Fake COVID-19 Statistics Illustrated

In Nueces County, Texas, there have (or had – see below) been no deaths from COVID-19. Most of the country also has had few cases and no to few deaths.  The coronavirus is not the return of the Black Death as once advertised.

These are not convenient statistics for those who wish to keep us shut down.  But statistics can be invented, don’tcha know.  Take the supposed first Nueces County COVID death, for example (with all sympathy and prayers for the friends and family of the lady mentioned):

The Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District received confirmation of the first COVID-19 related death in a Nueces County resident. The patient tested positive for COVID-19 in early March, but subsequently tested negative prior to being discharged from the hospital at the end of March. The patient was a female between the ages of 70 and 79. The patient was recently re-admitted for complaints of abdominal pain and other underlining issues. The patient subsequently passed away April 19, 2020.

Although this patient had tested negative prior to being released from the hospital, COVID-19 is a new disease and there is limited information regarding risk factors for severe disease and subsequent complications.

As the press release acknowledges, there were a number of “issues” behind the woman’s death.  And she had tested negative.  So why was she put down as a COVID-19 death?  We are not told.  One would think that is an important detail.

Statistic padding like this breaks down trust.  It feeds distrust towards those who insist on keeping us partly shut down.

And that distrust is well earned.

An Easter Sermon from Pusey House

The following Easter Sunday sermon from the Principal of Pusey House hit my inbox this morning and soon after touched my heart.  It is profound and explains how the resurrection affects us very well. At the same time it reflects the difficulties Oxford and England and the world are going through now.

Imagine Dr. George Westhaver standing alone, alone on Easter Sunday, in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House addressing his online congregation via Discord . . .

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs, Bestowing life!

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death in us, and in whatever way we find ourselves bound in graveclothes, touched by death or despair or fear, giving life, life eternal and full. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a great joy to have arrived at this day with you. Christ is Risen, Alleluia. I can hear you all crying out, the Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia. 

We have arrived together at this day. It has been a strange and unsettling pilgrimage. We have been forced into the desert in a new way. We have been compelled to suffer isolation from one another and from communion in the Body of Christ. We’ve been removed from the normal form of communion with one another, and we’ve been removed from communion in the Sacrament of our Lord’s body, this particular form of his sacramental touch and presence has been taken from us. 

We’ve been invited not just to suffer all this, but to find in it the shape of the cross of our Saviour – to lay our lives down, not just to have them taken from us. 

Conscious of those facing danger, sickness, anxiety and death, we’ve also been invited to fellowship with the Man of Sorrows who weeps over Jerusalem, ‘O all ye that pass by, Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow’ (Lamentations 1). Our Lord weeps not only for himself but for all that ravages the life of the earthly city, for all that threatens the people for whom he lays down his life. His sacred tears were shed in love not just for the sins of Jerusalem, but for those facing darkness and the shadow of death, in illness, or in fear, or in anxiety, in these past weeks, and in all time to come. We have kept vigil, first in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then at the cross, and finally, we have kept vigil in the night ‘whereof David said: “Behold the night is as clear as the day: then shall my night be turned into day.”’ 

We have arrived. Christ is Risen from the dead, Alleluia. But where have we arrived? The confusion and turmoil in the Gospel today can be a great encouragement to us. The Saints, Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, come to the tomb, but only John seems to grasp what is happening, and that no doubt imperfectly. The resurrection does not come with easy resolution, but with confusion and perplexity. It’s a wonderful historical picture. It is also a picture of the way in which the Resurrection is not a simple answer which sorts everything out. On the one hand, it is finished, the Lord has raised up the new temple of his Body in which we live and move and have our being. 

On the other hand, what is given in the resurrection comes to us in turmoil and perplexity. We never leave this behind, but rather we discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection by entering in, again and again, the confusion of the first disciples of our Lord. We discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection for ourselves and for one another by making Mary Magdalene’s words our own – ‘they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him’ (John 20). When we find ourselves seeking the Lord who appears to be taken from us, he finds us precisely there to invite us to know him and to be loved by him in the power and presence of his resurrection. Alleluia. 

In his letter to the Colossians, St Paul also speaks to us, both to tell us what has happened, and to help us to understand why the gift of the Risen life comes with perplexity as well as promise, with anxiety as well as with answers. 

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. ... For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

The great work has been accomplished, finished for us, and yet we must seek it. It is given, and we must find it.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Where do we find the life which is hid with Christ in God? God is Spirit, but since the Incarnation, God also has a human body (I speak as a fool). We find our lives in the risen body of Christ, the same body, wonderfully transformed, by which he lifts us up, draws near, carries, touches us, feeds us. ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (I Cor 15:14)The Resurrection of Christ is his vindication and victory, and the resurrection of Christ is our vindication and victory over all that takes away life. 

  

The Christian hope is not only the promise of eternal life. Tom Wright, sometime bishop of Durham, one of the great scholars of the Scriptures, and now retired to Oxford, emphasises that we don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, but “life after ‘life after death’”. Our Blessed Lord’s words to the thief are the foundation of Christian hope: ‘Today, you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23.43). This is the beginning of the Christian hope, not the end. There, ‘we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love [and we shall be loved, we shall know and] we shall praise’. But this is still only the beginning of Christian hope, not the end. We don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, however rich and full beyond our imagining, we look forward to “life after ‘life after death’.” In the collect of the burial office in the Book of Common Prayer, the priest prays that our loved-one departed may first ‘rest in’ Christ. But this is only the beginning; ‘our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul’ comes only at ‘the general Resurrection in the last day’. Our share in the Resurrection is what is hid for is with Christ in God. 

Why does it matter that ‘we believe in the resurrection of the body’, not just for Christ, but for ourselves? If one has experienced great suffering in the body, or if one has struggled with poor health, or simply the trials of growing old, one may be tempted, like the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, to see the body as a cage, better left behind. The poet Dante, in his Paradiso, gives one of the best answers to the why it matters. In the Heaven of the Sun, Dante speaks to King Solomon about the resurrection of the body. Solomon, is the traditional author of the Song of Songs, the great love song of the soul longing for God, of the Bride seeking the Bridegroom Jesus Christ, of each one of us seeking that life which is hid with Christ in God.

According to Dante, the souls in paradise are already robed in bliss, but when they rise again with their bodies, they will be more blessed still. But how is this possible? Hearing Dante’s question, the souls around him dance with more fervour and zeal, and Solomon answers on their behalf:

When, blessed and glorified,
the flesh is robed about us once again, 

we shall be lovelier for being whole. 

We shall be lovelier for being whole. The soul is not complete without the body, and the body is dead without the soul. God is pure spirit, but human beings are not whole and complete as purely spiritual beings. After death, the souls of the faithful are at rest. They enjoy the vision of God, even if this vision and this joy is not complete. But being in heaven as spirits is not our final destination. It is only at the resurrection of the body, when the bodies which we once had are changed into a spiritual body, to be like the glorious body of Christ, that we shall be whole, ‘more perfectly ourselves’, and lovelier for being whole. 

Does this mean that the resurrection of the body is only a hope for an impossibly distant future? We hope that we will rise with Christ at the last day, our perfect consummation and bliss, but even now, we are risen with him. What does this mean? Perhaps it will be more clear if we consider what a denial of the Resurrection of the Body would mean about the things which give us joy now. For those who believe in the Resurrection of the body, the happy meal with family and friends, the cup of tea or glass of wine, our attachment to particular places and particular people, little pleasures help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. To live as a people who believe in the resurrection of the body ‘is to love Bag End and the beer from a particularly good harvest’; to love a human being is to love the body; ‘To love the body is to love the small, the local, the particular. It is to love those things enjoyed by the body’. C S Lewis describes these day to day pleasures as ‘shafts of the glory’ and ‘channels of adoration’ which reveal our Risen life. To reject the resurrection of the body is to deny something important in these creature comforts. If we are destined to be pure spirit, our delight in a beautiful garden or a beautiful landscape, as well as our delight in the meal with friends and little pleasures are just distractions, whistling against the dark, fleeting things which may make life less painful, but which don’t tell us about the lives which our hid with Christ in God. But to believe in the resurrection of the body means that we expect the things which delight us in the body to help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. It is the belief in the Resurrection of the Body which makes it possible for the images of love and springtime in the Song of Songs to speak to us of the love of each of us for the Bridegroom Jesus Christ: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come ... the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away’ (Song of Solomon 2.11-13). For those who know that they are risen with Christ, this is an invitation to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. For the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, for whom the body is a shell to be discarded and left behind, this is just poetic fancy, singing against the dark. 

