Covid#9 - How this virus will define us

The ‘Church Closed’ sign on the local parish church was one of the most striking and sobering things I’ve seen so far.

It’s not because you would find me at church tomorrow or on any Sunday; I’m not religious and only go to church for a special occasion.  It got me wondering if there has ever been a time in British history when churches have been closed in this way.  I’ve done some Googling, and it seems there hasn’t.  As far as I can tell, even during previous great calamities – the Black Death, the English Civil War, the Great Plague, and the two World Wars, for example – churches stayed open.  The ‘Church Closed’ sign therefore emphasised the magnitude of our emergency.

There was a time when a pandemic like ours would have been seen as punishment by the Almighty.  During the Black Death of the 1340s, people turned to the Church for forgiveness of their sins, solace, reassurance and answers.  Ironically, the faith of many was rocked when the church seemed impotent and the very priests they turned to succumbed to the plague in large numbers.  During the Civil War, both Roundhead and Cavalier prayed in church for victory.  Churches remained open in 1665 when plague was once again attributed to divine retribution and the faithful sought God’s protection and mercy.  The start of the First World War saw a surge in church attendance as people identified with the justness of Britain’s cause and sought guidance from the Church, and the immediate inter-war years saw it rise again.

Historically, in times of emergency, we went to church and prayed for deliverance.  The closure of churches was unthinkable.  Today, relatively few will turn to God for solace, answers, protection or mercy and the closure of churches goes largely unnoticed.  

Instead of turning to priests for salvation, we turn to science.  Coronavirus is an invisible enemy just as Yersinia pestis was in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, yet we all know what it looks like.  It’s our doctors and nurses that we believe will save us and whom we’re urged to protect.  Virologists and epidemiologists explain the spread of the virus to us.  Science labs around the world are racing to produce a vaccine – today’s holy grail. 

For consolation, we turn to our smartphones and tablets and to the Internet.  We’re connected to each through myriad apps and more become available every day.  With a swipe of our thumb, we can message and call each other, video-conference and Facetime; we post memes, jokes, film-clips and photos to keep each other smiling; we stay up-to-date with the news and keep informed;  we continue to work; and when we feel anxious or upset, we find support.  Some of us even blog – like modern-day Samuel Pepys’!

Undoubtedly, this pandemic will define the generations that lived through it in the same way wars of the past defined our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations.  More than that though, while the already diminished church submits to the microbe, Covid19 will help define our age as one of great scientific and technological discovery and endeavour.