South Carolina cases of coronavirus reached a new high Thursday after health officials announced 261 new patients have tested positive.
Statewide, 1,554 cases of COVID-19 have been identified in all 46 of the state’s counties.
Cases are projected to continue to increase throughout the month with a peak in late April, according to projections by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
What does that mean for Christian life under quarantine? Might not a pandemic call for emergency measures, even granting the sacramental character of the church’s worship? Isn’t abstention from the bread of life too much to ask, too painful to endure for weeks or even months?
It is indeed a great deal to ask. It is very painful. But that does not resolve the issue. If a thing is unwise or impossible, we do well to resist the temptation to recast it as unavoidable or necessary. Better by far to acknowledge the pain and lament it together, albeit apart. As Chris Krycho has written:
We are eager to return to gather with God’s people. We are eager to come to the Table again. This eagerness, this longing, is a pointer just in the same way that the weekly gathering and Communion are in ordinary time: to the consummation of all things when Christ comes again. The hunger we feel keenly now for the gifts of God in this age can remind us to hunger more deeply for the gifts of God in the age to come — the gathering of all the saints, the feast of the ages, and both unbroken and unending. Temporary loneliness can point us to final fellowship. Temporary fasting can point us to final feasting.
Our inability to celebrate the Lord’s Supper for a season can only be, should only be, cause for sorrow and tears. For now, we are not able to celebrate this remembrance of the Lord by “tasting” and “seeing” his goodness (Ps 34:8). But this does not mean we are consigned to a state of utter forgetfulness. No. There is a kind of remembrance that accompanies exile from the city of God (Ps 137:5-6), the remembrance that leads to faithful tears (Ps 137:1-2) and that cultivates hopeful longing for restoration (Pss 63:1; 143:6), the remembrance of those who have once tasted and who, by God’s grace, know they will once again taste and see the Lord’s goodness, whether it is at his table in the covenant assembly or at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). This is the kind of remembrance that we are called to cultivate in ourselves and in our flocks in this season.
American Christians desire instant gratification. We expect technological fixes to temporary glitches. But this pandemic is not a glitch. It is a trial, and one that has no quick solution. It can only be endured. Instead of living in denial, we should allow the terrible burden of our endurance to make its mark on our habits of worship during this time. The liturgy ought not to carry on just as before, hastening to distract us from the danger around us. Let it instead bear the imprint of our moment. Life is not as it was. Worship shouldn’t be either.
Hey all: I wrote a long theological reflection, drawing on Neil Postman & Robert Jenson, on the nature of Christian worship, sacramental communication, and streaming the liturgy from home. Hope it’s of use to folks thinking through what to do in this time: https://t.co/bD7vlva4QU
— Brad East (@eastbrad) April 2, 2020
A prestigious scientific panel told the White House Wednesday night that research shows coronavirus can be spread not just by sneezes or coughs, but also just by talking, or possibly even just breathing.
“While the current [coronavirus] specific research is limited, the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing,” according to the letter, written by Dr. Harvey Fineberg, chairman of a committee with the National Academy of Sciences.
Fineberg told CNN that he will wear start wearing a mask when he goes to the grocery store.
“I’m not going to wear a surgical mask, because clinicians need those,” said Fineberg, former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. “But I have a nice western-style bandana I might wear. Or I have a balaclava. I have some pretty nice options.”
NEW: Dr. Harvey Fineberg, former dean of Harvard School Of Public Health, tells U.S. Task Force reviewing masks for general public that #coronavirus could be spread by talking or breathing: https://t.co/gMsSupCiKq
— Matt McCarthy (@DrMattMcCarthy) April 2, 2020
It was nearly supper time in Turbeville, but the owner of Chat N’ Chew on Main Street was leaning back in a patio chair outside the empty restaurant, reading a paperback book.
Occasionally, one of the town’s 800 residents would stop by to pick up dinner from a takeout window. But not often.
Bernard Blackman, the restaurant’s owner for the past 12 years, is losing money to keep the restaurant open during a coronavirus outbreak that has led other businesses to reduce hours or close. But the 69 year old doesn’t want to lay off his staffers.
NEW: I spent a couple of days in Clarendon County as its coronavirus cases spiked.
