Because wearing masks helps to stem the spread of the coronavirus primarily by preventing infected people who aren’t experiencing symptoms from infecting others, people around the world now regularly wear them to protect others in their communities. But in America, not wearing a mask has become a political statement — and it’s a statement increasingly being made by avowedly devout Christians.

For example, attendees at the Students for Trump rally at the Dream City Church in Phoenix on Tuesday mostly eschewed wearing masks and did not socially distance, instead relying on pastors who had claimed they’d installed a system in the church that killed 99.9 percent of COVID-19 in the air. (The pastors later took down a video of the claims, which were debunked by experts who noted that the virus is primarily spread by respiratory droplets by people within 6 feet of each other.)

Whether what follows — in a county currently in the middle of a spike in community transmission, with 1,231 new cases reported Tuesday alone — is another spike in cases won’t likely be clear for two weeks. But, if it is, it won’t be the first time that a church has been the locus of transmission when they had the knowledge not to be.

Since the pandemic-related stay-at-home orders began in March, we’ve had pastors arrested for holding church services in violation of them, numerous outbreaks of COVID-19 traced to churches, and even a certain man in a white house who wanted Easter Sunday to be not just the celebration of Jesus coming out of the tomb, but the edict for going back to church. From singing in churches to attending funerals, churches have become serious vectors for the spread of the virus — and yet some pastors seem to have missed the memo.

In Oregon, the Lighthouse Pentecostal church in Island City is the site of a major outbreak of the coronavirus. The church held services in April and May even though the state of Oregon put size restrictions on gatherings; weddings and graduation events were also held at the church during that time. Last weekend, 66 percent of 356 people at the church who were tested ended up positive for the virus. While the church had videos of various events without social distancing up on its website, those have now been taken down, and the leadership has gone silent.

Across the country in West Virginia, Graystone Baptist Church has also contributed 41 cases to a broader coronavirus outbreak in the area. The pastor encouraged but hadn’t required parishioners to wear marks, and stopped the handshaking part of the service but didn’t stop parishioners from doing it anyway; he told the Register-Herald, “The bottom line is this is the attack of the devil on my church.” State officials have linked most of the cases in the broader outbreak to either church services or tourism to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Even a priest of a Catholic church outside Sacramento, California, who did not wear a mask while giving Communion on June 13 and 14 — ignoring the guidance from the diocese said that they should do so— tested positive for the virus. To date, at least, none of his parishioners (or the unmasked deacons who also gave out Communion) have tested positive, according to news reports.

It seems like it is time to ask an important question: Is the recalcitrance of Christians — and, predominantly evangelical Christians — to wearing masks and limiting their churchgoing killing their neighbors? Or, alternatively: Why is it such a big deal for churches and the faithful to wear masks, or worship online at home?

The answer to these questions lies in understanding something that’s become implicit about some faith traditions in America: For many, their religious activities are not just about their faith, it is also about their politics. And since a simple face covering has become the focus of the new political culture war — going without a mask is standing for freedom, according to those who don’t want to wear one because they are following the president — it’s not surprising then that churches, especially conservative ones, are hotbeds for unmasked worship, limited social distancing and, thus, the spread of the coronavirus.

It is, after all, important to love one’s neighbor — but in America, individual freedom is often more prized than biblical admonitions. The churches that pressed to open their doors early or even meet in defiance of stay-at-home orders did so not because they were afraid their members’ faith would fail in 90 days. Pastors prefer to preach to members (who then open their physical wallets when a basket is passed) rather than a computer screen of people. Pastor Tony Spell — who was placed on house arrest for opening up his church in Louisiana in defiance of state stay-at home orders — is an excellent example of a pastor whose demands seemed to be less about meeting the needs of his members and more about attaining broader recognition for himself and the church.

Not all churches however, have forgotten how to love their neighbor; many churches in America are being careful, implementing distancing requirements, forgoing singing and requiring members to wear masks. A pastor in Orange County, California, asked the board of supervisors to reimplement a mask requirement (and was ridiculed for her efforts, rather brutally).

Or take the Houston Northwest Church — which, like Phoenix’s Dream City Church that played host to the Trump rally, finds itself in the middle of one of the new rapidly growing epicenters of COVID-19 in America. It has decided that all attendees should wear masks. According to pastor Steve Bezner, they began to see masks as, and explain to parishioners that masks represent, a “love of neighbor.” When in-person services resumed in early June, masks were required to be worn upon entering the sanctuary and, once inside, if members did not wish to wear a mask, they are required to sit in the maskless section, while those wearing a mask sit together, as well.

