When President Donald Trump first talked about churches being “packed” on Easter Sunday, many listeners must have wondered if he meant July 12 instead of April 12.
A lot has changed since Trump’s pronouncement and, for the most part, churches are not packed except for notable exceptions, such as the arrest of a Florida megachurch pastor on Monday for holding services this past Sunday.
Some of you may have heard that the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne ignored the social-distancing warnings and preached to a packed church this past Sunday. TMZ and many other outlets reported on that story.
This is the clear and present danger ... people continuing to congregate -- squeezing into close quarters like sardines -- and that's exactly what happened Sunday at a Florida Church.
The River Church in Tampa was packed to the gills with worshipers who clearly were looking for hope. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, who presides over the megachurch and has been reportedly defiant over social distancing, has claimed he'll cure coronavirus just the way he did with Zika.
He has vowed he will never close his church ... despite every doctor and scientist saying social distancing is the only thing that will prevent the disease from spreading even more.
On Monday, Florida police arrested Howard-Browne and charged him with two misdemeanors. CNN’s Daniel Burke had the best lede about it all:
(CNN) Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne said he wouldn't close his doors of his Tampa, Florida, megachurch until the End Times begin. The police weren't willing to wait that long.
News of this was all over Facebook and Twitter by Monday night. For those of you who are afraid of the Constitutional implications of all this, don’t worry. The CNN story points out that the police have been trying to work with this pastor for days, but getting nowhere. Now, the Christian Post says that Howard-Browne (which I am shortening to RHB) made family groups stand six feet apart from each other, but as I watched the video (atop this page), it was hard to tell. Take a look.
But then again, I’ve a history with RHB. I interviewed him back in 1994 for this article when he first hit the American religious scene (he’s from South Africa), introducing the “holy laughter” phenomenon and calling himself “the Holy Ghost bartender.” I was not impressed.
In searching elsewhere, I could not find one article that thought anyone else would be meeting together on Easter, much less Passover, which begins the evening of Wednesday, April 8, nor the Orthodox Pascha (Easter), which is April 19. (On Sunday, Trump extended the federal social distancing guidelines to April 30).
As you would expect, there have been debates about the big headlines about a few pastors who have rebelled, as opposed to the thousands who have done everything they could to cooperate with efforts to fight the coronavirus.
Christianity Today had the best headline: “To cancel or not to cancel: That is the question.”
Chances are slim to none that Jewish homes and Christian churches will be accommodating crowds this year. Elderly Jews need to think twice about traveling to someone else’s home for a Seder if they think there’s the slightest chance of them catching this virus. Even Ramadan, which begins around April 24 and is marked by evening gatherings at mosques to break the fast, is in peril.
After all, they’ve closed access to the Kaaba in Mecca. This Knoxville News/Sentinel piece — for the USA Today Network — sums up the problem:
Religious leaders are confident Passover, Easter and Ramadan will be observed one way or another. But if the COVID-19 prevention measures stretch for weeks or longer, it means Jews, Christians and Muslims will be forced to adapt the family traditions and familiar rhythms of their holy day observances to this new way of living…
President Donald Trump wants to ease the social distancing guidelines his administration put in place by Easter, which falls on April 12, in hopes of boosting the U.S. economy. But that timeline has been called a mistake by elected officials, medical experts and public officials…
In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee said he does not think Easter is a realistic deadline for lessening the guidelines in the state. On Tuesday, he called for schools to stay closed through April 24. Municipal leaders have issued their own "Safer at Home" orders. Knoxville's is set to expire before the holidays start, but it can be extended.
So it looks like we’re all going to be doing virtual Seders, Good Fridays and Easters and Ramadan festivities.
One thing I would like to know, with all this sudden free time on their hands, are pastors and rabbis using this opportunity to get to know their congregations, i.e. a personal phone call to each member? How encouraging that would be! Then again, many pastors may be working harder than every doing online services, new forms of online community building and organizing efforts to help those who are suffering in their flocks and communities.
