Today, Explained - Six feet away from God

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

While a few religious leaders flout shelter in place ordinances, Easter, Passover, and Ramadan are inspiring most to get creative with worship. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Sean Ramos-Furman, and this is your coronavirus update from Today Explained. Dr. Anthony Fauci finally had some half-decent news for the United States today. Emphasis on the half. He's saying it looks like the U.S. death toll could be 60,000 instead of 100,000 or 200,000 thanks to social distancing. That is, of course, still a very staggering amount of deaths. 799 people died in New York City since yesterday. The death toll in the city is now over twice the number who died on 9-11. New research suggests that this coronavirus started spreading in New York City as early as mid-February. That was weeks before the first confirmed case.

The research also suggests that the virus spread mainly from Europe, not Asia. Apparently, Europe and the United States are outbidding Latin American and African nations for medical supplies like masks and tests. That means countries without enough ICU beds also won't have like masks and tests. That means countries without enough ICU beds also won't have enough tests and masks. And that news comes as Oxfam says around half a billion people could be pushed into poverty as a result of this pandemic. The aid organizations asking richer countries to take urgent action to help nations in need. But of course, that picture is a little topsy-turvy right now. We got new jobs numbers today in the United States.

Another 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week. That's on top of the 10 million in the previous two weeks. 10% of the labor force is out of work, and economists say we're facing the worst jobless rate since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Congress is fighting over additional stimulus. Good news for Boris Johnson. According to a Downing Street spokesperson, Bojo is out of intensive care. He's now receiving somewhat less intensive care in hospital, as they say over there.

And something to soothe all the baseball fans out there. The season was supposed to kick off two weeks ago today, but then of course all this happened. But whether or not you love or hate the Red Sox, Fenway Park's organist is still putting in work for you. Josh Cantor has been streaming a seventh inning stretch from his living room in Cambridge on Facebook. He told the Washington Post he'll be doing it every day at 3 p.m. Eastern until baseball returns or people stop streaming it. Um, here we go. Stand and stretch. And we changed one of the lyrics. We don't say,

I don't care if I ever get back. We say, I do care if I ever get back because good Lord, do we want to get back to baseball and baseball games here we go Hooray! Thank you! My dad's a Hindu and my mom's a Catholic, so my brother and I were raised Catholic. And this was always a big week for the Catholics, even bigger than Christmas in a way. You've got Palm Sunday, today's Holy Thursday, tomorrow's Good Friday, Sunday's Easter. There's lots of church, some fasting, followed by some feasting, lots of chocolate if you're lucky. Passover also began at sundown Wednesday, time to read the Haggadah, drink wine, and eat matzah at Seder. If you're Muslim, Ramadan's around the corner. These are some holy, holy days for billions and billions of people around the world,

more than half the planet's population. But this year, they can't get together and worship. In some places, we found that religious communities have actively helped spread this virus when they gather together in large groups. Jack Jenkins has been reporting on how the major faiths have been coping with COVID-19 for religion news service. You know, one of the biggest early examples was actually in South Korea. There was a religious group there that early on was traced to the spread of the virus. The church itself says that it is cooperating fully. It's provided contact details of all of its members

so that the authorities can follow up and health officials can check with them to see if they are carrying the virus as these numbers continue to spike. And actually, it led to the government testing all 200,000 members of that religious tradition because they could trace it back to their worship services. But then here in the United States, we've seen similar things as well.

In the county of Sacramento, actually a third of, at the time when they reported this, there's a 300-odd cases of coronavirus in that county. And a third of them were attributed not only to faith communities in general, but most of that third to one specific faith community in the region. The church moved its services online weeks ago, so the problem hasn't been people congregating here, but at other people's homes for service. You had another instance in North Carolina where multiple cases of the coronavirus were traced back to one gathering that one church helped lead. And in Washington state, although this church choir practiced social distancing, two people are dead and dozens more sick. The group rehearsed right before the health department recommended no large gatherings. In New York City, there are suspicions that early