I watched daily life there grind to a halt after locals failed to take the virus seriously, spending last weekend at church, drag strip races and boating on Lake Marionhttps://t.co/OpDjjKyKGc
— Avery Wilks (@AveryGWilks) April 2, 2020
More than half of U.S. adults say they have prayed for an end to the spread of the coronavirus. Evangelical Protestants are among the most likely to say they have prayed for an end to the virus (82% say they’ve done so). A similar share of adherents of the historically black Protestant tradition (79%) say they have done the same. Two-thirds of Catholics (68%) and mainline Protestants (65%) also say they have prayed for an end to the outbreak.
Roughly one-third of Jews (35%) say they have prayed to end the virus. Religious “nones” – especially self-described atheists and agnostics – are less likely than those who identify with a religion to say they have prayed for an end to the outbreak, though 36% of those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” say they have prayed about the virus.
Fully 86% of people who pray every day say they have prayed specifically about the virus, as have two-thirds of those who say they pray on a weekly basis. Half of those who say they pray a few times a month report having prayed about the coronavirus, as have 15% of those who generally seldom or never pray.
Of Note: Just over half of U.S. adults have prayed for an end to the coronavirus outbreak https://t.co/FuCWdbSIFF
— Inst. Family Studies (@FamStudies) March 31, 2020
In 1899 a relatively obscure priest working in a City Mission in the slums of South Boston was compiling a book on prayer from articles he had written for the Saint Andrew’s Cross, a magazine of the recently established lay order of the Protestant Episcopal Church known as the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Seven years before, this celibate priest had left the Order of the Cowley Father’s whose House was just across the Charles River in Cambridge. Although he left the order over a dispute between his superior, Fr. A. C. A. Hall and the Order’s Father Superior in England, the young priest never left the inward embrace of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience””even less did he leave behind the spiritual disciplines of the religious life he had learned so well under Fr. Hall’s steady hand. Somewhere between his pastoral and social work among the sordidness and squalor of the South End””replete with red light district, street waifs, immigrants and vagrants”” and his late night vigils of intercessory prayer or early mornings spent in meditation, not to mention the full round of parish duties, he found the time to write. In the final chapter of his little book, With God in the World, he wrote words that now appear as strangely prescient for his own life: “Men””we are not thinking of butterflies””cannot exist without difficulty. To be shorn of it means death, because inspiration is bound up with it, and inspiration is the breath of God, without the constant influx of which man ceases to be a living soul. Responsibility is the sacrament of inspiration. . . . The fault of most modern prophets is not that they present too high an ideal, but an ideal that is sketched with a faltering hand; the appeal to self-sacrifice is too timid and imprecise, the challenge to courage is too low-voiced, with the result that the tide of inspiration ebbs and flows.” He was to parse this belief taking root in his soul, with the phrase “the inspiration of responsibility”. Within two short years he would have the opportunity to test these words with his life.
His name was Charles Henry Brent, born the son of an Anglican clergyman from New Castle, Ontario in 1862. How Charles Brent, a Canadian by birth, came to be a priest in of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and under the episcopacy of the renowned Phillips Brooks, and later, the almost equally celebrated Bishop William Lawrence, is itself an interesting story we haven’t time to explore. Suffice to say that God seemed to be grooming through the seemingly quixotic twists and turns of providence a bishop not merely for the church or for one nation, but for the world””a man, of whom it could be said, he was Everybody’s Bishop.
You may find Part One there and Part Two here. Take the time to read it all.
In the past few weeks, the Christians of the world have been holding their first major conference in some 500 years for the specific purpose of seeing what can be done about unifying Christianity as the sum of its world-wide parts.
Preparation. Today the parts (denominations) number 200-odd, all of them organized as distinct entities. The practical necessity of relating so many parts, of discovering identity among so many entities, was established by the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. The logical necessity was established later the same year, at a convention of the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati. The man who then proposed a world conference on Faith & Order lived to see such a conference actually held, after 17 years of preparation, and to preside over it as chairman, at Lausanne, Switzerland, the past three weeks.
Chairman Brent. This man was Bishop Charles Henry Brent of the Episcopal diocese of Western New York. Canadian-born and educated, naturalized in the U. S., an obscure worker in the awkward robes of the Cowley Fathers among the poor of Boston, later (under Bishop Phillips Brooks) an Episcopal rector who was made a missionary bishop and sent to the Philippines because of his earnest simplicity, rugged strength and adaptability among people of other races, it was Bishop Brent who confirmed General Pershing in the Philippines and subsequently became Chaplain-in-Chief of the A. E. F.
