In every one of our lives there are salient events which we look back to and recognise as important transition points. For some it was the first day at work, for others it was the day they got married. There may be a whole series of such events, but the key ones are the moments which have a strong sense of before and after. ‘Before I started work I never had any money but then … Before I got married I visited the pub three times a week, but afterwards I stayed at home to be with my wife’. These important events that mark transitions in our personal lives, extend to events we share with others. We also have moments we share with the whole of society. There used to be a time when an older generation was always talking about the time ‘before the war.’ I cannot remember whether the comparison was an expression of relief or regret. If the truth were known, it was probably a bit of both.
The advent of the coronavirus is one of those societal life-changing episodes (like the war) which will be corporately remembered as a before/after event. We will, in all probability, refer back to the time before the virus with some shorthand expression because things then were different from whatever is to unfold in the future. What the future brings is unknown to us. But it is likely that there will be things that BC (before coronavirus) we used to take for granted but are no longer available to us. We will think about them with nostalgia and longing. The Church, like every other institution, will have its own set of BC memories.
If, to take the pessimistic view, the c-virus age is with us for a long time to come, the old norms of social interaction will change. We may have to get used to the two metre rule for speaking to other people. As far as the church is concerned, there are many congregations where the two metre convention has always applied. These will probably also be the same congregations that resist the Peace with great passion. One cannot imagine that the providers of box pews in the 18th century designed them with the idea that individual members of the congregation would ever greet or touch each other. The revival of box pews, with their ability to isolate family groups from each other, might well have a come-back in the post c-virus age.
On a more serious note, the advent of the rules which have closed church services right across the land, brings into focus the way that physical proximity and touching are, for some, very much part of normal worship activity. While not every church encourages lengthy hugging and physical closeness, they are many that attract followers precisely because they do. It is these churches whose members may find the enforced closure of services the most debilitating to their overall faith and practice. Every Christian will be weakened spiritually by the enforced absences from worship services. The greater damage may however be felt by those who faith is bound up with a strong corporate experience which encourages actual touch. In short, some Christians seem to experience the divine only in a crowd situation, involving tactile experience and a strong leader to coordinate the event. At such services the right music has to be played and the right emotional/spiritual buttons pressed by the person on the platform for worship to ‘work’.
At the heart of this reflection is a question. Is our faith something between us and God which is assisted by coming together with others for mutual encouragement? Is it, alternatively, an experience that is completely dependent on the other people present? Are they, in other words, essential or merely helpful to us for the act of worship? In previous blogs, I have spoken about styles of Christian worship which themselves can create patterns of dependence on a minister and a crowd environment rather than on God. Along with these emotional ties to the minister, there is an attraction to a style of what I would call ‘Christian pop music’. The music, the crowd experience and the attachment to a leader can become forms of addiction. When a enforced separation from these ‘props’ takes place, this will result all too easily in withdrawal symptoms similar to bereavement. No doubt God can be experienced through these things, but equally when they are withdrawn for whatever reason, there may be a serious void experienced in their absence. The church going experience that involves any kind of addictive dimension will always be a fragile one, and this will become apparent when this experience is withheld.
My hope is that not every Christian will find the absence from church services such a difficult obstacle in their retaining a lively Christian faith and practice. If churches are closed for three months or more, what will we find when we return? If I have to make a prediction, I would expect to find greater spiritual resilience among those who have already learned to think, pray and reflect as individuals. These will not be those caught up in a dependant party line rooted, say, in the debates of the 16th century. Rather these resilient Christians will be aware of many ways of being Christian, some of which have focused, not on any kind of crowd experience or rousing music, but on aloneness. The Christian monastic tradition, alive to this day, is one example of this. The word monastic means just this, being alone. Jesus himself, spent much time on his own with his Father. We have the account of the Gethsemane experience as well the time in the desert. In my own personal Christian pilgrimage, I am much indebted to the tradition of the Desert Fathers. They record their own struggles with faith and belief and much of this was undertaken in complete isolation from other human beings. No one today is suggesting that all Christians should become hermits. But, by acknowledging the existence of that tradition, we can begin to draw on some of the strengths of that way of discipleship to meet our present crisis. A Christian with some sense of the power of the monastic or solitary Christian life, will, I believe, have the capacity to bounce back from the enforced Churchless period that stretches out before us.
This coming Sunday many churches will be physically open during the normal times of worship. There will, I hope, be individuals there occupying the stillness and space to be alone and to begin to discover, if they have not already, a different way of being close to God. This is the way of stillness, quiet and aloneness. That is the way of prayer and devotion shown to us by many in the Christian tradition, the monks, the mystics and the solitaries through the centuries. There is much that this distinctive tradition can teach us for our c-virus age and we need to embrace it more fully.
Oh, I’m going to miss Communion on Easter Day. Clergy can celebrate for themselves, I can’t. And my relationship with God’s church is, obviously, totally bound up with “going to church”, and meeting people. My relationship with God, isn’t.
Church-going can be a significant prop in our lives. Suddenly taking this away will be a significant shock for some.
Extroverts, people who derive their energy from interaction with others, will find this period more difficult. Some, as evidenced by those still going to the pub/restaurant/theatre, cannot grasp what social distancing means. Many of us in the normal range of extraversion find it very difficult.
Even in relatively happy huggy congregations, there are many who don’t interact with others much at all. These folk, often stressed parents of young children, look forward to an hour or more of crèche-relief to sleep through the sermon, or enjoy some celebral non-infantile temporary diversion. They’re going to miss that. On Sunday, and possibly for the rest of the week, parents may have to engage more with their offspring. This is not always welcomed.
The addicted, or those simply dependent on a weekly fix of churchianity, will experience withdrawal symptoms, ranging from mild dysphoria to acute anxiety. There will be some leakage I suspect, with clandestine meetings.
Many of the worthy attempts to help others in this crisis, feature meeting them somehow. This is the opposite of what the government wants in general terms.
Introverts, if you’ll permit the term, and I should add there are a good few on this site, may well welcome increasing solitude. The last time I completed a Myers Briggs assessment, was in a church setting. We were encouraged to explore the other “side” of our inclinations, whatever they may be. I actually still find some value in this. But I would be surprised if many follow this suggestion now. There will be a rush to fill the space with activity and online interaction. I have it in my diary to phone a friend.
In 3+ months’ time, when the effects of withdrawal have subsided, I wonder how many will return in the same way to the church they have left. How much of what we do there, the pop singing, the pomp and circumstance, have any real connection with who God is?
We cannot afford to centre our attention only on our little worlds of ecclesiasticology. Already we are seeing seismic economic earthquakes. Few will emerge from this with income or capital unscathed. How are we as leaders going to minister to them?
And obviously as a church, we cannot bury our heads in the sand any longer concerning the sheer gravity of the health crisis facing our country, our world.
There is something apocalyptic about an untreatable virus, spreading rapidly and destructively through our community like an Old Testament plague or a Revelatory cadenza. Where is our God? What are we going to come up with? For others?
Like it or not, introvert or extrovert, the church is a body. Of people. We will have to use our imagination to figure out how to engage with the other without the old props.
How well we do this, or even IF we do it, will determine what we have left after the virus is defeated.
Hmmm. I’m sure you don’t mean to be rude, Steve, but I don’t see church as a prop! I love silence, but by definition, you can’t do communion alone at home. It’ll soon be Easter! I love Easter. I shall miss it.
I was really just speaking from my own experience English Athena. There was a time when I would have gone a thousand miles for an Easter service.
I recall singing harmony in the band one Easter night as being one of the most precious moments I’d ever experienced.
“Prop” is a clumsy word, and I apologise for any offence. For me, for many years, church attendance was an integral part of my identity. I found it catastrophic having to leave, but have recovered in time.
I’m hoping the incredible people on here will come up with a more medically safe type of worship!
No prob. We all speak from our experience. That’s what makes this site so valuable.
Athena, a number of churches will be streaming services and there may also be services broadcast on radio and telly. Why not get your own bread (or cracker) ready, hold or elevate them at the words of consecration, and then receive them as holy communion? You will not be alone but part of the celebration you are tune into – a virtual congregation. And God is not limited by space or time.
We know that the earliest Christians ‘broke bread’ from house to house, so we will be returning to an apostolic tradition.
Thanks, nice idea. I’ve actually been involved in recording some prayers and readings for the BBC’s programmes. But they’re not communions. But thanks for the suggestion.
Athena, that’s lovely. I’m so glad you’re able to have this ministry. When and where can we listen in?
Palm Sunday. It’s tv! No idea what time. BBC1. And then others later.
I realised the Sunday before last that the small cloud, no bigger than a hand, on the horizon in Wuhan was on the cusp of becoming a raging torrent. However, I had not anticipated that it would transform life so utterly, completely and quickly.
In addition to my job I have to look after/live with three adults with very depleted immune systems (one of whom has just also had a major heart-attack), so I have become increasingly concerned that I might contract the virus, even if asymptomatically, and then end up killing my own family or dying myself and leaving them in financial straits. For this reason, I do not see myself darkening the doors of any church for some time to come. This rather puts paid to my extensive pilgrimage – since rushing from service to service would make me an efficient vector for contamination.
So I am rather relapsing into a sort of Carthusian existence; absent work calls, this is increasingly a life of silence.
The virus is an epochal event for all churches. Attendees are overwhelmingly in the most vulnerable demographic. A great many of them will lose confidence in attending, even if the virus dissipates or there is a [temporary] vaccine – because of the high risk or recurrence in perhaps an even more visceral form (remember that it was the third wave of Spanish ‘flu that did the real killing). I think that it is highly likely that this will be the final ‘Amen’ for a very large number of churches up and down the country, which were already hanging on by their finger-tips. Then there is the fact that the Church now subsists on a pay-as-you-go basis, from weekly contributions. Take those away and we are very quickly left with a situation where assets must be sold, quickly and in a bear market, so that stipends and pensions can be paid. This may well turbo-charge the death spiral of the whole institution.
This is not just the worst slump since 1945; it is arguably the worst slump since 1347-48 or 1360; it has occurred with far greater rapidity and severity even than the 1929 crash. Within a *couple of days* more than 10% of US workers – the demand motor of the world economy – have been filing for unemployment assistance!!! Any plans that I or others have developed to allow churches to continue will not withstand such a tsunami of distress and government liabilities. We shall just have to let the economic impact sweep over the churches (and society) and see what is left. However, the possible 18-month lead time for a vaccine (which might be optimistic) means that there is an enhanced likelihood that this will be an L-shaped rather than a V-shaped slump. This is such a gigantic shock on so many levels that it may take years to determine what is to become of us (even after the immediate maelstrom subsides), and what misery may ensue.
I very much hope and pray that all of you remain safe and that you may all continue to derive hope and solace from the promise He gave to us. Very best wishes!
Thanks Froghole. My husband and myself both have mothers in their 90s still living. And all of us baby boomers in the next generation down have conditions that put us at risk. Diabetics, asthmatics, various heart flutters and the like. You don’t know whether to go out and get veg or not. I pray that all of us do alright in the coming months.
Froghole, thanks for your timely reference to the Elijah story (1 Kings 17f) from which we learn that the Widow’s Cruise does not mean a luxury passage in a state-of-the-art liner to the Carribean but rather the jar of oil that was God’s provision in time of need. Better to live there than in James 5:1-6 which is where we have been as a society. Be ready for hardship in days ahead.
Get veg Athena! Where! I think one of the really difficult things for survivors in all this is that like most other businesses the church will have no ‘head space’ for anything other than the virus. Reviews, reports and conversations will be put on hold as staff work from home and can think of nothing else but the immediate threat to economy and life. This won’t mean the feelings of the survivor has gone away but they will no longer be seen as anywhere near top priority and that may leave them feeling even more alone. Suicides will undoubtedly rise, mental health problems will be on a scale never seen before. Even when the situation has been normalised the church will take so long to recover that my fear is survivors will be kicked into the long grass for even longer.
There will be mental health problems for many. I just heard my son’s work place has closed, but they’re looking after their staff. I’m so relieved. But there will be so many where that isn’t true. Sometimes, those who have these problems are well placed to help others in the same situation. Yes, a lot of things will be put on hold. We’ll just have to assess the situation when we’re through the worst. All the best, Trish. I still pray for you every day. I hope you don’t mind.
Many thanks, English Athena/Trish. I very much hope that things work out for you and your families.
I think that a number of dioceses will either go bust and/or will go cap in hand to the Church Commissioners in coming weeks (if not already). The Commissioners will ‘lend’ them money, but the dioceses will be going back again and again the longer this crisis persists and/or if there is a secular decline in parish share contributions. The 8.3bn which the Commissioners had in 2018/19, which will have shrunk considerably over the last two weeks, looks set to shrink again, and of course in terms of returns they will get less and less out of less and less (what’s more the combination of net negative interest rates and collapsed returns will be especially toxic). The Commissioners may well perceive themselves as sliding quickly into a vortex: if DBFs have to fund at least 30,000 people (via pensions or stipends) and there is little or nothing coming in the Pensions Measure 1997 is effectively abrogated: the de facto liability passes back from the dioceses to the Commissioner who must support this ‘castle in the air’ out of their shrinking capital base.
So whereas a few weeks ago it looked like there might be a prospect of a decent fund for survivors I feel that Trish is probably right: the establishment of such a fund will either be deferred indefinitely or else will be materially under-funded.
