Don’t just pray
For 50 years, a Christmas pageant has been our church’s most important tradition. The production has been note-for-note the same for two generations of children. It involves more than 100 angels, shepherds and magi wearing passeddown costumes and singing on Christmas Eve afternoons in front of more than 1,000 people. We even have a llama and a donkey. It’s wonderful, joyous chaos.
This year will be different. We won’t be able to gather. For weeks, we’ve recorded children one by one, physically distanced, in an empty church. We will premiere a pre-recorded pageant on Christmas Eve. This year, Christmas miracles will be translated through Zoom screens. It’s difficult, it’s sad for some, but it’s right.
Our deepest responsibility requires us to keep our community safe and to model safety at a time when even the most basic precautions have become politically divisive. We have to get beyond the toxic political culture around us and safeguard human life, the single most precious gift.
At 11:47 p.m. Thanksgiving Eve, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Gov. Cuomo’s restrictions on religious gatherings to 10 people or fewer in COVID hot spots. By a 5-4 decision, one that reversed course from the court’s own opinions earlier in the year, the court said that the rules were in conflict with the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the free exercise of religion.
The suit was brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and by Orthodox Jewish communities. The core question was, when the two might be seen to be in conflict, which governs: public health or religious freedom?
I can’t speak to the constitutional issues. But I know the suit brought was mistaken in its intent and confirms impressions about faith communities’ self-focus.
Faith communities bear a moral responsibility beyond our own parochial interests. We have a responsibility for the health of the whole community, and not just of our members. Where and when indoor secular gatherings are barred, and they are in those zones, it doesn’t make any sense to exempt religious gatherings.
The lawsuit and the court decision make that harder. The Diocese asserted they had taken adequate safety measures and should be able to gather given the capacity of their buildings, claiming the need for prayer is more urgent than the health-oriented restrictions.
I agree on the importance of prayer, but it’s a false distinction. It represents an upside-down moral calculus.
Throughout this pandemic, following science has helped, not hurt. In my church, we’re using guidelines that keep our members safe. We’ve limited our services more than state guidelines suggest. Carefully measuring seats to be six feet apart and reducing the length of our services has been hard. The restrictions haven’t always made sense, but we’re all learning about COVID-19.
Everyone has experienced grief and loss this year. Churches, synagogues and mosques have been required to make radical changes that we couldn’t have imagined a year ago. Synagogues hosted high holidays online. For the first time in 2,000 years, Christians couldn’t gather on Easter.
We’ve adapted. We’ve found creative ways to connect — and to pray.
Even more importantly, this pandemic moment offers faith communities an opportunity to serve and connect more broadly.
The lawsuit suggests a diminished perspective. Its claims are correct in one aspect: We are not the same as gyms or bars. Our rituals aren’t benefits for members of the club. We exist for the wider world. We have a deeper, larger purpose.
This pandemic moment offers an opportunity for the faith community, if we have the courage and creativity to take it. Celebrating human dignity crosses religious traditions and joins people of faith with those who have no religious connections at all.
Religious communities have always served our city in time of need. Pope Francis has said, “you pray for the hungry and then you feed them. That’s how prayer works.”
Together, we can help lead New York’s next chapter when our city is mired in its worst crisis since the Great Depression. Religious institutions should be prophets and bridge-builders. The pandemic has made long-standing racial and economic inequality even more apparent. We can engage our people and use our institutions as a resource to the city. Nothing about the safety guidelines holds us back from sharing our values and making a difference.
We’re going to remember what we did in this time. Our children will ask us about it.
The Supreme Court has knocked down New York’s restrictions. Now faith communities must do the right thing morally and follow what keeps us safe and makes us all stronger. If we look beyond our own interests, we’ll be able to say that we emerged from the pandemic as a more fair and more just New York.