Posted on 08/22/2023 5:22:00 AM PDT by lightman
One of the greatest contributions that America gave to the world was and is religious freedom. In 2020, that freedom was taken away from all religions in the United States. We’ve not yet come to terms with this awful reality and what it means for the future of faith.
The lockdowns were a major blow to religious institutions and practice. Every major survey shows that attendance at weekly religious services is down from pre-lockdown times.
“The share of all U.S. adults who say they typically attend religious services at least once a month is down modestly but measurably (by 3 percentage points, from 33 percent to 30 percent) over that span,” writes Pew, “and one-in-five Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.”
I’ve had this confirmed by many friends who report that the religious houses of their choice seem to show far less participation. This very likely translates to a decline in financial support too. Once people got out of the habit of participating in a physical church, the ritual was broken and now we see the spreading of indifference. This is surely not a good sign.
But that picture is complicated by a strange feature: the religious congregations that resisted COVID controls and shutdowns have likely earned trust and loyalty from their members. Indeed, this weekend I happened to attend the debut of a new opera where attendance was dominated by what are called “traditionalist” Catholics. Talking with people after, I was thrilled to learn just how many of their congregations never closed down.
A priest friend of mine in the Midwest tells the story of Easter 2020, when most every church in the country was closed. That’s an outrage, by the way. It’s a devastating commentary on the Catholic Bishops that they uttered no protest against this. It’s a black mark against an entire generation of Church leadership.
My priest friend, however, stood up to his own Bishop and said he would sooner resign his post as pastor than lock his own parishioners out of church on Holy Week.
“You are bluffing,” the Bishop said.
“Try me,” the priest answered.
The Bishop could not afford to take the chance of losing this man because his parish had a very large school and was thriving. So the meeting broke up with the Bishop neither given permission nor refusing it. The parish allowed parishioners to come in the back entrance where the media was not on the lookout, and they kept the lights in the building very low so as not to attract government officials.
Services went on. The parishioners have not forgotten this act of bravery and increased their participation and financial support in gratitude. The priest was tested and showed that he took seriously the Gospel message. He was not going to throw away the words of Jesus that wherever two or three gather in his name, there is God.
There is nothing in the Gospels about social distancing, much less mRNA jabs as a moral imperative.
Jesus ate with the lepers but Fauci told us not to get near each other because of a virus circulating with a 99 percent and higher survival rate, even while he was banning therapeutics and killing people with ventilators and toxic pharmaceuticals.
Those who trusted Jesus over Fauci have earned the respect of their congregations. But there is even more to it than that.
There is something about a very strong religious faith that protected people against government propaganda in those times. They could see straight through the lies even as more secular people in general went for the government-pushed baloney.
Think back to those times. Who resisted? Certainly the traditional Catholics did, more than a few of them devoted to the older form of liturgy with Latin and all the smells and bells. They teach a stricter doctrine about sin and salvation than you get from the watered-down version in modern parish life. Those people were certainly among the resistance to government decrees.
It was the same with Jewish congregations. The typical Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox temples and synagogues shut down and went to Zoom. This infuriated people and alienated them from their place of worship. But in many communities called “ultra-Orthodox” or Hasidic among others, there was indefatigable resistance.
Indeed, both the governor and mayor of New York dared blame these faithful Jews for the spreading of disease. The New York Times agreed completely, despite how this claim revived one of the more grotesque smears of the Jews from the Middle Ages.
The Amish never paid the slightest attention to the disease frenzy that shut down the rest of society. In the Anabaptist tradition which also includes the Mennonites there is no real distinction between the community, the way of life, and the functioning of the place of worship. It is all in a unity in both belief and practice. And so there simply was never a chance that these people would stop worshiping God in the way their tradition demands.
It was all true of many break-off sects of the so-called Mormons. Outside the confines of the official church that is forever seeking respectability of the media and secular elites, these communities continued right on with their practices. And why not? Their whole lives are defined by the choice to believe and live in a certain way. Some hysterical screaming from D.C. and the media elites are not going to shake them from something much more fundamental: the relationship of their members to their God.