Other churches, of course, are forgoing meeting in person altogether until the situation improves.

While the virus rages across America, to mask or not to mask isn’t really so much a question of politics as it is an imperative of public health. So if Christians truly believed that they should love their neighbors as themselves or obey the golden rule, then wearing masks ought to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, for so long, many churches preached that Republicanness was next to godliness — and now a strict adherence to the gospel of Trump all but demands they ignore those of Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31 and Luke 10:27.

But if we are ever going to end this pandemic — and grieving over Zoom and iPads — people of faith are going to have to listen to science and the Bible, care for each other and our communities as much as ourselves and our political heroes, and wear our masks.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-phoenix-megachurch-rally-proves-how-much-faith-face-ncna1231992

You can listen to me and

@jelani9

talk about racism, Trump and the murder of George Floyd on the

@ABCReligion

My clip starts 11 minutes in.

America burns: Jelani Cobb and Anthea Butler discuss the dangerous fault lines of race

On The Religion and Ethics Report with Andrew West

Share

•  Facebook
•  Twitter

Download America burns: Jelani Cobb and Anthea Butler discuss the dangerous fault lines of race (18.16 MB)

Download 18.16 MB

For two days, mainstream Christian leaders have criticised US President Donald Trump for using religion as a prop in his response to the violence that has shaken America.

Since an unarmed African American man, George Floyd, was killed by police in Minneapolis a week ago, protests – and riots – against police brutality have convulsed 350 cities. One of the arresting officers has been charged with George Floyd’s murder.

Donald Trump went first to an Episcopal Church in Washington where he waved around a Bible and then vowed to crush protestors. Then he visited a shrine to Pope John Paul II.

But the Episcopal and Catholic bishops have both condemned the president. Washington DC’s Catholic leader Wilton Gregory even called Trump’s visit “baffling and reprehensible”.

Jelani Cobb, a Columbia University professor and staff writer at The New Yorker, has been watching events unfold.

And the death of George Floyd is, tragically, only part of a long history of US police killing unarmed black people.

But does the nationwide outbreak of protest and rioting we have seen over the past week suggest this is a breaking point for America?

Anthea Butler of the University of Pennsylvania is one of America’s leading theologians and civil rights activists.

“I just signed your death warrant.”

With those stark words, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina pronounced sentencing on Dr. Larry Nassar, a convicted serial sexual abuser; though convicted on a handful of abuse and child pornography charges, 156 young women, many of whom were elite athletes, testified to his criminal actions at his sentencing hearing. While much has been written about the crimes and abuse of Dr. Nassar, Judge Aquilina stands out not only for her deft handling of this emotionally charged courtroom, but for her support and validation of the victims.

Not only did Judge Aquilina provide the space for victims whose cases were not before the court to confront their abuser, she provided words of encouragement, support and most importantly, rebuked Dr. Nassar’s petty attempts to keep from having to listen to the testimony of those he had sexually abused. Judge Aquilina did what Michigan State University officials, USA Gymnastics and the Karoyli ranch officials did not: Immediately believed the women who had been abused, validated their lives and ended their perpetrator’s access to them and other victims.

Judge Aquilina did what Michigan State University officials, USA Gymnastics and the Karoyli ranch officials did not: Immediately believed the women who had been abused, validated their lives and ended their perpetrator’s access to them and other victims.

Judge Aquilina is the advocate these women needed against a harsh legal system that repeatedly puts the abused on trial, rather than abusers.

Consider that in the last few years, judges in various cases across the continent have been harsher to the victims rather than the perpetrators: Canadian federal court Judge Robin Camp asked a woman in a rape case “why couldn’t she just keep her knees together,” for instance; Montana Judge G. Todd Baugh was censured for blaming a teen for her rape and sentencing her rapist to jail for only 30 days; and even Judge Roy Moore, accused during his Senate race of sexual misconduct, as a judge often sided with persons accused of sexual crimes.

What often happens in a court of law is that, if victims do get their day in court, they are on trial as much as the perpetrators. Judges can bring their own biases about sexuality in the courtroom, causing victims untold pain in the telling and retailing of their stories. This was not the case for Judge Aquilina.

