Why Churches Should Not Drop Their Online Services

So Liturgy of the Ordinary author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren wrote a column for the NY Times titled, “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services.” I know I am biased, but I think it is safe to say that it hasn’t been her most popular op-ed. In it, she makes a case that she is very over online services and that everybody else should be too.

Now I think it’s time to drop the virtual option. And I think this for the same reason I believed churches should go online back in March 2020: This is the way to love God and our neighbors.

Ms. Warren believes the pandemic is waning and the risks of Omicron are about like the flu.

We are not in 2020 anymore. Even for vulnerable groups such as those over age 65, Covid has a roughly similar risk of death as the flu for those who are fully vaccinated, and the Omicron variant seems to pose even less risk than the flu.

I don’t know where she is reading, but today’s 7-day moving average of COVID deaths is just over 2500 souls per day. There were 27 deaths from the flu last week.

While she is correct that vaccination provides protection from serious illness and death, vaccination rates among white evangelical Christians remain low. Any objective look at differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated finds that unvaccinated people are at greater risk for severe outcomes if they get COVID.

Why not have both in-person and online? Apparently, Warren doesn’t trust her people to come to church.

One might ask, why not have both? Why not meet in person (with Covid precautions in place) but also continue to offer the option of a live-streamed service? Because offering church online implicitly makes embodiment elective. It presents in-person gatherings as something we can opt in or out of with little consequence. It assumes that embodiment is more of a consumer preference, like whether or not you buy hardwood floors, than a necessity, like whether or not you have shelter.

In fact, people do have a choice. People can go to her church or another one. If I am disabled or in quarantine and my church rejected an easy tech solution for me to join the group, I might have to find another group.

The attitude toward people who can’t make in-person church is probably what has triggered the most pain among disability advocates on social media. Warren writes:

[N]o longer offering a streaming option will unfortunately mean that those who are homebound or sick will not be able to participate in a service. This, however, is not a new problem for the church. For centuries, churches have handled this inevitability by visiting these people at home in person. A small team of “lay eucharistic ministers” at our former church volunteered to go to the home of anyone who could not make it to church and wanted a visit.

For centuries, churches haven’t had an easy technical solution to bring church services into our homes. We have been able to get video recordings of big name preachers for a long time. However, the pandemic brought this tech to almost every local church. Now, people can look in on their church and hear their singers and preacher. Even if the sound is sketchy and the preaching isn’t polished, it is local and familiar. This has meant a lot to people. I am very surprised that Warren shrugs that off.

Furthermore, there are numerous reasons why people might need to have access to services via broadcast. Churches looking for ways to multiply their reach have had this dropped in their laps. I can’t see anything positive that will come from just giving it up. I hope Warren will rethink her stance and use her platform to modify her position.

Twitter reaction has been intense.

Who Said This About Vaccine Mandates?

Who said this?

The claim I am making here is very limited. If a person has decided personal convictions about the contagious disease he is carrying, the society in which he lives has an equal right to have decided and contrary convictions about that same contagious disease he has. And if there is an outbreak of such a disease, and the government quarantines everyone who is not vaccinated, requiring them to stay at home, the name for this is prudence, not tyranny.

Prudence, not tyranny.

Let’s see. COVID is a contagious disease. Correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard that there is an outbreak in the land of that contagious disease. Although government has not quarantined everyone who is not vaccinated, it sounds like this person would support such a dramatic move.

This view is quite bold and controversial. This person would likely be quite unwelcome at a MAGA rally. I know people who would be moved to red faced indignation at the mention of a government requirement for the unvaccinated to stay home.

Who is this bold contrarian? This defender of the greater and common good? This public health warrior?

I hope you are sitting down.

Doug Wilson.

Yes, that Doug Wilson. The 2015 Doug Wilson here.

Now in 2021 Wilson cracks on about fake vaccine identification cards, as in how and why to make them. Why would anyone do that? The 2015 Wilson said the government would be prudent to quaratine the vaccine refusers. Now, he advises people to “non-compliance with a clean conscious.” More directly, regarding the vaccine, he tells his readers: “First, if you are in a position to resist openly, do that.”

The 2015 Wilson told us that the government would be prudent to mandate a vaccine. The 2015 Wilson said:

Now I do have views on the efficacy of vaccines, but I want to address another element of this — the idea that even if they were effective, a requirement that everyone get vaccinated is necessarily statist and tyrannical. Why isn’t this a matter of personal choice and conviction? The answer is that it is not a matter of personal choice because everyone else is involved.

Now, Wilson counsels open resistance to what he calls a Biden power play.

But overarching everything was the obvious and naked nature of the power play that is being run. The Biden regime has already floated the idea of restricting interstate travel for the unvaccinated, and how would you do that without “papers please” checkpoints? Checkpoints everywhere a road passes from North Dakota into South Dakota. Don’t tell me I have a feverish imagination—I wasn’t the one who brought it up. Bans on interstate travel for the unvaccinated wasn’t my idea.

But something like it was his idea just six years ago. He said it would be prudent for the government to require the unvaccinated to stay at home. It seems to me that such a policy would prevent interstate travel. So about that feverish imagination…

Cynical me thinks that Rev. Wilson found himself an issue of real passion to conservative followers on the right and he is riding it. Maybe I didn’t read long enough to find out why he changed his mind, but the difference is striking. While we may not need a comprehensive quarantine, I think he may have been closer to correct the first time. Certainly, vaccine mandates for certain activities (work, school) have precedent and should not arouse the feverish response ginned up by the 2021 Wilson.

 

 

Eric Metaxas Goes Anti-Vax

Not only has Eric Metaxas become a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the 2020 presidential election, he apparently has gone full anti-vax.

I told you about his move into this world back in 2020. Now Metaxas is telling his followers not to get vaccinated.

(Metaxas has removed the tweet, but below is a screen cap of it)

Hat tip to Joemygod for this. I am blocked by Metaxas so I didn’t see it.

In May 2020, Metaxas had Kent Heckenlively on his radio show and gave him a 36 minute commercial for the anti-vax movement. Heckenlively was allowed to provide a full recitation of the anti-vax catalog of false claims and half-truths. Now it seems Metaxas has fully sided with the fringe and may push some people over the anti-vax edge.

He just keeps finding the edge of the fringe and jumping off.

The article that Metaxas links to is not by a scientist or virologist but by a conspiracy writer. In it, he writes:

It [the vaccine] is not a vaccine. Vaccines are actually a legally defined term. And they’re a legally defined term under public health law. They’re a legally defined term under CDC and FDA standards, and a vaccine specifically has to stimulate, both an immunity within the person receiving it but it also has to disrupt transmission. And that’s not what this is.

Here is the CDC definition of a vaccine: “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”

While there is a question about transmission with these vaccines, these questions don’t render the vaccine not a vaccine. Past vaccination efforts have had inconsistent results when it comes to transmission immunity. See this Scientific American article for more on that topic.

This 2009 scientific virology paper casts doubt on the notion that transmission prevention is a requirement to be a vaccine:

The benefits of reducing person-to-person transmission in the context of either an epidemic or a pandemic are clear. It is therefore appropriate that one of the main aims of vaccination is to limit transmission. Nevertheless, the efficacy of vaccines in blocking viral spread, either to or from the vaccinated individual, is not traditionally assessed in preclinical or clinical trials.

Beneficial? Yes. Required or “traditionally assessed?” No.

David Dark asks Simon & Schuster a very good question.

Another COVID-19 Outbreak at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church – UPDATED

UPDATE: LA County Department of Health informed me this afternoon (12/21) that “No additional outbreaks have been reported by Grace Community Church to Public Health since” the earlier employee related outbreak in October.

………………..

Twitter user and Medium writer Modern Day Zorro posted a piece on Medium with news of another Grace Community Church COVID outbreak (there was one back in October). MDZ is close to GCC and has never been wrong with news on the church. (My question mark in the title is admittedly self-protective, and because I have not been able to get confirmation from Grace’s PR firm. – See the update below) Given the lack of mitigation measures and the ignorance about COVID which have been apparent at Grace, I don’t doubt the report. However, if corrections or modifications are needed, I will make them.

According to the Medium report, multiple Grace members and staff may be infected:

  1. Don’t take the vaccine as it’s just a money ploy.
  2. Grace is welcoming 400 new members.
  3. The giving is the best it’s ever been.
  4. There are no long-term side effects to COVID.
  • Yes <hits mic and blows into it> 7 people, elders and staff, have COVID symptoms and have subsequently tested positive as a direct result of going to a Staff Christmas party.

    While I await confirmation of specific numbers, I can note that one pastor at Grace, Will Varner, has tested positive for COVID and announced this publicly. He also said a musician affiliated with GCC’s Sojourners ministry tested positive.

Let’s not forget that MacArthur’s attorney Jenna Ellis tested positive for COVID-19.

As someone who has had COVID, I certainly wish the best for these folks. I post this because I sincerely doubt that certain church leaders at GCC will provide the congregation with appropriate information. At least, it hasn’t happened so far.

UPDATE: Julie Roys has an article out on Sunday with reporting that people at Grace are being discouraged from telling anyone about their COVID diagnosis.  She also has much more documentation of GCC members and staff who have COVID. It seems pretty clear that MacArthur’s rosy picture of a church meeting indoors without caution and without cases of COVID is false.

During church on Sunday morning, MacArthur did not comment on the cases identified by the sources noted above and by Julie Roys.

Another update from Modern Day Zorro:

MacArthur said everybody has a bug.

COVID-19 Doesn’t Play

I haven’t posted for awhile because I tested positive for COVID-19. It started out mild but then hit me hard. While I was able to stay home, I did feel pretty sick for about a week. While I am off quarantine now, I am still tired and don’t feel quite back to normal. Overall though, I feel blessed to have stayed out of the hospital.

I feel more certain than ever that mask wearing is necessary and churches should stop clutching their rights to meet together. We only have a few more months until a vaccine is widely available. Surely, we can wait a few more months to get together in large groups.