The evangelicals were a bit slow to catch on to the scam that was the lockdowns but they figured it out too, many by the summer of 2020, and they started holding weddings and funerals. Regular weekly services returned to the howls of the media hounds but they didn’t care. Once they had shaken off their fears, they were ready to get back to their religious obligations.
Tellingly, it was the more secular areas of the country that stayed closed longer. And the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches proved themselves all-too-willing to go along with the demands that they shut down services because of Fauci’s diktats.
For most of 2020 and 2021, many of these churches simply kept their doors closed or forcibly masked their parishioners. Horribly, some of them even went along with the vaccine mandate, not only for staff but parishioners too.
“Nationwide, a number of churches and synagogues are implementing vaccine mandates,” wrote the Deseret News in September 2021. “Some are requiring not just clergy and staff to get vaccinated but even congregants. Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, California, is enforcing such an all encompassing mandate — complete with ushers who will politely turn away those without proof of vaccination.”
I’m not saying that such churches deserve to go out of business, but ... actually such churches deserve to go out of business.
What have we learned? People who take their faith seriously have proven that they are more immune to the lies of the secular elites than those who barely go through the motions. It’s the hard core among them who put God ahead of government, their teachings ahead of the media, and their personal convictions ahead of the biomedical elite and their bogus claims.
In other words, it was faith itself that enabled people to follow real science better than those who outsourced their hearts and salvation to pharmaceutical companies and government bureaucrats. In other words, it was the people of firm religious conviction who proved to be better practitioners of both science and human values.
Think what that means in terms of the history of science and faith. For centuries we’ve been told that only a faithless rationalism provides a true guide to truth, while faith is merely a superstitious distraction. There are perhaps some valid historical reasons for this bias—certainly the union of church and state was not good for religion or civic community—but the truth is more complicated.
The last three years have shown that this claim might be completely inverted. It is faith that allows people clarity to see through government propaganda and inspire people with moral conviction to do what is right regardless of what a totalitarian government happens to be preaching at any one time.
In the end, it was Fauci and the whole COVID regime that was the superstitious distraction, while robust and traditional religion provided the best guide to light and truth.
As an Evangelical Christian I think I agree with this. The church, including the one I attend absolutely failed. They capitulated and bowed the knee to the atheistic governors and County Executives who spit upon the Constitutions they swore allegiance to.
Many in my church have lost respect for the church leadership.
If there was a better one in my community. we’d be there, but sadly, they all failed equally.
2020 taught me firsthand the unfortunate lesson that very few people in this world have the courage to truly stand up to fascism. I understand now how it is that so many awful atrocities take place throughout history.
An excerpt from Bill Wylie-Kellermanns classic Seasons of Faith and Conscience (1991).
The sealing of the tomb is, I believe, notoriously misunderstood. I grew up with a Sunday School notion that to seal the tomb was a matter of hefting the big stone and cementing it tight. The seal, in my minds eye, was something like first-century caulkingputtying up the cracks to keep the stink in. Not so. This is a legal seal. Cords would be strung across the rock and anchored at each end with clay. To move the stone would break the seal and indicate tampering.
The event conspicuously echoes the story of Daniel sealed in the den of lions. And a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel (Daniel 6:18). As there, this is a legal lock on the tomb doornot air tight, but politically tight. To move the stone and break the seal is a civil crime. The resurrection is against the law.
The seal is also a recurring theme in the book of Revelation. Remember the scroll of history sealed with seven seals? Only One is worthy to break them and look upon or unveil the truth: that One is the Lamb who was slain. The seal is a claim of ownership and authority. Its meaning in Revelation is at least that God in Christ reigns sovereign over all history and in all events.
Caesar, in Pilate, on the other hand, violently disputes the claim. He has set his seal of approval on Jesus death, and now he guarantees it with troops. Secured by security forces. When the seal is broken in the resurrection, it stands among the signs that the power of the powers (death in all its forms) has been broken. The dominion of political authorityespecially inflated, aggressiveand imperial authority has been cut to the heart.