In the words of Hillaire Belloc, modified slightly by Bp Robert Barron, ‘Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There’s laughter and [music] and good red wine’.

Belloc’s words also help us to make sense of the strange turn in St Paul’s words to the Colossians and to us. ‘Red wine’ is not only a way to find our lives hid with Christ in God, the same red wine can be the path to destruction, family break-down and misery. We could say the same for many of the comforts which delight us – they can lead us to apprehend the spiritual riches which are ours in Christ Jesus, or they can send us on a path to darkness. Our perfect consummation and bliss is in the resurrection of the body, but it is not merely sensual. The Resurrection life does not consist in more food, more drink, more of whatever thrills us: ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’.  The ‘earthly body’, thanks be to God, is not the same as the ‘heavenly body’.  ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed’; this ‘mortal must put on immortality’ when ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor 15). So says St Paul, Mortify – put to death on the cross – your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. We cannot leave behind the disciplines of Lent in Lent. We will keep the feast, we will celebrate, and our celebrations can help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. And yet, our lives are hid with Christ; the spiritual disciples reveal what is hidden in what is right in front of us. As the goodness, the wisdom, and the love of our Risen Lord possess us more and more, we will find that life which is hid in him. 

Let us cast our cares and concerns upon him; he is able to bear them. And let us seek, on this great day, and the days to come, the life which is hid for us with Christ in God. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, our Risen Lord speaks to us: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away’, and in this coming away, in this dying, the things which delight us now may be channels of adoration and a path of find the life which is hid with Christ in God. 

The Presiding Minister of CREC Gets It on Restoring Freedoms

This morning, I was about to post on Christian leaders who are exploiting COVID-19 for ungodly causes such as letting border crashers right on in.  But I came across an open letter from the Presiding Minister of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), and I find it a much more pleasant subject.  He gets it on the need to bring the shutdowns to an end and to restore our freedoms.

Further, he nicely lets it be known that the time CREC will comply with restrictions on churches will soon come to an end:

The citizens of the United States and our congregants are already beginning to strongly feel the need to get back to regular living. While we do not currently have a date after which we will no longer comply with the extreme restrictions, we believe the time is now at hand for our leaders to stand down from the extreme isolation efforts, and the date after which we will no longer comply, is soon approaching, in days or weeks, not months.

His overall thinking on the current COVID-19 situation and on reopening the economy and society is so much in line with mine that I will post his full letter without further comment:

Dear Mr. President, Congressmen, Senators, Mayor, and Civic Leaders in the USA and Abroad, 

I am writing to you as the Presiding Minister of Council of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an International Denomination. 

We have been praying for you and continue to do so. May the Lord grant you His wisdom as you make decisions in this time of trial. 

First of all, thank you for the care and concern you have shown for the citizens who elected you, and for your attempt to do what you believed to be best for the public good in light of the available information at the time.  

It is now apparent that our initial information was incomplete. The pandemic is not what we all thought it was going to be. This is understandable. It was new. We all thought it was a dire threat and we all responded to protect the lives of our citizens, and our congregants, as we should have. It is now clear that the stated rationale for these temporary, emergency actions, “to flatten the curve”, has been achieved, and that these temporary measures are no longer necessary. If we continue on the current course of action of extreme mitigation, things may get much worse, as we fear they most certainly will.  

President Trump was right to say that the cure cannot be worse than the disease. In fact, it is. The pandemic did not justify putting millions of people out of work and locking down businesses and churches for the indefinite future. It is now time to open up for business, return to work and return to the worship of the Triune God.  

While Covid-19 is among us and members of our churches have been harmed by the disease, the much larger damage to our members has been done by cutting off the means of supporting the lives of their families. In our churches, we have few Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations or deaths. However, we have many people whose ability to support the lives of their families has been greatly damaged through the loss of wages and damage to their businesses. For us, the cure has been far worse than the disease. 

We encourage you to consider the immense damage that will be caused by continuing down this current path of a closed economy. The lost livelihoods, closed businesses, and the isolation of our congregants, is a tremendous loss to the health and well-being of our society. This damage will only worsen the longer we stay on the present course of sheltering in place and keeping the economy and houses of worship closed. Dangerous social unrest is the likely result of staying on this course. 

