Time to confront lockdown’s immorality
The failure of religious and moral leaders to address societal cost of restrictions has been an utter travesty
In the immediate aftermath of Christmas comes the feast of Thomas Becket, the most famous of turbulent priests, whose moral upbraiding of King Henry II resulted in his death. There was a time when the Church held the state’s feet to the fire in terms of morality, however unpopular its interventions were with more secular leaders.
The pandemic was not such a time. When people were locked in their homes and “non-essential” businesses closed, the Church didn’t make a robust case for being essential. It closed its doors. Just when the country needed spiritual succour more than ever, dignified clergy retreated to their kitchens.
Many considered this to be an abrogation of leadership, but it is par for the course for much of the last century. During political upheavals, wars and terror attacks, our religious leaders have largely acted as supporting actors to prime ministers who have spoken using the moral vocabulary that was once the preserve of archbishops. “The strength God gave us to wage war against a monstrous tyranny,” one prime minister said. “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony,” another urged. “A new dawn has broken,” another celebrated.
At the start of the Covid crisis, that was enough. The Prime Minister talked in terms of moral responsibility, of our duty to others, especially the most vulnerable, and of the great struggle we had before us.
However, it did not take long for that language to change. The effect of lockdown soon became couched in terms of “the economy” or “the science”. Meanwhile, the plight of the marginalised – who do not have the best political representation and who often have most cause to rely on the church – has been to a large extent ignored.
The societal, and therefore moral, consequences of our current situation are catastrophic, and yet they have gone curiously unmentioned. Domestic violence has risen to levels that constitute a tragic pandemic in itself. The reliance on the internet and hours cooped up at home has led to the consumption of violent or taboo forms of pornography skyrocketing.
We have a duty to contemplate the effect of repeated lockdowns on the young, particularly on the development and the nutrition of the poorest children. They have carried an extraordinary burden.
And while restrictions may be tolerable for the comfortable middle classes, our leaders seem to have forgotten those for whom staying at home is a type of hell, and those for whom work, which tends to be essential, cannot be conducted from the spare bedroom.
To consider the impact of policies on the most vulnerable is a moral imperative and a role for religious leadership. It is indubitably something that we have badly missed from the conversation surrounding this pandemic.
Might the tide now be changing? Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, this week decried the travel ban on African countries – who, unlike China, were transparent about the presence of a new variant as soon as they found it – as “morally wrong”.
He was right to do so and I can only hope that our country is now ready to hear and consider such moral interventions. It is long past time for societal considerations to be given their due weight in the debates alongside the great clunking fists of economic and health policy. If those concerns cannot be voiced by faith leaders, whose very calling is to speak for the vulnerable and the overlooked, then who can voice them?
The Government has again turned to us with the stentorian voice of moral authority and made the argument that we should abide by further restrictions to our freedom.
I am hopeful that those who retain some genuine moral authority – derived if not from their actions then from their office or the Divine – will do more to raise the plight of all those who continue to suffer most from the disruption of society.
As another Christmas looms when those who are manifestly not prepared to make sacrifices ask them of those who are, how can Covid not now become a question of morality?