By opening up her courtroom to all the victims who wanted to make impact statements, she gave the opportunity for these women to face the accuser who had violated them. She responded to each statement with an encouraging statement of her own, setting a baseline for how victims’ impact statements should be heard in a court of law, and how justice can be meted out by judges who are compassionate to victims, and deliberate and pragmatic with abusers.

She established where the blame lies — not only with Nassar, but with all of the organizations who did not listen to these women, ignored the implications of their stories and were complicit in an alleged administrative web of obfuscation that allowed an abuser to flourish.

And, perhaps most importantly, she openly eviscerated Nassar for his letter to the court about how painful it was for him to listen to the hours of impact statements, and his non-apologies. “This letter tells me you have not yet owned what you did,” she said to him on Wednesday. “You still think somehow that you are right, you’re a doctor, that you’re entitled, that you don’t have to listen. That you did ‘treatment’. I wouldn’t send my dogs to you, sir.”

By destroying Nassar’s arguments in his letter to the court, Judge Aquilina accomplished several things. First, she established where the blame lies — not only with Nassar, but with all of the organizations who did not listen to these women, ignored the implications of their stories and were complicit in an alleged administrative web of obfuscation that allowed an abuser to flourish.

In many cases, in order to protect organizations, administrators often move abusers around, discount victim statements, stonewall victims in administrative processes and/or offer legal settlements with non-disclosure agreements to victims, with the express intent of protecting the institution and ridding themselves of the victim. (We’ve seen these patterns in the Catholic Church abuse cases, in the cases of sexual abuse at private high schools and in the case of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, just to name a few.)

Injustices of the sort experienced by Nassar’s victims can be only revealed and adjudicated by those who are forthright, serious and who advocate for victims, instead of perpetrators and organizations.

Judge Aquilina’s actions have already started to turn that tide: Her pronouncements in court not only passed judgement on Larry Nassar, but on others involved in this long running violation of young women. The president of MSU, Lou Anna Simon, resigned from her office in the wake of intense criticism of how she and the university handled reports of abuse by Nassar. The Karolyi ranch is under legal scrutiny, and it is matter of time before officials at USA Gymnastics are investigated as well: Three board members have already resigned and the rest face calls from the U.S. Olympic Committee to do the same.

None of this reckoning however, would have happened were it not for Rachel Denhollander, who was relentlessly brave in speaking up about her abuse; she was one of the first to go public and tell the Indy Star how Nassar had abused her. She also reported Nassar to Michigan State Police. By doing so, Ms. Denhollander opened up the door for Nassar’s deeds to be revealed.

As Judge Aquilina said in her sentencing statement, “There has to be a massive investigation as to why there was inaction and why there was silence. Justice requires more than I can do on this bench.”

Injustices of the sort experienced by Nassar’s victims can be only revealed and adjudicated by those who are forthright, serious and who advocate for victims, instead of perpetrators and organizations. Judge Aquilina is that person, and we should all hope for more judges who are deliberate and fair in how they deal with not only defendants, but with their victims.

I’m sure that Billy Graham did not like being called a white nationalist back then, and many evangelicals will bristle at this quote even now. With Graham’s death, it’s time to reconsider how his promotion of a nationalistic version of Americanized Christianity has influenced evangelicals today. Graham’s proximity to the office of the presidency and government since the Eisenhower administration is part of why we see scenes of eager evangelicals embracing President Trump. It’s also responsible for a large cohort of evangelicals who are actively supporting Islamophobia, isolationism, and America first policies.

Billy Graham may have been “puffed up” by William Randolph Hearst newspaper reporters in his first crusade in Los Angeles, but the more important event in Graham’s ministry was his Washington, D.C. crusade in 1952. It was there that he would begin what was part of his lifelong work: fusing Christianity and Americanism together to create a potent cocktail of Evangelical Christian Nationalism. Graham was allowed to lead an Evangelistic Service from The Capital Steps and Plaza on February 3 1952. Graham’s permission to preach from the capital at the time had to be given by three different governmental officials: Vice President Barkley, Speaker of the House Rayburn, and David Lynn, Capital Architect. That service was reported in the AP newswire as follows:

Evangelist Billy Graham Reports “Hunger For God in Washington” (AP)~Evangelist Billy Graham told a crowd from the steps of the United States Capitol yesterday: “If I would run for President of the United States today, on a platform of calling the people back to God, back to Christ, back to the Bible, I’d be elected. ‘”There is a hunger for God today.” The 33-year-old, blonde, wavy haired preacher gave two sermons during the course of an hour-long meeting carried coast-to-coast by a radio network. In one sermon he asked the U. S. Senate and House to call upon President Truman to set aside a day of prayer—as did President Abraham Lincoln on April 13, 1863—as a “day of confession of sin, humiliation, repentence, and turning to God at this hour.” Graham spoke from the place where the stand is erected for the inauguration of presidents. Mr. Truman, specially invited, did not attend. The crowd filled about half of the paved parking space facing the center steps of the Capitol. The staircases leading up to the House and Senate wings of the Capitol were liberally dotted with people.

