COVID-19: Health Crisis and Crisis of Faith

Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church is silhouetted against the rising sun in Kansas City, MO., 

Wednesday, April 8, 2020. With Easter Sunday in several days, many churches are looking for 

ways to celebrate the occasion in light of stay-at-home orders and restrictions on gathering in an

 effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

(By Anthea Butler) - Is faith as we know it enough to get us through a pandemic?

(RNS) — This week, Christians will not gather in the streets of Seville, Spain, for the annual Semana Santa processions. There will be no washing of feet on Holy Thursday. Seven last words services on Good Friday will be livestreamed. For Jews, Passover has taken place at tables devoid of physical outside guests. Friday prayers at mosques will not happen. 

It turns out that a virus we cannot see is a more formidable threat to religious faith than secularism, government or unbelief. Catholics and Confucians, Buddhists and Baptists have all seen their piety give way to the coronavirus, which demands a solitary sufficiency that forbids the tactile, communal rituals that one would normally see this time of year.

Covid-19 is a health crisis, but it is also a crisis of faith.

This new normal will have profound implications for religious groups. Some will make it through this time, and their faith will be stronger for it. This is a test for believers — in the face of death, and robbed of their rituals and practices, what remains of their faith? It is a dark night of the soul, the ripping away of the familiar, the comforting, the soothing.

Many around the world have already been tested. In the Detroit area, seven bishops and leaders of the Church of God in Christ have died from the virus. Outbreaks have risen in the Orthodox Jewish community. In South Korea, the coronavirus outbreak began in a church in Daegu; in France, Covid-19 spread through a meeting of evangelicals in Mulhouse.

Nigeria and the Effects of Religion

(By Raymond Ijabla & Biodun Aiyegboyin) – The Destructive Effects Of Religion On The Nigerian Society

From the professor of medicine who lectures at the prestigious University of Ibadan, to the almajiri destitute who roams the streets of Kano, to the wealthy real estate manager in Port Harcourt, to the lowly nomad of arid Baga, there is one thing that connects these people - religion. Religion permeates every facet of the Nigerian society and influences the collective mindset of its people. Religion supposedly makes people good except that the evidence does not support this claim.

What we know is that our society is plagued by all the inequality, injustice and atrocities that one rarely encounters in the godless Scandinavian societies, to use just one example. Our high degree of religiosity has not translated into good governance and prosperity for our citizens. The reasons are not far-fetched, and are discussed below.

One thing is undeniable – our society needs a change of attitude and values. So how can we do things differently? 

Mr. Biodun Aiyegboyin teams up with the secular humanist and commentator on Nigerian socio-political and religious matters, Dr. Ijabla Raymond, to explore these issues, and more.

The Problem With Nigerian Christianity Today

(By Joy Isi Bewaji)--What really upsets me most about Christianity is its cowardice. This spineless manipulative religion!

A 14 year old girl has been forced into marriage (forced, because she is a minor and cannot make decisions of her own. She is a child!)… where is Christianity when you need it!

What did Christianity do when it heard the news? It made a "friendly" call to the paedophile and his community and before the wink of an eye, Christianity had its tail between its legs, surrendered to arguments on consent… and has left everything to God.

A languid and lifeless faith.

It’s shameful.

How can you live in a time like this without a fight in you?

Christianity is so selfish, it’s sickening.

The only time its voice appears valiant is when it needs to extort money from you- tithe and offering and building projects and pastor’s appreciation shenanigan.

The Muslim Whose Presence Defiled Christ

Source: loonwatch.com

(Pius Adesanmi)-- ...Modees, obviously, is a Muslim. His best friend who was getting married is a Christian. A Muslim was going to be best man in a Christian marriage! The Christian groom and his Muslim best friend thought nothing of this until wedding day and the officiating Pastor somehow caught wind of the faith of the best man and refused to proceed with the ceremony.

It was bad enough for Modees, a Muslim, to have come to defile the body of Christ in his church! To approach the pulpit as the best man in the wedding was adding insult to injury! All entreaties to the Pastor failed. No Muslims allowed here!

The story of this foolish fundamentalist Christian Pastor in Calabar is the story of Nigeria. It is indeed the story of Africa. It is the story of the failure of critical intelligence. It could very easily have happened the other way round. It could have been Modees getting married and his Christian friend being bundled out of the ceremony for defiling a Mosque.

The trouble with Nigeria, the tragedy of Africa, is that in a world of mutual connectivity and global influences and interactions, we have not figured out a way of making whatever we accept from the outside, whatever is forced on us from the outside, sit on the solid foundation of our own worldviews and humanity.

The Ancestors and the Dialogue of Religions

Source: timeslive.co.za

"My father was a man of few words, and I have always regretted that I had not asked him more questions. But I realize also that he took pains to tell me what he thought I needed to know. He told me, for instance, in a rather oblique way of his one tentative attempt long ago to convert his uncle.

It must have been in my father’s youthful, heady, proselytizing days! His uncle had said no, and pointed to the awesome row of insignia of his three titles. “what shall I do to these?” he had asked my father. It was an awesome question. What do I do to who I am? What do I do to history?

An orphan child born into adversity, heir to commotions, barbarities, rampant upheaveals of a continent in disarray: was it all surprising that he would eagerly welcome the explanation and remedy proffered by diviners and interpreters of a new word [i.e., Christianity]?

And his uncle Udoh, a leader in his community, a moral, open-minded man, a prosperous man who had prepared such a great feast when he took the ozo title that his people gave him a unique praise-name for it: was he to throw all that away now because some strangers from afar came and said so?

Those two—my father and his uncle—formulated the dialectic which I inherited. Udoh stood fast in what he knew, but he left room also for his nephew to seek other answers. The answer my father found in the Christian faith solved many problems, but by no means all.”

Chinua Achebe (2009: 37), The Education of a British-Protected Child

In Pursuit of Happiness

Source: pintrest.com

“In that Christ had suffered, and had suffered voluntarily, suffering was no longer unjust and pain was necessary. In one sense, Christianity’s bitter intuition and legitimate pessimism concerning human behavior is based on the assumption that over-all injustice is as satisfying to man as total justice. Only the sacrifice of an innocent god could justify the endless and universal torture of innocence. Only the most abject suffering by God could assuage man’s agony. If everything, without exception, in heaven and earth is doomed to pain and suffering, then a strange form of happiness is possible.”

Albert Camus (1956: 34)

The Rebel

The Bible In A Vulgar Hand

The book thus put in every vulgar hand,
Which each presum'd he best could understand,
The common rule was made the common prey,
And at the mercy of the rabble lay.
The tender page with horny fists was gall'd,
And he was gifted most that loudest bawl'd:
The spirit gave the doctoral degree,
And every member of a company
Was of his trade and of the Bible free.
Plain truths enough for needful use they found,
But men would still be itching to expound:
Each was ambitious of th'obscurest place,
No measure ta'en from knowledge, all from grace.
Study and pains were now no more their care;
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer:
This was the fruit the private spirit brought,
Occasion'd by great zeal and little thought.
                    John Dryden, 1682 (Religio Laici 822-38)