treats secular activity differently, said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA Law School professor and First Amendment expert. “But if you’re just imposing the same burden on everybody, for reasons completely unrelated to religiosity of the behavior, that is likely to be permissible even” under state-level religious freedom laws, he said.
Those religious freedom laws ask whether government restrictions are the least burdensome way to further a “compelling interest.” When it comes to coronavirus, Volokh said, courts are likely to find “there’s a compelling interest in preventing death through communicable disease.”
Luke Goodrich, vice president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and a top religious freedom attorney, agreed that the public health emergency of the pandemic would make the governmental case for restrictions on gatherings, including worship, “far stronger than usual.”
While focusing on the social-distancing sins of believers, it is also important to remember that many other Americans (and people around the world) continue to jam into markets and vacation spots all over the place.
For context there, see this strong New York Times story about these non-religious “Deniers and Disbelievers.” This summary passage ends with the Florida party quote that launched a thousand tweets (or more):
Across the United States, from Florida beaches to California mountains, casinos to national parks, legions dismissed the growing demands this past week to isolate themselves and stop congregating as the coronavirus spread through the country and shut down nearly all facets of American life.
They were the defiers and the disbelievers. They were those eager to flout authority or those afflicted with cabin fever, if not Covid-19. … They were all people who dismissed the calls for isolation, seeing more reward than risk in gathering. They conflated confidence with immunity. …
“If I get corona, I get corona,” a reveler in Florida said in a widely-shared television interview. “At the end of the day, I’m not going to let it stop me from partying.”
Let me end by pointing readers (especially journalists) to an essay this past weekend by religious-liberty pro David French, a Harvard Law level evangelical who writes for The Dispatch. I have had numerous people send me the URL for his piece entitled, “Coronavirus, Courage and the Second Temptation of Christ.”
It opens with scripture, such as:
Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
—Matthew 4:5-7
Here is the key passage, summarizing the theological issue that is driving many of these debates about the wisdom of retreats from large-scale worship services.
You will hear echoes of this debate in stories about other world religions, during this crisis. The bottom line: Do believers worship a God who can protect them or not? When do believers play it safe and stay home and when do they show courage in this kind of crisis, plunging into efforts to help others?
Read this French commentary carefully:
There exists within Christianity a temptation to performative acts that masquerade as fearlessness. In reality, this recklessness represents — as the early church father John Chrysostom called it — “display and vainglory.” Look how fearless we are, we declare, as we court risks that rational people should shun. In the context of a global pandemic followers of Christ can actually become a danger to their fellow citizens, rather than a source of help and hope.
Or, put another way, reckless Christians can transform themselves from angels of mercy to angels of death, and the rest of the world would be right to fear their presence.
But just as Christ rejected performative displays, he also rejected cowardice. He demands sacrifice even unto death. Yet taking up one’s cross in imitation of Christ means engaging in purposeful sacrifice. This is the risk of the doctor or the nurse who possesses the courage to continually expose himself or herself to deadly disease to care for the sick and dying. This is the risk of the faithful believer who sheds personal protection to care for the least of these so that they are not alone.
And this person does not then walk into church or to church events — or even surround herself with her own family — to prove God’s divine protection. Were the men and women who were infected at a church event in Nashville not faithful Christians who were fearlessly serving the Lord? Yet one man’s infection still became their infection, and now dozens of people are paying a steep price.
I know doctors who are separating themselves from their families. They’re treating this moment of crisis in much the same way that a soldier treats a deployment. The normal comforts of home are just not available. That’s not fear. In fact, they are fearless in their service. It’s prudence. They will not impute their personal risk to the men, women, and children in their family and community.
Yes, read it all. This will help many readers understand some of the headlines they are seeing.