This event would lead to a national day of Prayer for the nation to be established, which is now celebrated every February with a prayer breakfast, starting in the Eisenhower administration. Graham’s friendship with Eisenhower would be the beginning of his relationships with many presidents, and presidential candidates. Graham could thus, at once, be the perfect Southern folk preacher from North Carolina and have access to the halls of power. His particular brand of fiery preaching with a gentle call to Jesus might have been reminiscent of Billy Sunday, but it was every bit made for the modern era of television and visual culture. Standing like a blonde icon of white male American power, his good looks and message would carry him all over the world as a representative of American power and the nation’s Christian faith.

Graham’s preaching and evangelistic crusades are what many will remember him for, but Graham’s unique position as an exceptional articulator of American political power is equally a part of his legacy. This was on display whenever a president needed him to provide the imprimatur of Christianity for an American activity, policy or action. Richard Nixon would use Graham in this way by having him open the “Honor America Day” events on July 4, 1970, which Nixon envisioned as a way to bring the country together after the Kent State massacre and the toll of the Vietnam War. Graham led a prayer service on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Graham’s sermon included checking the “stitches” (on the US flag) of racism, poverty and foreign policy. While Graham and others promoted a strong America, part of the audience engaged in an “Honor America Day Smoke-In,” while white nationalists protested for the white man.

While Graham would later begin to reconsider his relationship with power, his impact on American Christianity and politics is indisputable. Graham has paved the way for evangelicals to operate not only comfortably in the political world, but as lobbyists for theocratic policies and moral issues. Today, evangelicals find themselves on a regular basis in the Trump White House, laying hands on the President, staying at Trump Hotels, and acting as a de-facto approval committee for the Trump administration, no matter how antithetical to the gospel.

This proximity to power which Graham achieved as the representative of Christian America is unparalleled. That is without dispute. What is up for conversation, is how that representation has culminated in evangelical leadership backing the president with the lowest approval rating in American history, while posing for pictures with him in the oval office. We have Billy Graham to thank for that dubious distinction, and it’s worth looking back in the wake of his passing to see how his form of folksy American pious politics morphed into a power grab by evangelicals to establish their particular brand of theocracy in America. President Trump fully embraces the isolationist, hegemonic WASP politics that son Franklin Graham and many others promote today. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Franklin Graham simply represents a more strident version of 1950s Billy Graham.

It’s not surprising then, that Billy Graham will finish his race in the United States Capitol next week. House Speaker Paul Ryan has indicated that Billy Graham will lie in state in the Capitol from February 28 to March 1^st. For the most prolific modern-day evangelist of not only Jesus, but a nationalistic American style of Christianity, this is the right ending to a complicated story. Billy Graham is finally at rest, but we still wrestle with his complicated legacy.

In the words of Simeon llesanmi, “An African Academic Elephant has indeed fallen”— meaning that a great individual has died.

Sanneh’s scholarly contributions spanned more than 20 books as author and editor, and over 200 scholarly articles through the course of 40-plus years of academic scholarship on four continents. He represents a particular kind of scholar that is hard to come by in today’s academy: a rigorous polymath who cared about not only the theoretical work of theology and history but the everyday lives of those who believe.

Born in Gambia to a royal lineage, Sanneh grew up as a Muslim but later converted to Christianity. Earning his graduate degrees from the University of Birmingham (M.A.) and the University of London (Ph.D.), Sanneh would go on to teach at the University of Ghana, the University of Aberdeen, Harvard Divinity School and, since 1989, at Yale Divinity School. He worked with Andrew Walls setting up World Christianity Conferences and was a member of the board at the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Yale Divinity School. He has served with extraordinary distinction in many areas, including holding a lifetime appointment at the University of Cambridge’s Clare Hall and holding the John Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress.

