Moving into a New Phase
December 2022
If you spend any time with pastors or church leaders of any kind, it's not long before the subject will turn to worship and contagion precautions.
"How is your church doing worship right now? Are you requiring vaccines? Are you checking? What about masks? Are you singing? Is anyone singing?"
On an unconscious level, many of us have started to realize that we're moving into a new phase in our relationship with the novel coronavirus. Now that vaccines are widely available in the United States (and since the vast majority of our members are vaccinated) we have begun to move from the pandemic stage into the endemic stage.
All along, scientists have said the likely end-game for COVID-19 is that the virus that causes it will become endemic in the human population. Like the common cold or the flu (which are dangerous for some people but not for most), the virus will become something we learn to deal with regularly. For those who are vaccinated, this is already beginning to happen -- even while the pandemic rages on in intentionally unvaccinated wealthy populations, and in communities and countries deprived of vaccinations.
Our CPC churches, where most people are vaccinated, are becoming proving grounds for how we will live in the endemic phase. For that reason, we need to think carefully about what we do in the next few months. We are setting patterns that will live with us for years, and we may be modeling behaviors that will become common practice in the wider population.
I also want to say something about morality and vaccinations. Whether we like it or not, our calling to be Christians means we are also called to moral leadership, and the decision of whether or not to vaccinate is a moral question. I'm not sure about the ethics around requiring proof of vaccination for attendance at church, but I am absolutely clear about the morality of choosing or not choosing to be vaccinated.
I know we progressive Christians don't like to name it. However, when a healthy adult with access to vaccines chooses not to get vaccinated, they are sinning. They are sinning against their body, and the God who created it. Choosing to risk illness and death for no good reason. They are sinning against their neighbors, risking the health and lives of people they infect, and the lives and health of those whose hospital rooms they selfishly take. They are sinning against healthcare workers who have to hold their suffering, despite the medical professional's own longterm trauma and exhaustion from this pandemic. They are sinning against those around the world who continue to die from new variants incubated largely in the bodies of our unvaccinated friends and family who glibly flaunt their selfishness as if it were a virtue. It is not virtue. It is sin.
I am trying to become more bold in accepting my calling as a moral leader. I want to be careful not to fall into hubris or brittleness. However, in the face of a concerted effort in our society to claim selfishness as a virtue, those of us who are called to Christianity need to begin to exercise our moral voice.
As we move into the endemic phase of this disease, I believe our highly-vaccinated church communities will become engines of experimentation for endemic best-practices. We have an opportunity to model good habits for our friends and neighbors. We also have an opportunity to be moral voices in our communities, advocating for vaccination as a moral choice for those who have access, and demanding good access to vaccines for our less-wealthy neighbors in the United States and abroad.
As always, thanks for accepting the call to be the church for this place and this time. You are the moral leaders the world needs right now.
Blessings,
Tyler
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