Clorado Congressman and GOP chief Ken Buck caught a little fire recently for proclaiming that he would return to church on May 3 even if he had to “wear a scuba outfit.”
While I agree with Buck’s assessment that many of us “don’t get through this without prayer,” my personal faith experience tells me that church and socially responsible action are not mutually exclusive.
About a month ago, I lamented the loss of Holy Week services to the coronavirus but wrote that though “I couldn’t go the house of God, He found His way to me.”
The intervening time has not changed my opinion. If anything, it has strengthened my belief that common solutions should be prioritized over false dichotomies. The former is the path of unity that, in the words of conservative columnist David Brooks, allows “us to see each other on a level much deeper than politics – see the fragility, the fear and the courage.”
And of course, for Christians like Buck, R-Windsor, and myself, bringing people together is the path charted by Christ.
For me, the solution has come via Facebook watch parties and YouTube live feeds of services performed by my priest in an empty church. Just last week, he addressed this new reality directly when he recognized that, “Preacher and pastor types are not just preaching the Word to our people across new platforms, we are proclaiming the good news during a global pandemic to a people who are stranded in their anxieties and uncertainties and fears and uneasy and vulnerable hearts.”
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