Lamin Sanneh meets Pope Francis at the Vatican on Feb. 9, 2017. Photo courtesy of Yale Divinity School

In September 2018, the University of Ghana established the Lamin Sanneh Institute, which will promote scholarly research on religion and society in Africa, emphasizing the areas of Sanneh’s expertise, Islam and Christianity.

Many of us know Sanneh’s work as a pioneer in the field of world Christianity. His writings on African Christianity and Islam in Africa are important works for theologians and religious studies scholars alike. Among his many writings and books, two particularly stand out for their impact on the field of study: “Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture” and “Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel Beyond the West.”

In “Translating the Message,” Sanneh upends the argument that Christianity — as a missionary religion — wipes out the cultures it enters. Rather, Sanneh asserts that Christianity is unique as a missionary religion because it is translated without the language of the founder (Jesus) and invests itself in every language by forsaking the language of Jesus (Aramaic). Christianity is, according to Sanneh, a preserver rather than a destroyer of indigenous languages and cultures. In “Whose Religion Is Christianity,” Sanneh answers questions about Christianity not from a Western perspective, but from the perspective of, as he puts it, “the movement of Christianity in societies that were previously not Christian and societies that had no bureaucratic tradition in which to domesticate the gospel.”

Here lies the crux of Sanneh’s scholarship.

About 15 years ago, several of us were working on a project about the history of world Christianity. At that time, there was an academic debate over what term to use: world Christianities, global Christianity or Christianity in the non-Western/majority world.

None of those fit, Sanneh told Dale Irvin, president of New York Theological Seminary, in an email. Christians outside the West had an equal claim to the word “Christianity.” They are not from a different faith.

“(T)he fight about what name to give to the subject is really a fight of the west and its surrogates to contest the right of Christians elsewhere to consider themselves as equals in the religion,” he wrote. “The countermove with the inclusive title ‘World Christianity’ is intended to force a reckoning with ‘tribal’ view of the west.”

For myself and many other students and scholars, this emphasis on world Christianity opened the doors to scholarship that was not simply focused on Western ideas and theologies. It opened the doors to new ways of thinking about the historical and present-day impact of Christianity in cultures around the world, as well as Islam and other indigenous religions.

I remember when, as a graduate student, I stumbled onto Sanneh’s book “West African Christianity.” Years later, I was delighted to meet Sanneh while I was a junior professor on a project working with world Christianity for Orbis Press. He was cordial, distinguished and welcoming to me, as well as many others.

Lamin Sanneh. Photo courtesy of Yale Divinity School

Sanneh’s loss is deeply felt among his colleagues.

“Africa has lost a great scholar and a public intellectual, whose foundational works on Islam and Christianity vividly capture the religious identities of millions of Africans,” wrote Jacob K. Olupona, professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School. “Sanneh’s scholarship transverses the two dominant religious traditions on the continent, Islam and Christianity, and has provided significant insight into how they define contemporary politics, identities and civil society.”

Olupona, writing from Nigeria, also expressed his own grief at Sanneh’s passing.

“I have lost a dear friend, a senior colleague and a fellow sojourner in the common quest for African religious space in the global religious community,” he said.

Irvin, who also serves as professor of world Christianity at New York Theological Seminary and as editor of the Journal of World Christianity, called Sanneh “one of the most effective and insightful interpreters of world Christianity in the past century.”

“He was a persistent critic of the entrenched territorial Christendom of the West and the accompanying tendency to reduce Christianity to its Western tribal forms,” Irvin said. “He never tired of asking why should he as an African be considered accountable for the failures of Western colonial Christianity. His brilliance was to see beyond the arrogance of the West to uncover a deeper spiritual truth about the faith he so deeply embodied. We have lost a major prophetic figure.”

Dana Robert, Truman Collins Professor of World Christianity and History of Mission at Boston University, spoke of Sanneh as a “giant in the field of world Christianity.”

“His loss sends a tidal wave across multiple fields, institutions and continents,” Robert said. “He will be sorely missed by those of us who worked with him and called him a friend, as well as by people who knew him only from his powerful writings.”

Greg Sterling, dean of Yale Divinity School, said he recently gave Sanneh’s autobiography, “Summoned From the Margin,” as a gift to the school’s major donors.

“He had no idea that the gift would become the final testament of his life,” wrote Sterling.

In his autobiography, Sanneh wrote: “When someone dies, people say he or she has run out of rains. Life ends when we run dry.”

The rains may have run out for Sanneh, but his memory and scholarship will continue to refresh us for many years to come.

May he rest in peace.