Purim services among Jews, who were very careful, by the way, really, you know, there was a lot of anxiety about whether they should have even held those services. And they went, they called authorities who actually gave them the green light to do it. There's a lot of, you know, looking back 2020 hindsight, thinking that that actually led to this spread of the virus in New York City as well. And so we see a lot of these pockets of outbreaks of the virus across the country, you know, rooted in religious communities. And from the perspective of many health professionals, that makes sense. The virus

spreads when there's lots of people gathered in the same space. So how has the United States attempted to deal with this? I know it's a patchwork throughout the country, but where you have shelter-in-place lockdown-type measures, do you have exceptions for religious services or are they included? This is an interesting question, and it's one that has come up a lot recently because it's, you know, all these governors are issuing these, you know, shelter in place or stay at home orders. And some of them, some of the earliest ones explicitly outlawed religious services alongside any other large gathering. But as time has rolled on, we've started to see some of these governors either issue stay

at home orders that exempt religious services or even retroactively redesignate faith groups as quote unquote essential services. Now back here in Kansas, lawmakers have reversed an order by the governor that restricted church gatherings. Most of them are already planning to stay home and pray together and watch services online. They just felt like it was a violation of their constitutional rights to have the government tell them that they cannot participate in a church service. There have been a couple of polls now that show roughly 12% of faith communities are continuing to gather in person as of a week, a week and a half ago. We don't have the latest data on that. You know, in some states you can still have a church service or go to a synagogue, but you need to do it with 10 people or less.

And those seem to be carve outs for specific small religious ceremonies, whether that's, you know, a baptism or something of that nature, where everyone in the church would also have to stand six feet from each other. So you're kind of seeing a really hodgepodge approach to all of this. And then above all of that is the White House, which was really slow to address this issue early on. Vice President Pence, people were still going to church. What's your message to folks still heading outside of their homes to go to church services? Well, for Karen and I, and I know the president, we've been enjoying worship services online. But they didn't actually come down on it until very recently. Last week, Vice President Pence did finally answer a question about this. We really believe this is a time when people should avoid

gatherings of more than 10 people. And so we continue to urge churches around America to heed to that. Are you seeing religious leaders rebel against these stay-at-home orders, against the administration, against their own clergy? Yes. We're actually seeing several points of tension here. The two most dramatic examples came up last week, where we had the arrest of a pastor in Florida and a pastor in Louisiana who had continued to defy local authorities and gather in large groups of hundreds, or in the case of the Louisiana pastor, as many as a thousand people gathered together in one place.

Just hours after Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Central was charged with six misdemeanor counts of disobeying the powers of the governor, Tuesday's service was still on schedule. This is an affront, an attack upon all Christians across the world, and my entire congregation stands in solidarity with me as their shepherd. We had an emotional time, had water baptisms, and a lot of people saved today. A defiant Florida pastor arrested for openly, blatantly violating a ban on large gatherings continuing to hold Sunday church services. You can see Howard Brown preaching to a room full of people, many of them shoulder to shoulder, in total disregard of the CDC's six feet social distancing guidelines.

It's not about a virus, it's about the church being an essential service to the community. Since those arrests occurred, the state of Florida has now, you know, said that religious gatherings are exempt from their stay-at-home order and even the county in which that Florida pastor, you know, was gathering his church, they've also issued an order saying that religious communities are exempt. None of those orders are retroactive, so that pastor is still gonna face charges of endangering public health for continuing to gather amidst this pandemic.

And so there has been some tension between these faith groups and ruling authorities across the country. He refused repeated requests to please don't put four or 500 people in danger to where they then go home and put thousands more in danger with the possible spread of this COVID-19 virus. When you close every door in this city, we'll close this door and we'll go underground, but we are going to assemble and congregate

as God-fearing Christians. What is it that prevents these religious leaders from just adhering to these stay-at-home orders, to the guidance from the White House even? You get people who say that God protects them if they continue to worship, or you get people that if you take me from my house of worship, you're really taking away a lot of the reason and the ability for me to exist in society as I have known it. And I was up visiting my parents in Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, during this quarantine time and attended church with them at Calvary Chapel of Godspeak, Palm Sunday. When I pulled up to church, you know, I pulled up and all of a sudden I saw these news reporters and this one guy with a sign and it said fake Christians on it. And I just found it interesting that people were protesting this when they think, you know, it's fine to go to the supermarket and get stuff. I went to Target last week and the checkout lady, she was like coughing out her hands and then she would, you know, take my groceries and scanning them and touching them. And it's like, that's okay. But people at church that are doing a great job of practicing social distancing, that's not okay. Like that's where I have trouble with that. What they did that day at the church, it wasn't in lieu of church service. It was, you could just come, take communion,

and then go back home. So they weren't trying to gather masses of people together and spread the disease or anything. They took every single precaution necessary. Every single employee was wearing a mask and gloves. Everyone was six feet apart from each other or more. All the juice and the bread, they were individually packaged. Like, there was absolutely no contact with anybody or anything, you know. So, yes, even though they violated the governor's orders, like, I wasn't fearful at all because of that. And I just, you know, think as a believer, it's just important to take part in that sacrament. I definitely miss not being able to go to church every Sunday because that's always

just a very safe place for me and just a place where I can come and just kind of get rejuvenated for the week. And, you know, it's wonderful seeing friends at church. And I think a lot of people are just very fearful right now and just, you know, have no idea what's going on. And while I have, you know, answers for how long this is going to last, you know, I have no idea what's going on. And while I have no answers for how long this is going to last, you know, I just able to trust that God is in control and he knows what he's doing. And I do trust that he's going to bring an end to this. I haven't loved being quarantined at all. Like I miss getting together with friends and having my normal, you know, routine and going to work and going to CrossFit and church.

And yeah, but I really feel like my faith has just allowed me to not fear during this time. I just attribute that to God and I just thank God for allowing me to not be super fearful during this time. After the break, all the ways people are worshiping without breaking the law right now.

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Terms and conditions apply. Okay, Jack, we've established a few things here. It's a very holy time for a number of religions. A handful of religious leaders are breaking the law, but most of them are complying, and a lot of them are innovating, too. Let's talk a number of religions. A handful of religious leaders are breaking the law, but most of them are complying. And a lot of them are innovating, too. Let's talk about some of that. What are followers of Christ up to on this very holy week?

One of the big images that's come out of the pandemic in general is this image of Pope Francis offering a blessing in an empty St. Peter's Square in an empty Vatican City a couple of weeks ago. Today we pray for the deceased, for those who lost their lives because of the virus. In a special way, I'd like us to pray for the health of workers that are dead recently. They donated their lives to serve the sick people. And apparently that is also the plan for Holy Week. He will continue to observe all of the rituals of Catholicism in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican while basically alone. Like when he was observing Palm Sunday this past weekend, you know, he was basically in this gorgeous church that's normally filled with parishioners and completely empty.

Although I will note that his message in the midst of that aloneness was for him to declare, do not be afraid, you are not alone. Meanwhile, you have these very different approaches to liturgy and worship among Protestants across the country here in the United States. So if you are part of a small church, they hold Zoom meetings where you show up to worship. And this past Sunday, people would wave their palm fronds into their computer cameras as worship began. And then when it came time for Eucharist or for communion during the course of the worship, you had, particularly in the Presbyterian tradition where the authorities have spoken out and said, this is okay, each person brought their own elements to the table where they had

their laptop or their iPad. And when they said, you know, now it is time for us to break bread together, people picked up their donuts or their bagels and broke them and then drank their coffee as if that were the wine, all while looking into the camera together. Wow. I mean, as someone who was raised Catholic, that actually sounds like an improvement. I will say that I have heard many reports that the bread has become significantly more delicious when it's in Krispy Kreme donut form. They finally figured it out. Exactly. And so there's that kind of creativity that's being built into this. You're also seeing a lot of worship services, again, go online. And you're also seeing that in Judaism as well. People have, multiple traditions have now embraced the idea of, you know, kind of this virtual Passover Seder,

where while people can't gather in person, they can, you know, again, get on Zoom. You've had different Jewish authorities create principal Haggadahs designed so that these are like the order of worship for a Passover Seder. The Union of Reform Judaism created a guide for creative ways to get online and get involved, helping people be able to gather together. Look, this is the holiday of all of the holidays in the year that most Jews are most likely to observe. And that's because at the heart of this holiday is really a story of hope. It's a story of our people who moved from enslavement to freedom, from anguish into a place of joy. And that's a story that I think we need perhaps more than ever before this year. No word on whether or not you'll have like an empty Zoom

