Houses of worship can be ‘dangerous environment’
At a church in Sacramento, California, that has been closed for in-person services since March, congregants occasionally still stop by to pray outside and try to capture a sense of fellowship they dearly miss.
In Nashville, Tennessee, the pastor of an Anglican church has been handing out Communion in the parking lot for weeks.
South of Atlanta, the animated pastor of a 3,000-member congregation tries to summon every ounce of enthusiasm in his body to deliver a lively, music-filled service in front of a live audience of no one, hoping his message and spirit come through on various technology platforms.
None of those are ideal options, but they beat becoming the source of an outbreak of COVID-19.
Almost 40 places of worship and religious events have been linked to more than 650 cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to tracking by The New York Times. Along with the nationwide surge in infections that has followed the loosening of restrictions aimed at combating the virus, outbreaks connected to churches have sprouted at several spots.
Those include a Pentecostal church in northeastern Oregon tied to at least 236 positive tests; five flareups linked to churches in West Virginia, the largest one resulting in 51 infections; more than 50 cases stemming from an evangelical
church outside San Antonio where the pastor allowed hugging again; a large worship service in Cleveland, Tennessee, that appears to have generated at least a dozen cases, including the pastor, who said he stopped counting after 12; and a Christian camp in Missouri that had to shut down after 82 campers, counselors and staffers contracted the virus despite taking precautions.
All those outbreaks except for the one at the camp occurred in June.
‘Safer ways’ to worship
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California-San Francisco, said the coronavirus thrives in the typical setting of a house of worship – indoors, with a multitude of people gathered close together, often singing, which can expel viruscarrying droplets.
Add to that practices traditional to some religions, like shaking hands, taking Communion and dipping the host in a chalice with wine, and you have an ideal breeding ground for the virus.
“All the things we’re learning about the virus now make it more clear how much churches and the types of gatherings churches represent provide a more dangerous environment for viral transmission,” Bibbins-Domingo said. “We have to figure out how to worship in safer ways, and right now in-person, in large groups, in an enclosed building is not a safe place.”
Many houses of worship throughout the country have remained closed or operated at significantly reduced capacity amid the pandemic. On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom included churches among the organizations that had to shut down in most of the state because of a spike in infections. Churches had been allowed to reopen under certain conditions in late May.
Oftentimes, even when congregants are welcome back, many have been reluctant to return.
A drop in attendance
A USA TODAY analysis of anonymized cellphone data from 16 million devices shows church attendance dropped 52% in the second week of March, when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, compared with an average week in February.
Church visits haven’t come close to returning to the norm, lingering at around minus 40%. Activities such as visiting restaurants and clothing and shoe stores have bounced back stronger, both at minus 23%.
“The vast majority of people in our congregation are still not comfortable coming to a worship service, even though we have a very clean setup,” said Thomas McKenzie, pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in Nashville.
McKenzie’s church, with a congregation of 500, has done extra sanitizing, required face masks, limited capacity, removed seats to allow for more social distance and changed the way Communion is handed out, including distributing the host in the parking lot to those who don’t want to come in.
“My theory is I have to act like I have the coronavirus, and I try to minister people as if, if I breathed on them, I could kill them,” said McKenzie, who wears gloves and a mask while preaching.
Still, the biggest turnout since reopening May 31 has been 45 – five short of the current limit – with a low of 12. For the first time ever this year, the church is streaming services.
That has been a common tool for houses of worship in the age of the coronavirus: Facebook and YouTube serve as platforms to reach worshipers who can’t or won’t attend in person.
With the rising number of cases in the Atlanta metro area, T.J. McBride says it’s unlikely he’ll preach in person again until next year. That’s a shame, because the pastor of Tabernacle of Praise Church International, about 20 miles south of Atlanta, feeds off his mostly Black congregation of 3,000 in
delivering his energetic sermons.
Performing for the cameras without an audience doesn’t provide much immediate feedback.
“It’s been a real challenge, because you don’t have anybody saying, ‘Amen, preacher,’ or any of that stuff,” McBride said. “But this is the new normal.”
McBride said six members of his church have died of COVID-19, and many families have lost loved ones. It was especially painful not to be able to comfort them in person, having to rely on phone conversations and hearing how congregants couldn’t bid a proper goodbye to their relatives who died because of restrictions on funeral homes.
But McBride is aware the coronavirus has taken a disproportionate toll on communities of color, and he’s wary of reopening any time soon, even though legally he’s allowed to.
“We don’t want to be the cause of anyone getting this disease,” he said.
Some just stay shut
A much smaller place of worship, the 1,200-member South Sacramento Christian Center, has kept its doors shut since mid-March but continued its community outreach by distributing bags of food and helping set up a coronavirus testing site for its mostly Black and Latino congregation.
Pastor Les Simmons said challenging times like this are when people most need their church’s embrace. But his followers have had to settle for virtual hugs and remote words of wisdom.
“It’s very hard because people are definitely used to closeness and the idea of being touch-deprived is very real right now,” Simmons said. “It’s been very difficult for folks to accept that.”
Simmons said the lack of a physical presence has also led to financial hardships for his church, which has missed the donations of members who prefer to bring them in person. Some of them may also now be unemployed. Through those difficulties, the Christian Center continues to offer five services a week, all remotely.
And while some congregants come by at times to have a moment of reflection outside the closed doors, Simmons takes heart in knowing there have been no major outbreaks among the congregation, and he emphasizes a church is more than just a building.
“Many Scripture passages I’ve seen show the priest or the prophet was able to connect with the people without being by the people,” he said. “Our faith is between us and God, not necessarily us and a place.”
Weighing the risks
Ogbonnaya Omenka, an associate professor and public health specialist at Butler University, said defeating the virus will require for Americans to think less about their individual liberties and more about the common good. He acknowledged that’s complicated considerably by the politicization of the pandemic and of such proven measures as wearing masks.
Omenka also pointed out that mitigation attempts by churches such as sanitizing, spacing and mask requirements are limited by the reality that they can’t control what their congregants do outside the services and how much they’re exposed to the virus.
“So there’s no safety net that would completely eliminate the threat of a resurgence when you reopen places of worship,’’ he said.
More troubling to Omenka, though, is the cognitive dissonance he notices among people who don’t want to be inconvenienced by the changes the virus’ existence demands. Reopening, he said, does not mean a return to normal, not for quite a while.
“Opening a church normally is risky, so let’s figure out another option,” Omenka said. “Let’s do the service outside. But some may say, ‘Well, it’s raining and we don’t have enough seating for everybody to be under a canopy. Let’s go back inside.’ No. Can we just accept that it’s OK to not have service for that day if it will keep the congregants healthy to come back next week?”