Of course, it is vanishingly possible that support for the Church might increase (on the basis that there are no atheists aboard a sinking ship), but that is something of a pipe-dream.
In 2018 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland established a Radical Action Plan which will see the closure of a large section (perhaps even a significant majority) of their churches. Look on their website to see just how many assets they are liquidating: it’s been like this for several years. Shetland had 11 historic parishes; they will go down to one. The St Andrews presbytery (covering east Fifeshire) is also liquidating its stock. Brechin Cathedral has just closed, etc. It is surprising how little this is being reported in the Scots press. I now foresee the Church in Wales (which is effectively scrapping the concept of parish ministry) and the Church of England going down the same path in double quick time.
Although ‘we are all socialists now’, I do fear that the resources of the British state may buckle after a few months. The best we can hope for is that the rate of infection abates and the recovery is at least U-shaped. However, this tragedy will make a solvency crisis amongst Gen. X almost inevitable when it hits retirement. Globalisation may reverse to some extent, but there is a greater probability of antagonism between states (especially Sino-American friction); there may be an emerging market debt crisis, defaults and echoes of the inter-war debt controversies. Taxes may escalate, with property being the most obvious target.
Froghole, thank you for your analysis. Appreciated.
It seems to me that this is a time to be the church rather than to go to church. It’s a great opportunity to show love and kindness to people. I have made a list of all my friends who live alone, and I plan to phone them over the next few weeks to see how they are getting on.
We are on day five of self isolating and so far, it’s going well. Marmalade making, log splitting, all my letters out at Scrabble.
Oh yes, The Widow’s Cruise : this is not a reference to a life of luxury on a liner in the Carribean but a reminder of Elijah and the widow’s jar of oil, I Kings 17 -19. Lots to ponder here, including how Elijah, the mighty man of God, could not cope.
Ah yes. Love is the widow’s cruise of oil. It never runs out.
Thank you for your prayers Athena, always welcome. My daughter has also been laid off it is a worrying time and I hope anyone in that situation can access the right support. On the positive side air pollution is at an all time low, so nature will be dancing for joy, perhaps a pandemic was the wake up call we deserved and needed.
Thank you Stephen for your reminders of the Christian traditions that will help us at this extraordinary moment. The world needs prayer and we need to feel closer to God. Fortunately some of us have more time to spend in quiet and meditation.
There are more church services etc. on line and TV than usual and I am sure this will attract a wide audience. Let’s pray that all these opportunities will be embraced by many.
Amen to that.
Just catching up with recent posts after a period of poor mobile signal. Thinking of you all back in UK.
Froghole your situation sounds worrying. I do hope isolation is working and you and yours stay well.
Athena, I am with you on missing communion. It has been one of the hardest parts about our travels. I like your idea Janet of joining a service virtually.
On that topic, can anyone recommend a survivor-friendly virtual child? I have been looking for a few years but not found one yet that I felt safe enough to join.
David I love your thing of being the church not going to church. Trying to practice that too.
Trish I share your fears re survivors. I have already been told that my investigation has been essentially put on hold, because they haven’t interviewed people yet, and now they can’t. I am trying to prepare must for the possibility more of them will die before the investigation ends. With the main perpetrator who died last month, I have been told nothing else can happen now. It feels rubbish that the only focus is risk management. He’s dead so no risk, job done. No justice for me.
We’re stuck overseas at the moment and can’t move the boat. Feel even further from family & friends at this time. I think that is the hardest thing, not just for church, it’s natural to draw together in a crisis and physical distance really does matter here.
I love being on my own for contemplation and prayer, but thinking of all those who need somatic company. Also anyone who feels trapped at home. When I was being abused as a child and later teenager, school and church were my safe places. My vicar, deaconess and one particular teacher got me through a v tough time, they were lifelines. Thinking of all the children and adults trapped in abusive homes right now, my organisation is pulling together wisdom on this right now & will be petitioning government & vol orgs to help. If anyone reading this would like to help, please email connect@survivorsvoices.org
Stay safe,everyone. Praying for our little community here, if that’s ok
Should say virtual survivor-friendly church! Blinking auto correct!
If you’re on Facebook, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is streaming services. She did Holy Communion last Sunday and Morning Prayer from home every morning. And you don’t have to watch them live, you can catch up later (useful if you’re in a different time zone). I find her approach refreshing and helpful.
I’m sorry you’re all stuck overseas, but hope it’s somewhere nice. I can imagine a boat might begin to feel confined in these circumstances.
Thanks Jane. It’s always lovely to be prayed for.