I thought I knew a little about my family’s history.
I’ve written about my grandfather Lloyd Lee Ross, whose World War II service earned him a Bronze Star Medal and a Purple Heart. Papa died in 2011 at age 93.
I’ve visited the rural West Tennessee cemetery where generations of my relatives — going all the way back to my great-great-great-great-grandfather Daniel Ross (1791-1842) — are buried.
But not until the COVID-19 crisis hit did I learn about the global influenza pandemic of 1918 — known colloquially as the Spanish flu — and my family’s connection to it.
I knew that Papa lost his father when he was a baby. It turns out that my great-grandfather William Charles Ross (1883-1918) died on Nov. 15, 1918, at age 35 from the flu pandemic. Papa, the youngest of William Charles’ five children, was nine days shy of eight months old.
I appreciate my Uncle Chuck educating me on these details from our family’s past.
Given my interest in religion, I am grateful, too, for the journalists digging through newspaper archives to report on how houses of worship responded to the 1918 pandemic, which killed nearly 700,000 in the U.S. and 50 million globally.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Peter Smith wrote a fascinating piece on the subject, as did the Birmingham News’ Greg Garrison. For Religion News Service, Megan Botel and Isaiah Murtaugh related a Los Angeles church’s “tale of two pandemics, 100 years apart.”
At The Gospel Coalition, Joe Carter (a former member of the GetReligion team) offered “9 things you should know about the 1918 influenza pandemic.” And Word & Way editor Brian Kaylor interviewed a historian who says the 1918 pandemic shows churches can survive shutdowns.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. A cough. An X-ray. A ventilator. Bishop Steve Wood battles coronavirus and lives to tell: I have a short list of journalists who could write the phone book (this ancient reference will make sense to a few) and I’d read it.
That list includes Jennifer Berry Hawes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning special projects writer for the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, and author of the must-read “Grace Will Lead Us Home” about the Emanuel AME Church massacre.
Trust me, you’ll want to take time to read Hawes’ compelling narrative about an Anglican bishop who survived the coronavirus.
2. Pastor-sharing: For clergy, a holy hustle and labor of love: “Multiple churches increasingly share one pastor. It's an old model making a comeback amid new cultural dynamics,” notes G. Jeffrey MacDonald.
MacDonald is a veteran religion writer and author of the new book “Part-Time Is Plenty: Thriving Without Full-Time Clergy.”
His enlightening Christian Science Monitor cover story explores how the pastor-sharing trend is “shaping church life, faith identities and the future.”
3. ‘Plague on a biblical scale’: COVID-19 has hit New York City-area Hasidic Jewish families especially hard, reports Liam Stack, the Metropolitan religion writer for the New York Times.
In a deep piece impressive both for its specific details and its broad context, Stack explores how “the epidemic has killed influential religious leaders and torn through large, tight-knit families.”
Continue reading “For Lessons On Closed Houses Of Worship, Look At 1918 Flu Pandemic” by Bobby Ross Jr., at Religion Unplugged.