We have a great concern for the lives and health of our members as well as those in our communities. Many in our churches are elderly or are in a high-risk category for Covid-19. Those individuals and their families, pastors, leaders and physicians, are the ones to make the best decisions about how they should live during the spread of this disease. If this were a great plague, a direct threat to the health and lives of all of our congregants, as many of us initially thought it was, we would be glad to continue to comply with reasonable measures to mitigate the spread. However, it is now clear that it is not the plague and we are not prepared to continue to comply with extreme mitigation efforts.

Our desire is to be obedient to the civil magistrate. However, we must also do what we believe God expects of us, what is best for our people and our communities, and what our consciences dictate. For our American members, The U.S. Constitution rightly affords us these rights of speech and assembly because they extend to us from God, Himself.

  The citizens of the United States and our congregants are already beginning to strongly feel the need to get back to regular living. While we do not currently have a date after which we will no longer comply with the extreme restrictions, we believe the time is now at hand for our leaders to stand down from the extreme isolation efforts, and the date after which we will no longer comply, is soon approaching, in days or weeks, not months.

  Our response in the churches has been to humble ourselves, confess our sins, the sins of the church and the sins of our citizens and governments. Please join us in humbling yourselves before the Lord Jesus.  

We call upon the grace and mercy of God to give us relief. Death is an enemy, the last enemy that will be destroyed by the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge this. While we despise death, we do not fear death, because for us, to live is Christ and to die is gain. May God grant us repentance, and as we confess and repent of our many sins, we trust that He will be gracious to us and heal our land. 

In the service of King Jesus, 

Virgil Hurt 

Presiding Minister of Council Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC)

Democrat Governor of Kentucky Vows to Quarantine Easter Churchgoers

One nice thing about COVID-19 is that it is revealing who the totalitarians are, both among busybody neighbors and tyrannical politicians.

Take Democrat Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, please.  Go to church services in Kentucky tomorrow Easter Sunday, and he will try to slap a 14-day quarantine on you.

“We’re having to take a new action, and I hoped that we wouldn’t, and it’s that any individual that’s going to participate in a mass gathering of any type that we know about this weekend we’re going to record license plates and provide it to local health departments.

“Local health departments are going to come to your door with an order for you to be quarantined for 14 days,” Beshear said.

This has a bright side as well.  Beshear may have just guaranteed he will be a one-term governor.

But if we real Americans do not fight back against the tyranny that is using the coronavirus as its latest pretence, our freedoms may be short lived as well.

The “Bishop” of London Crucifies Again the Body of Christ

On Good Friday, almost 2000 years ago, both religious and secular authorities attempted to silence Jesus of Nazareth and to do so permanently.

They failed.

Yet through the centuries, they keep trying.  Various authorities, both secular and religious, have time and again sought to silence Holy Church, the Body of Christ.

They have failed again and again and again.  Jesus lives and reigns, and His Holy Church lives and reigns with him even though it may not seem so at times.

There is little question that those of a totalitarian mindset are trying to use the COVID-19 pandemic to silence the church and drive it out of the public square.  The Democrat Mayor of New York even threatened churches that do not comply with his edicts with permanent closure.

Yet in some ways the church is flourishing as it struggles in the midst of this pandemic both to do its part to guard public health and to do its duty for spiritual health.  Livestreams of excellent worship abound.  The glories of traditional Anglicanism especially are getting new and more widespread audiences.

But the petty totalitarians do not want to abide even that.  People, though a very few, are STILL going to churches and even livestreaming their worship?  How dare they!

Never mind that multitudes go to grocery stores and liquor stores and use mass transit where there is far greater risk of getting the coronavirus. The use of church buildings for worship is non-essential, don’t you know.

In London, one very small loophole was allowed.  If a priest lived on the premises of a church with internal access to the sanctuary, he could use the church building and livestream from it:

Because there are a very few churches in London Diocese where the church is accessible by an internal door from the clergy home, or can be accessed from the clergy home without leaving the curtilage of the church, we will encourage those – and only those – clergy to pray in their churches privately and to consider whether they could live stream their services from within the church building.

Peter Anthony of St. Benet’s Kentish Town was among those utilizing this loophole in a most winsome manner.  Fortunately, he recorded the Good Friday liturgy in his church when he still could.

