Love in the Time of Coronavirus

This article was originally published here by The Praxis Journal on March 2020, the first week of lockdown. As we hope that gatherings in person will be safe again soon, may this article remind us of the responsibility we have.

— by Andy Crouch

A guide for Christian leaders.

At this extraordinary moment, local leaders — people who lead groups of 10 to 1,000 people — have perhaps the greatest opportunity to shape culture in the United States that they have ever had. This is a guide for those of us who are Christian leaders at this moment.

Shaping culture is a matter of changing “the horizons of possibility.” Culture tells us, in countless direct and indirect ways, what we are able to do, and what we are not able to do. And leaders play an outsize role in moving those horizons, especially at times of disruption and crisis. They play that role through both symbolic action — what they say, how they say it, even how they hold themselves and respond to others — and through decision-making on behalf of others.

A leader’s responsibility, as circumstances around us change, is to speak, live, and make decisions in such a way that the horizons of possibility move towards shalom, flourishing for everyone in our sphere of influence, especially the vulnerable.

With the arrival of COVID-19 in the United States, we need to change the horizons of possibility extremely rapidly in two fundamental ways:

1. We need to change norms of social interaction literally overnight to minimize the transmission of the virus. I will outline below what I believe are the most important steps, based on the best public information about SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and COVID-19 (the disease). These steps feel drastic. Crucially, implementing them early enough will require tremendous leadership because they will not initially seem necessary to most of the people we lead. When dealing with pandemics, the measures that will actually make a difference always need to be taken sooner than we think.

2. We need to redirect social energy from anxiety and panic to love and preparation. This crisis presents an extraordinary opportunity to fortify small communities of love and care for our neighbors. That will only happen if we lead in a way that reduces fear, increases faith, and reorients all of us from self-protection to serving others.

There are several reasons that now is an almost uniquely important moment for local leaders. We have become accustomed to culture being shaped “somewhere else” — by elected officials, especially national ones; by celebrities; by media. But we are dealing with a virus that is transmitted person to person, in small and large groups of actual people. This is not a virtual crisis — it is a local, embodied one. Local, embodied responses will quite literally mean life and death for people.

Governors, mayors, and leaders of major businesses and institutions all have a part to play, but to an amazing degree the choices made by churches, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations will have a huge effect. This past week an outbreak in Massachusetts has been largely traced to a single meeting of about 175 people sponsored by the firm Biogen. Countless Christian leaders are involved in decision-making about groups of that size. We have decisions to make, and horizons to shape, which leaders at other levels cannot.

Most of all, while government at all levels can enforce a certain amount of behavior change, for example through quarantines and “lockdowns,” it is almost impossible for coercive authority to increase people’s capacity for love and service to others. This is the role of faith and above all, we believe, the Christian faith. Equipping Christians for moments like this is the role of Christian leaders.

The recommendations that follow are the result of about a month’s worth of intensive study of the medical and public health information about COVID-19 that has been available to the public. I have no specialist-level insight, nor any non-public sources. But my calling as a journalist, which was my profession for 15 years, is to make complicated things clear, quickly. (The length of this essay shows just how complicated the current moment is.)

If you have access to more specialized counsel, by all means make use of it. Many aspects of this crisis are highly localized, and every aspect will change on a daily basis for the foreseeable future. It also goes without saying that we should obey the directives of public officials in our area. But I hope this can be a general guide to swift and decisive leadership based on love and faith.

This essay has four parts. Feel free to skip to the one that is most relevant for you:

1. What is happening? An overview of the most important things for Christian leaders, anywhere in the United States, to know about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.

2. What should we communicate? A list of the most helpful messages others can hear from us — and the most harmful messages as well.

3. What decisions should we make? Recommendations for decisions about large gatherings, medium-size gatherings for Christian worship, and small groups meeting in households. As of the President and federal health officials’ afternoon press conference on 16 March 2020, this advice, which was intended for leaders making decisions on or immediately after12 March 2020, is obsolete, though still helpful both for modeling how Christians might make such decisions and in helping us comply with existing restrictions (e.g., in places where gatherings of up to ten are allowed). I will not be updating it further. All leaders should obey both the requirements and the requests of public officials at every level.

4. What can we hope for? A few reflections on the genuine possibility that our decisions in the next few weeks could reshape the practice of Christian faith in our nation and, God being merciful, lead to a revival of the church of Jesus Christ in America.

Click here to see the full article on Praxis Labs

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[ Photo by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash ]