On Friday, March 13th, as news of the Coronavirus spread that the damaging virus was beginning to affect New Haven, I scanned social media to see what my friends were saying about the threat. The public schools system, which had announced half-days, to give teachers time to develop teaching plans for possible school stoppages, changed that announcement to indefinite closures. The mayor was asking bars and restaurants to cut their occupancy to half, and then to close altogether. Before full closing, one New Haven public school was already closed, and a suspected affected person was announced in the city. The concern seemed to grow by the hour, and some of my FaceBook friends did not seem to be getting it, particularly, the church-going ones.
In response to the news about the virus, or shall I say, in defiance of it, people were quoting Bible verses that suggesting they had no reason to be concerned. Their statements indicated that their belief in God would either prevent them from being affected or protect them from further illness if they did. Such an attitude to this pandemic, a pandemic that even forced an oft science-denying President to call a National Emergency, inspire me to pen and post the following statement on my Facebook pages:
DEAR CHRISTIANS: When Faced with a Medical Emergency, please use your God-Given Intelligence to Get Medical Treatment or to Avoid Getting Sick at All. Quoting Bible Verses will NOT Suffice. The Bible is NOT in Competition with Science. The Authors of the Bible did not have at their disposal the Medical Advancements that God has allowed us to possess. PLEASE Listen to the Medical Professions, who are God’s Servants, and Keep yourself safe. Prayer is not a Substitute for Being Wise. PLEASE SHARE THIS.
I’m happy to say that the statement was shared multiple times, and persons positively responded to it over 50 times.
During this time, I was also in continual conversation with Deacon Even Simmons, chairperson of The Immanuel Baptist Church’s Diaconate Ministry. The person who is my primary lay assistant, and who works as a physician assistant at Yale-New Haven Hospital. We discussed whether we should cancel the religious services at Immanuel for Sunday. We also had to consider how we would (or if we could) keep our soup kitchen open, which serves 45 to 100 persons each week, depending on the time of the month, snow or not. We ultimately made the impactful decision to cancel church.
Canceling church, as it is usually called, is not something we take lightly. But, when doing so is necessary to protect the well-being of the congregation, we do. Such a decision is sometimes a no-brainer, like on heavy snow Sundays, but we had been there many times before. In this case, we are on untutored terrain, and we needed to rely on the knowledge and expertise of others. I spoke with a physician friend of mine who led me to call New Haven’s Martiza Bond, director of health. While Director Bond did not advise us to cancel church, the information she provided, coupled with the seemingly ubiquitous national details, especially the advice concerning “social distancing,” we decided to cancel church. It is near impossible for church attendees to keep our distances from one another. For the health and well-being of our congregants and for others with whom they will come into contact after church, our decision was sealed.
Along with Deacon Bethany Watkins, who is in charge of the weekly operations of the soup kitchen, The deaconate chair and I, worked out a plan to keep the soup kitchen open. We joined the soup kitchen crew of four to help prepare and to serve approximately 50 dinners at the door of the church, without allowing our clients to gather in the Fellowship Hall. It was the soup kitchen’s form of “Distancing.”
As stated in my Facebook post, I genuinely believe that intelligent Christianity is not in competition with science. We should not use Bible verses to blunt medical knowledge available to us. As members of a multifaceted community, we, like everyone else, have the responsibility to keep our neighbors and one another safe whenever and wherever we can. The city does not know how long the coronavirus will be with us, but doing our part to help contain, and eventually dismiss it is a no-brainer.