For now he cannot without disobeying authority.  After the bleatings of the petty totalitarians, even that loophole has been taken away by the London College of “Bishops,” and that during Holy Week of all times:

…we are asking the limited numbers of you to whom the above applied, to stop all live streaming from your church buildings for the time being.

It feels extremely hard to ask this of you, this week of all weeks.  But you will know that some people believe that being in our churches to stream, even if it is accessed by a door in your home, is encouraging others to want to travel to their church, and for others to ask for churches to be open to the public. [GOD FORBID that people would ask for their churches to be open!! – ed.] We would not want to be seen to encourage any laxity in the requirement to stay indoors except for designated reasons, because this will save lives, and protect the NHS.

Thus, with the flimsiest of excuses, the “Bishop” of London seeks all the more to muzzle the church.  As if solitary priests livestreaming from their churches endangers lives and the NHS.

Well, apostate religious authorities attempted to use their authority and secular authority to silence Jesus, and that too on dubious pretences.  We should not be surprised when apostate “bishops” attempt to silence Holy Church and its faithful priests. 

We shall not be silenced.  We must not be silenced.  For, yes, lives are at stake.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the samesufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. (2 Cor. 1: 5,6)

Southern Baptist Coup?

Imagine, if you will, the uproar and outrage if President Trump used the coronvirus as a pretence to delay the November elections a full year and to stay in full power as President of the United State for that year.

It seems Southern Baptist Convention President J. D. Greear has pulled pretty much the same sort of coup.

It is certainly understandable, even advisable, for the Southern Baptists not to have their convention this year.  What is not understandable is for him to remain President of the SBC for the additional year until the next convention with the full exercise of the powers of that office.  The appointment powers of the SBC President are particularly important.  Will Greear use those to stack further the leadership of the SBC?

Could the Southern Baptists not had an online vote to elect a new President?  Or could not Mr. Greear had vowed not to use most or all of the powers of the office during this additional year?

Now perhaps he may come around to seeing that putting aside those powers is the right thing to do. But I’ve seen no indication that he has or will.  And I have looked around and asked around including asking Greear himself.

Will you refrain from using some of the powers of a #SBC president such as appointment powers? What will you do to alleviate the concerns of those who see this as a power grab?

— WannabeAnglican (@WannabeAnglican) March 30, 2020

I will keep my ears open and will post again if Greear does the right thing.  But there is no indication of that so far.  Instead, he gave a long tedious speech about “putting the Gospel above all.”  I did not hear a word about him putting the Gospel above his own power.

But is there any outrage from among Baptists?  Not much that I’ve noticed.  Some are even cheerleading it, including Dwight McKissic.

Watching the convention debate resolution 9 & the unprecedented abhorrent act against Pastor David Uth & the dear sister scheduled to do the poetic speech would have been observing the SBC return to their original sins. God spared the SBC & America of this pending atrocity. https://t.co/ebGnXAjmif

— Dwight McKissic (@pastordmack) March 25, 2020

You know he would not be cheerleading an unelected free year for Trump.  Heck, he will probably rant if Trump gets reelected fair and square.  But an unelected free year for his side in the SBC?  He has the gall to thank God for that.

I will leave aside, at least for now, what I would do if I were a Southern Baptist.  But I will remind my Baptist brethren that a big reason the mainline Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches went liberal and apostate is because most of the people in the pews were spineless wimps who did nothing when church leadership engaged in the outrageous.

Go and do not likewise.

-------

NOTE:  No, I do not think Trump would ever use a pandemic to stay in power an additional year.  And I would oppose any President pulling a stunt like that . . . although I admit I love it when Trump trolls the paranoid Left that he will be in power for decades and decades. 

I am much more worried about Democrats using the coronavirus to steal the election as they have already attempted.

REC General Council Postponed to June 2021

From Reformed Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Ray Sutton:

I write to report the important decision by the General Committee to postpone the 56th General Council planned for the week of June 7, 2020. Our Constitution and Canons stipulate regarding the time and place of the meeting of a General Council: “If in the opinion of the Presiding Bishop there be sufficient reason to change the time or place . . . this may be done by him with the consent in writing of two-thirds of the General Committee” (Article VII, Sec. 2). On March 26, with the unanimous support of the Council of Bishops, I made recommendation to a called meeting of the General Committee, that our General Council be rescheduled for June, 2021, at the same location in Charleston, South Carolina. The General Committee unanimously approved my recommendation. 

The rest of his letter with more factors behind this decision may be found at the REC site.

In Praise of Smokey Matt’s During Coronavirus

Yesterday, I surely heard more sermons (four) in one day than ever before.  At least, COVID is good for something!  Any number of churches are dutifully working to get the word and worship online.

Among the churches I visited, one stands out.  Yes, my favorite Anglican parish in the U. S. (other than my own) of St. Matthias Dallas, aka Smokey Matt’s.

First, their audio is the best I’ve come across. And that is important.  A frequent weakness of online worship is the sermon is hard to hear.  That was the case with two of sermons I heard yesterday.  Second, St. Matthias has services online just about everyday.  For example, they had Matins and Mass early this Monday morning even.  

And the organ they have during some services is very nice!

St. Matthias has details of what they are up to on their home page.  You can access their live streams through their Facebook page.

I’m confident all my pious readers are using this Coronavirus Lent to worship, pray, and listen more, not less.  The worship of St. Matthias Dallas certainly merits an online visit.  May the day come soon when I can visit in person once again.

Democrats Attempt to Use the Coronavirus Crisis to Steal Elections

It’s in the House Democrat bill in black and white.  Among the porcine provisions are national same-day voter registration, national ballot harvesting, and yet more mail-in ballots.

This former election judge and anyone concerned about clean elections rather than stealing elections knows same-day voter registration, ballot harvesting, and expansion of mail-in ballots all enable election fraud.

So Nancy Pelosi's Democrats are holding coronavirus relief hostage in order to make it easier for them to steal elections.  There is no way around that.

I await concern from the “social justice” crowd. 

Presiding Bishop Sutton’s Letter to the REC

After the letter from ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach, Presiding Bishop Ray Sutton has issued his own letter to the Reformed Episcopal Church.

It is one of the more balanced responses to the coronavirus situation I’ve seen.  The letter follows:

Dear Reformed Episcopal Brethren,   

Lenten greetings as the Lord provides the lessons of the Cross in the midst of great trial for the Church and for our nation!

I am writing to ask that all of our churches suspend temporarily their present way of publicly offering services of worship involving more than ten people. My strong recommendation is based on the request of Archbishop Foley Beach and the College of Bishops, which includes the Reformed Episcopal Bishops (See the archbishop’s statement below).

Considering the data and requirements of the Centers for Disease Control and the instructions of the President of the United States, we believe it is important for the Church to support in every way the mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic to protect and save lives. As believers in Jesus Christ we are called to, “Love our neighbor.” To reduce the way we gather, that others might be helped, is the least we can do to prevent illness and the loss of life. Before this crisis is over, we need to do so much more with the love of Christ to reach our society in many other charitable ways.

At the same time our Lord commanded us to, “Love the Lord thy God.” Please do not misunderstand. I am not asking our churches to stop worshipping our Triune God. Instead, we should continue to offer the Divine Liturgy in ways that can comply with the call for minimal social contact. We are blessed to have the technology to provide worship via online means (i.e. streaming, recording, etc.). To this end for our Sunday worship, I suggest either Morning Prayer with a sermon, or a small Holy Communion/sermon service with a presbyter and attendants only. I hope as well that all of our churches are saying the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer.

It has also been suggested that small missions and churches could offer multiple Eucharistic or Morning Prayer services on a Sunday to groups of ten or less. To do so would require figuring out how to divide and direct your congregation. I strongly suggest only receiving in one kind if it’s a service of Holy Communion, per my last communication’s instructions. Even with this approach, however, I caution that folks can come to these smaller services, who have unknowingly contracted the virus and spread it to others. This has already happened in other denominations. The safest approach is therefore to follow the above call for altering worship to an online venue.

Please keep in mind that in days prior to the advent of modern technology, this type of instruction had to be given in other situations of extreme duress. During World War II after the tragic bombing of Coventry Cathedral, the Church of England Bishops had to ask the people in London and other larger cities not to attend the cathedrals and city churches out of concern that the latter places of worship had become prime targets for bombing. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the technology to offer worship by electronic means. Still, the people of God said the Daily Office, in time God prevailed, and worship was restored. These kinds of difficult directives sometimes need to be given to protect life, knowing that the worship of the Church will continue other ways and eventually be restored in larger gatherings.

To comply with what our Archbishop and College of Bishops are asking in response to official directives, please know that I have suspended our own regular Sunday worship services at Church of the Holy Communion Cathedral in Dallas, Texas, until Palm Sunday. At the end of the next two weeks, we will have an opportunity to reassess the matter further. I will send out another communication as to where we go from that point. If necessary, we may have to extend our measures longer. If so, I will offer additional suggestions as to how we do might do this.

I can only add and caution that, if you and your congregation choose not to follow the CDC and Presidential directives, your vestries should consult with your chancellors and legal counsel. There could be serious legal consequences for your parish if you do not comply. God forbid, but should you not follow the instructions, members of your congregation contract COVID-19 from one another, and spread the virus to others, they might become subject to civil action. No one should want to take this chance.

In conclusion as someone has said, “Feed your faith and not your fears.” Use this time of limited quarantine to utilize the online ways of worship, to pray, to read your Bibles, to spend time with your families, and to wait in patient faith for the crisis to lift. It will eventually get better. We will get past this. The early Christians in the Roman Empire faced similar situations and ways to spread the Gospel in the midst of plague (see the following excellent article: How Early Christians Saved Lives and Spread the Gospel During Roman Plagues ). Please be assured of my prayers and attentiveness to your needs. Our God is Sovereign. He will prevail! May the Lord bless and keep you through these challenging times!

Sincerely in Christ,
The Most Rev. Dr. Ray R. Sutton, Ph.D.
Presiding Bishop

BREAKING: ACNA Bishops Ask for No “In-person Worship Services”

From the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America Foley Beach:

I write to you after meeting with our bishops this afternoon. We considered the advice given by the President of the United States' Coronavirus Team, the Centers for Disease Control, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and by governmental authorities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States strongly advising that no public gatherings of 10 or more people be held.  It is our desire to partner with our civic officials as they seek to exercise their duty to protect our communities. Therefore, the College of Bishops is asking our congregations not to hold in-person worship services or gatherings until further notice, but to offer, when possible, worship services on a virtual platform. We realize these are extreme measures that we had hoped to avoid, but for the health and welfare of everyone in our churches and communities, this is something we all must put into practice immediately.

Each diocesan bishop will communicate to his diocese regarding the specifics of how this will be applied in each local diocesan context.

My initial response is similar to when the Anglican Bishop of South Carolina shut down services. I think it a once-size-fits-all response and well meaning over-reaching.

I am well aware mine is likely a minority opinion.

Bishop Lawrence Cancels Services for Entire Diocese of SC. UPDATED

Again, I hesitate to be critical of churches who decide to cancel services for a time.  And some, such as large churches in highly infected cities, probably should.

For example, Pusey House has with sadness shut down for a time, likely the rest of term at least.  But they have little choice given government directives and given that Oxford, a very international and mobile community, is especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. Please join me in praying for Pusey House and Oxford.

But the decision of Bishop Mark Lawrence to cancel services for at least two Sundays for the entire Anglican Diocese of South Carolina has me scratching my head.   The Carolinas have a low infection rate at this time.  Some of the parishes in the diocese are small and in small towns.  Their risk is low, and people going to those churches likely interact with each other anyway.  

Besides do not the parishes have enough wisdom to decide for themselves?

And people need the church now more than ever even if they do not see that although many do.  Comprehensively cancelling Sunday services gives the false impression that it’s all just optional.  It tells people that they do not really need us all that much.  And at least in some cases, it is a disservice to those who know their need of the comfort and strengthening of corporate Sunday worship.

Yes, I may be a bit harsh there, and I probably just angered some people.  I respect that.  But Bishop Lawrence’s decision seems overreaching at best to me.

----

UPDATE:

Bishop Lawrence has posted an open letter about this decision.

Coronavirus Closing Overkill? UPDATED

A few months from now, I suspect a large group will look foolish, either those who cancelled everything or those who downplayed the danger of coronavirus.  Yes, maybe both will look foolish.  But I suspect the excessive cancellers will look more foolish.

