Blogocentric Formulations

Christian Exceptionalism

"Take up Your Cross"  | Prompt ▼

Do you think it was right for the churches to be shut down when the pandemic first began?

Do I think churches should have been included in the stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic when nobody was sure of anything about COVID-19 and many of us were worried that ourselves our our loved ones could die of a new virus of unknown lethality? Nah, we should have totally let churches stay open right alongside other essential services like hospitals and grocery stores. They're basically the same thing, right?

While religious freedom is certainly a freedom we here in the United States and many other places around the world enjoy, it's not an absolute right. And despite what conservative politicians and the majority on the Supreme Court may say, that freedom is not under fundamental attack. The public good supersedes personal preference, so just like freedom of speech has its limits (you can't yell "fire" in a public place and cause a panic, for example), so does the freedom of religion (like, oh, maybe having to stay home along with the rest of your neighbors when there's a public health emergency going on).

As a Christian who regularly attends church, the pandemic was hard on me (as I know it was for many, many others). I missed my church family. Doing church remotely was not even close to an ideal substitute, and yet it was something that I did gladly because part of the whole "love thy neighbor" thing is, you know, keeping them safe from a raging pandemic. And sure, with the benefit of hindsight, we could argue about what the actual lethal risk of this virus was, what mitigating factors were necessary and which were less effective, and when the right time to open different types of activities back up again would have been. But this question doesn't contemplate having any of that hindsight; it asks about the beginning of the pandemic, when things were uncertain. And during those times I just don't think the Christian faith supports a position of, "Who cares about the risk to other people, my religious freedom demands that I be allowed to attend church in person when 80% of other establishments are shut down!"

The larger issue I think this question speaks to, though, is a pervasive attitude of Christian exceptionalism combined with a massive persecution complex. Christianity is, admittedly, a religion based on the the idea of evangelizing the "good news" and bringing others to the "true" faith, so it's somewhat understandable that feelings of superiority that often come with the exceptionalist beliefs present in the Christian worldview. But many Christians have also convinced themselves that they're an oppressed group, even in countries where they represent the overwhelmingly dominant religion (and in many cases the majority of the total population). Church attendance and the number of citizens who consider themselves Christians may currently be down from their record highs from a few decades ago, but that's not the same thing as being persecuted.

You want to see people being persecuted for their religious beliefs? Spend some with the underground Christian churches in China. Do some missionary work in Africa. Talk to any of a number of Muslim communities in America about how they've been treated since 9/11. With approximately 65% of all Americans still identifying as Christian, we are not an oppressed class in this country. The fact that we couldn't gather in a physical location to worship during the same time where people had to close their business and shelter in place does not mean our religious freedom is being infringed upon.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a real problem with this question. I have a problem with it because its phrasing at the very outset ("Do you think it was right...") implies that there is a value judgement to be made and I don't think that should be the case here. Especially at the beginning of the pandemic, we were all focused on keeping ourselves and others safe and that should be doubly important for Christians whom Jesus commands to radically love and sacrifice for others. If this question had asked whether the pandemic measures were necessary, or what churches could have done different in hindsight or something like that, it would have been an actual conversation piece with differing opinions and perspectives on what could have been done.

But this question instead basically presumes that Christians were persecuted for not being allowed to attend church early in the pandemic and asks if the respondent agrees with that. For the record I don't, and I don't even believe that churches being closed during the early stages of a pandemic is an indication of religious persecution. We were still free to worship, we just couldn't gather publicly during a period of time where community spread of a lethal virus was a major worldwide concern. Those aren't the same things.

I think the world would be a better place if a lot of Christians spent less time being aggrieved about how they're being perceived or treated and what they want, and instead spent that time focusing on the mission of Jesus and following the commandments he gave us.