(Each Saturday, a faith leader in Franklin County offers a personal perspective in this space. To become part of this series, email religion@recorder.com)
It is no overstatement to say the novel coronavirus has precipitated an unprecedented sea change in American life. Not since World War II have we seen our lives changed overnight, our physical well-being endangered, and our very futures put into question. And like the specters of climate change and nuclear armament, COVID-19 is fueling a transformation of our religious landscape that began decades ago.
Due to the imperative of social distancing, churches, synagogues and mosques are being forced to imagine themselves anew as communities of God. Until this century, religious communities had been significantly defined by tradition, buildings and institutional affiliation. But in this tidal wave of economic, cultural and health globalization, we are being called to understand in radically new ways what it means to stand in a religious tradition.
As an Episcopal priest, the current pandemic serves to remind me that there is no such thing as an autonomous, stand-alone Christian. Just as Jesus lived in the shadow of an empire that constantly put his life under siege, so may we be experiencing what it means to live under similar threats of social isolation and death. In this light, the transcendent spirit of Jesus comes to the fore: to be faithful to God is to be faithful to the whole of God’s creation.
The threats posed by climate change, nuclear armament and the novel coronavirus share at least three characteristics: they can inspire fear in us; they can divide us; and they can convince us that we are powerless in their midst. The earth is getting dangerously warm, as seas are rising and myriad life forms are disappearing from the planet. Nuclear armament continues to escalate, further destabilizing an already precarious global future. And now COVID-19 is tragically taking tens of thousands of lives around the world.
Yet these threats also offer the opposite response: they can inspire courage we never knew we had; they can bring us together in ways that never would have occurred; and they can generate human will which, in the absence of such threats, never would have been. The choice of how we respond is ours — just as it was for Jesus.
Evidence of the divinely interrelated nature of creation is everywhere. When my daughter was 4 years old, she identified herself as a “Protector of the Animals,” later pointing out that “You can’t be a ‘POTA’ unless you protect the environment.” A Navy veteran once told me that if he had been given the order to fire a nuclear missile, he and several of his submarine comrades wouldn’t have done it. And as I write, countless doctors, nurses and neighbors are working tirelessly to care for us.
All these witnesses, “religious” or not, testify to the truth that by our nature we are inescapably related to the whole of creation. And as such, this nature demands that we recognize creation as borderless. Perhaps this is why Jesus himself transcended every border – to embrace the whole of creation in the spirit of its creator.
In this spirit we suddenly see not division, competition and greed — not, who can afford to escape the rising seas; who can fire the first missile; who can get the last bottle of hand sanitizer on the shelf — but unity, generosity and friendship across unnatural boundaries, which serve to reveal the will of God that together we must be one.
And in this spirit we are freed to help our sisters and brothers escape floods and fix the system; in this spirit we are freed to resist the destructive temptation to fire the first missile; and in this spirit we are freed to protect one another from diseases that know no borders. For now we are called to look into one another’s eyes, and to recognize that your lost climate is my lost climate, your nuclear death is mine, and your coronavirus is my coronavirus, in order that we might be one.
The Rev. Christopher Carlisle is Director of Cathedral in the Light, an ecumenical outdoor worshipping community which normally meets every Sunday at 2 p.m. on the Greenfield Town Common. Due to the current health crisis, the weekly service (and hot meal which follows) has been suspended until it is deemed safe to convene. However, in anticipation of once again joining hands across Greenfield, we invite local religious communities, schools, businesses, municipal departments and nonprofit organizations, to contact Chad Wright at 413-834-7153 if interested in serving a community meal when Cathedral in the Light is back in operation.