Take the NCAA Basketball Tourney, popularly known as March Madness, that I was very much looking forward to.  The initial plan to carry on but with only family and necessary staff attending was wise. But to cancel it all? Family, teams, and staff interact anyway.  To cancel the tourney does not protect much more or prevent virus spread much more but it does give yet one more big hit to the economy and national morale.

Even churches are cancelling services, among whom are ACNA’s Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh.  It is hard for me to criticize efforts to reduce the spread of coronavirus, but at times like this, people need and perceive their need of church even more.  I know that as I reduce my social interaction and experience increased stress, I need church more.  I will keep more social distance when I go this Sunday, but I want to go!  And, no, watching church on a screen won’t do.

Contrast Pope Gregory the Great’s response to a plague.  He led a procession into the teeth of it.  That may seem a bit medieval, but closing churches instead seems a bit . . . well, I will leave that to the reader.

Now I will make an exception.  Episcopal Churches and mainline Presbyterian Churches, yes, please do close for the sake of public heath both physical and spiritual.  Thank you.

----

UPDATE: St. Matthias Anglican (REC) of Katy, Texas has suspended its services for this Sunday.

BREAKING: Ascension Pittsburgh Suspends Services for Three Weeks

The Pittsburgh ACNA parish Church of the Ascension has suspended its services for three weeks due to the coronavirus situation.  More information on their site here.

Tish Harrison Warren tweeted about this earlier.

In One Kind

With the current coronavirus situation, a number of churches and jurisdictions are switching to Holy Communion in one kind, i. e. via bread only and no wine.  The Archbishops of the Church of England have strongly advised this.  Pusey House is following that advice.  ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach has mandated that for his Diocese of the South and has recommended that as an alternative for ACNA as a whole as has Presiding Bishop Ray Sutton to his Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).

In so doing, Sutton notes:

There is an old understanding in the Church, “To receive in one kind is to receive in both kinds.” That is, theologically speaking we are given to understand the Sacrament of Holy Communion remains a means of grace if received only in one kind. Either element alone conveys what Christ says of the Lord’s Supper, when He says, “This is My Body; This is My Blood.” Clearly the preferred pattern is to receive in both kinds, but the fact is that throughout the history of Christianity some believers have only been able to receive in one kind for physical, personal or medical reasons.

I do not know what my REC parish will do, but I personally am switching to one kind for a while. Now I have not studied this subject in any detail.  But I do know that Sutton is correct and that receiving in one kind is a long standing practice, the normal one in the West in medieval times.  The doctrine of transubstantiation (which I do not hold) has it that the host contains both the body and the blood. As for Real Presence guys such as myself, it would certainly be odd to say one must receive in both kinds to receive Christ.  The Anglican reformers emphasized the importance of the availability of communion in both kinds, but I think even they regarded communion in one kind as still valid.  (Those who have studied this more may feel free to correct me.)

So I think the validity of communion in one kind is good doctrine.  And it is comforting doctrine for those with compromised immune systems, for those who fear drinking alcohol, and during times of contagion.

Now those little Baptist shot cups are another matter. ;)

----

By the way, I have seen online that one ACNA parish is suspending services for three weeks. I am in the process of verifying which parish.

A Good Time for the Litany

The title to this post begs the question: Is there ever a bad time for the Litany? And, yes, I am talking about the traditional Anglican Litany found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Its attitude of penitence and utter dependence is perfect for Lent.  My parish recites the Litany every time we do Morning or Evening Prayer during Lent.  I like singing it best.

I also like praying the Litany during times of particular difficulty, as I have done privately, and now is surely such a time.  And the traditional Litany covers just about every difficulty imaginable. 

Note that I said the traditional Litany.  Some inferior modern versions do not mention plague among other deficiencies.   Yeah, some of you moderns and post-moderns thought prayers for protection from plague were antiquated.  Well, I hope you don’t get sick.  I also hope you feel foolish and add that to your Lenten penitence.

As part of your penitence, follow the godly admonition of Laudable Practice and pray the traditional Litany:

This is a time when we need to be renewed in our dependence upon God's mercy and grace, petitioning for deliverance, seeking blessing upon our common life, beseeching "mercy upon all men", acknowledging how the disordering of our common life requires repentance.  It is not a time for cut-and-paste liturgical resources hesitant about expressing the extent of our need for God's mercy and provision. A serious time needs a serious liturgy and that liturgy is the Litany.