window for Elijah. There's like a lot of questions about how this will be expressed for different Jewish communities. But alongside that are groups like, say, the ultra-Orthodox who are not embracing technology and instead having more analog approaches to this. You've had Orthodox leaders here in the United States, you know, outline very stringent and strict rules for how people can engage with Seder. It's basically saying, if you're going to invite anyone outside your immediate family into your home for Passover, it has to be someone who absolutely is unable to prepare a Passover Seder otherwise. They have to undergo a two-week quarantine in advance before

showing up to the Seder, and they must maintain social distancing when they come in, and they can't exhibit any symptoms of the virus when they appear. And then in the meantime, you have Muslim traditions, you know, who were kind of slowly going into this Ramadan season. And that's a little bit different because there's actually been a lot of conversation about how the Juma prayer, the Friday prayers that normally happen weekly for many Muslims. It's actually not OK for, according to most Muslim authorities, to have a virtual version of that. Tradition often argues that you have to have a virtual version of that. Tradition often argues that you have to have a certain number of people physically present for that scenario. And

while there have been some conversations among Islamic scholars about the possibility of trying to, you know, try to do a virtual Jummah prayer, the reality there is that most of the authorities at this point are saying you're just just gonna have to fast from this for now and kind of do these backup prayers, for lack of a better term, that often happen when someone can't physically attend a Jummah prayer. As Muslims, we believe that our public health

and our bodies have a right over us and that oversees the necessity of rituals that we have to do. So in this case, we thought that the best thing was to not have services because when you're having hundreds of. So in this case, we thought that the best thing was to not have services because when you're having, you know, hundreds of people come in for prayer, you just need that one person

who is sick to contaminate everybody else. And we did not want to be the breeding ground for that. This doesn't super impact Ramadan in terms of fasting because it's already on the books that if you're ill or traveling, you know, the rules are amended for you during that time period. But it's certainly keeping a lot of Muslims from gathering together in a way that they would prefer. What about people who don't have maybe the technology to attend virtual mass, who maybe don't have a laptop with Zoom capability, or who don't have

an iPad, or who have, you know, phones with bad reception and lag a lot? What are people who don't have an iPad or who have, you know, phones with bad reception and lag a lot? What are people who don't have the means to sort of update to this new normal do? This is a big and serious question for a lot of communities. And in some communities, it's notable that you would think would have a hard time with this are not. Apparently, for instance, the Amish are taking this pandemic very seriously. And we now have, you know, drive-through testing facilities that the Amish show up to in horse and buggy. But in general, you know, it's actually, it's a big unanswered question that a lot of people are figuring out on the ground and a lot of faith leaders are really struggling with right now.

If they actually get there, if they get to that Seder, if they get to that Friday prayer or that Sunday service, do you know what leaders are saying right now about why this is happening? I mean, what's the answer to like, why would God let this happen? Right. Some people have made really dark arguments that this is the result of the sins of humankind, etc. Most are taking a very different tact. You know, these people are preaching about how this is a difficult time, just as there have been many difficult times throughout history. And then they say the second thing, which is that while faith isn't always able to answer

and give a firm answer to the question of why would a pandemic sweep the globe, faiths are arguably built for crisis. I mean, this is where they are often at their strongest and their boldest, is in the midst of any sort of disaster, or in this instance, a health crisis. Many rabbis are referencing the past times that Jews have encountered pandemics. So have many Christians. And again, I will go back to that image of Pope Francis speaking alone in a church, talking to a flock of a billion people and saying, you are not alone. the consolation of God that sustains you. They already knew that.

It's just helpful to be reminded in the midst of a crisis that even if they're cloistered in their own homes and not within the physical walls of a mosque or a church or a synagogue, they are connected to their community. And that is the kind of spiritual connection that religion forges. Jack Jenkins is a national reporter for Religion News Service, and he's now an author too.

He's got a new book if you're looking for something to read. It's called American Prophets, The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country. What a title. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Thank you.