I’ve been surprised to see even some of the more secular publications have taken this issue on. The New Yorker just came out with a decent essay that suggests worshiping from home is not a bad idea and that Christians should set an example for social distancing. The writer was raised as a Lutheran.
Luther opened his home as a ward for the sick, and refused to leave even when the rest of Wittenberg was evacuated, so he would certainly be encouraging Christians today to do what they can to aid those whose vocations are life-saving, whether sewing masks or donating money or sharing whatever goods or groceries they might have.
But he would not be encouraging them to insist on gathering in groups larger than what medical experts advise, or suggesting they test God by exposing themselves to danger. I suspect that, instead, he would be reminding us of what gifts God continually gives us, like phones that let us talk across long distances and videoconferencing programs that bring community to us safely rather than requiring us to endanger others to pursue it.
I assume they’ll be doing something on Easter, the high point of the Christian year. Passover and Ramadan are also taking place during the same month — highly symbolic events that will offer unique challenges to believers this year.
There has been some coverage of other religious gatherings that will go by the wayside this year including the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando and the United Methodist General Conference in Minneapolis, the latter a potentially historic meeting on the Bible, doctrine and human sexuality that could result in an agreement to split the denomination in two. So that will have to wait a year.
Quoting Knoxville Rabbi Alon Ferency, the News-Sentinel story wonders if going online is a good enough substitute.
The quick turnaround to using technology has presented its challenges, but Ferency and other community leaders are hoping that platforms like Zoom will "scratch the itch" for connection.
"I've been using it for everything from board games to board meetings," Ferency said. "It's not the same as the warmth of a friend, but it's close."
USA Today has an amazing gallery of 156 photos on its home page showing how people deal with coronavirus around the world. One was a photo of men at Friday prayers at a mosque in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia. It shows a gigantic room of men, all standing about one yard apart instead of the usual shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.
But even more striking was a March 18 photo of thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims crowded together –- with no distancing in sight –- to pray for protection from the virus.
There is even a photo of someone spraying disinfectant around the ruins of the archeological city of Petra in Jordan. And in Mumbai, there’s even street art of the Buddha wearing a face mask.
Indicative of the need for copy editors who know some basics about religion, there’s an AP photo of about 20 people attending a service at the world’s largest church, Yoido Full Gospel, in Seoul. Although it’s a Protestant congregation, the photographer wrote down that they were attending “Mass” there.
Searching elsewhere on the USA Today website, one finds a short video on how the Easter bunny is related to Easter, which seems in poor taste considering this year’s circumstances. Scroll to the middle of the bunny story for a photo gallery of how coronavirus is affecting how people worship. The photos appear to be taken from papers belonging to the USA Today network.
This Washington Post story talks about how the cancellation of Easter services (Passover tends to be centered in the home, not the synagogue) will affect church economics. Christmas and Easter are major fundraising highlights for churches because of the crowds.
We already have pieces talking about the economic disasters that may happen if the annual hajj to Saudi Arabia is cancelled in July in that people who arranged to go this summer put down nonrefundable deposits for the trip, the National Observer (in Canada) says. The hajj has been cancelled before, says this English-language site The New Arab and 2020 may go by the wayside too. Even if the threat has subsided worldwide by that time, what will happen when two million pilgrims show up for the event, all of them packed like sardines? The Saudis probably don’t want to know.
Middle East Eye says that Palestinian travel agents lost millions of dollars after Saudi Arabia suspended Umrah pilgrimages to Mecca in February and are afraid of losing even more money if the hajj doesn’t happen.
So, the effects of cancelling religious holidays is vastly more than whether or not Christians can gather for Easter. The whole idea behind religious travel, including pilgrimages along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, is people staying together and worshiping in close quarters. (The Camino is closed too, by the way Here is the link to a YouTube video telling pilgrims to stay home).
Trump notwithstanding, the real story isn’t so much what observers of Easter, Passover and Ramadan will do without people being able to meet. They’ll do just fine. Much more upending is how coronavirus is affecting the conferences, the pilgrimages and mass gatherings.
As they said in “All the President’s Men,” follow the money. That’s where the real upheavals will be.