My church Legacy in Albuquerque fought the state of New Mexico and its fascist Governor every step of the way!
All religious gatherings were shut down but the queer hook-up apps stayed open for business. Guess they were “essential.”
Same in Pennsylvania...the Governor’s orders explicitly exempted places of worship but the Hierarchs (probably pressured by their liability insurance underwriters) chose fear over faith.
The last three years have shown that this claim might be completely inverted. It is faith that allows people clarity to see through government propaganda and inspire people with moral conviction to do what is right regardless of what a totalitarian government happens to be preaching at any one time.
AMEN!
Me ;-)
I was representing students making claims to their schools for their religious exemptions from the Covid vaccine.
Pure Pontius Pilate move.
The parish allowed parishioners to come in the back entrance where the media was not on the lookout, and they kept the lights in the building very low so as not to attract government officials.
America is pagan Rome now - with a side order of soviet law.
Goodonya !
Very parallel to what the St. Mary's Catholic Church of Lancaster, Pennsylvania did during the 1918 Spanish Influenza.
But that closure of churches lasted for only three weeks.
Which goes to show how badly we were being played over a disease so mild that you had to "get tested" to know whether or not you had it.
I believe that we’re to be respectful toward government when they appear to have good intentions. So, the 14 days to flatten the curve, given an entirely unknown disease, was not an outrageous thing to ask. However, when it became evident that this would be extended and used for power, control, and to discriminate against churches, our obligation then was to “obey God rather than man.”
Our pastor was called by the county health department and threatened with state troopers if we had our 2020 Easter Service. We were allegedly having services in defiance of the governors orders and theirs, which we were not. We followed CDC guidelines and did facebook and parking lot services, but we had 10 people in the church doing various jobs. Playing piano, leading music, facebook, sound room etc... doing the social distancing idiocy and that wasn’t good enough. Your cars will be 6 ft apart in the parking lot the health department shrew demanded and the pastor asked why this wasn’t the rule for Walmart and Krogers? No reply. He finally said you are violating our Constitutional Rights, we are having services and you send your troopers, they obviously need to hear the Word as do you.
We held our Easter service and filed complaints with the state Attorney General Daniel Cameron and they investigated and put a stop to the local health department thug(BTW her husband is allegedly a minister, interesting his wife’s master works in Frankfort). No troopers showed up and the congregation is still furious at the local health department gestapo’s tactics.
Come May the pastor and deacons decided we are done with the parking lot services and we are having them in person and did the distancing thing and placed masks and hand sanitizer about the church. Our first day back was the Mothers Day service which we were going to do regardless of the health department thugs. The night before the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled churches could meet, the governor was in violation of the law.
Since that Mothers Day service we have closed once for a Wednesday and Sunday services because the pastor, assistant pastor and deacons had minor cases of covid at the same time. Because we refused to close we were attacked by other churches in the community. We were called “bad neighbors”, “uncaring for our fellowmen”, even said we were “a bunch of fanatical snake handler types!” At one point we were the only Baptist church in our county having Sunday and Wednesday evening services.
Attendance stayed strong, when we went back to in church services we had about five or ten members either stay in their cars or watch facebook and after a few months all those returned but five or six and they stopped attending and fell away. The tithes and contributions remained strong and actually increased in 2020, 2021, 2022 and this year as well.
The pastor and deacons all say we didn’t do anything God’s hand was in this beginning to now, he gets all the glory!!!
Having just gone through a 35 part study of ACTS, I am struck by how totalitarian the antichrist Jews were in their scheming and, oddly, how judicially fair the Roman government constrained itself to be in spite of them (albeit with mixed motives thrown in). There was something TO being a Roman citizen and Paul pointedly appealed to his citizenship several times and prevailed over his kinsman foes.
...got a bit of scorn their way even from fellow churchgoers.
likewise
I get sick FROM flu shots, so I wasn’t about to take the COVID one.
Wifey did - booster, too.
Yup - she got sick!
yeah!
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