First in war, first in peace, Bishop Brent had had experience in handling international conferences, as president of opium parleys at Shanghai (1909) and The Hague (1911). He declined the bishoprics of Washington, D. C., and New Jersey, to preserve for his world ministry the freedom of action he enjoys at Buffalo, N. Y. When his world ministry reached its peak this month, he was not content merely to preside over the hundreds of churchmen he had brought together, but went with them into their councils; explained, directed, adjusted and dictated daily despatches on their progress to the New York Herald Tribune.
Read it all (requires subscription).
Heavenly Father, whose Son did pray that we all might be one: deliver us, we beseech thee, from arrogance and prejudice, and give us wisdom and forbearance, that, following thy servant Charles Henry Brent, we may be united in one family with all who confess the Name of thy Son Jesus Christ: who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Feast of Charles Henry Brent, Missionary Bishop, 1929. http://t.co/LHvtf8qAFH pic.twitter.com/kExG3B5pgY
— Episcopal Calendar (@eccalendar) March 27, 2014
O God, whose blessed Son did overcome death for our salvation: Mercifully grant that we, who have his glorious passion in remembrance, may take up our cross daily and follow him; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
A Song of Ascents. Of David. O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.
–Psalm 131
“To hope is not only to believe in God, but to believe and be certain that He loves us and means well to us; and therefore is a great Christian grace.” pic.twitter.com/ZQowBve6gg
— FrDavid AbernethyCO (@pghoratory) October 9, 2019
The South Carolina Supreme Court announced yesterday that it has denied the Petition for a Writ of Prohibition submitted on February 21st by The Episcopal Church (TEC) and The Episcopal Church in South Carolina (TECSC), which sought to prevent Judge Edgar W. Dickson from ruling on the Diocese’s and parishes motion to clarify the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling. If granted, the petition would have prevented Judge Dickson from ruling on the case as he has indicated he was about to do. The Supreme Court’s order succinctly states: “Petitioners seek a Writ of Prohibition to prevent the circuit court from clarifying this Court’s decision in Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of S.C. v. Episcopal Church, 412 S.C. 211, 806 S.E. 2d 82 (2017). The petition is denied.”
This ruling by the Supreme Court allows Judge Dickson to proceed with clarifying the Court’s earlier August 2017 ruling, which was comprised of five separate opinions. That situation is unprecedented in the history of the court. This open-ended denial of the petition by the Supreme Court places no restrictions upon the appropriateness of Judge Dickson’s work in interpreting the meaning of the original ruling.
Ironically, this ruling comes almost exactly a year after TEC and TECSC filed a similar Petition with the high court for a Writ of Mandamus meant to force Judge Dickson to rule in the case. The Mandamus Petition asked the Supreme Court to require the Circuit Court to interpret the Supreme Court’s August 2, 2017 ruling favorably for TEC and TECSC. That petition was also denied by the Supreme Court in July of last year.
As before, the Prohibition Petition was an attempt to end run Judge Dickson’s exercise of his discretion in interpreting the August 2, 2017 decision in a manner that may differ from TEC and TECSC’s interpretation.
The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina welcomes this decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court affirming that the Circuit Court is the proper venue to resolve the many uncertain issues arising from the August 2, 2017 decision.
The Rev. Marcus Kaiser, President of the diocesan Standing Committee observed, “In this time, our focus is on caring for our people and praying for a world deeply rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, we are profoundly grateful that the Supreme Court has denied the request for a Writ of Prohibition, and hope this ruling helps move things along. We pray for Judge Dickson and the complex issues he has to deal with, even as we continue to focus on concerns far more pressing to most people.”
The brief in support of the motion by the Diocese to dismiss this Petition can be found on the Diocesan website, along with further background on the earlier Petition for Mandamus. The August 2, 2017, ruling by the Supreme Court may also be found here.
(#Anglican Diocese of SC) #SouthCarolina Supreme Court denies Petition for Writ of Prohibition by The Episcopal Church https://t.co/PZYCugWZhQ #law #religion #parishministry #history #lowcountrylife #stewardship #ethics pic.twitter.com/v5BuyYENTM
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 1, 2020
A 30-year-old high school baseball coach in New Jersey died Monday from the coronavirus after being discharged from the hospital.
News of Ben Luderer’s death was shared by Cliffside Park superintendent Michael Romagnino in a letter to families.
This story is chilling: https://t.co/1SQJslTvty
— Paige W. Cunningham (@pw_cunningham) April 1, 2020
South Carolina officials recorded hundreds more positive coronavirus cases Wednesday, bringing the state’s total to 1,293 cases and 26 deaths.
The new numbers include 210 new positive test results, more than the state has announced in a single day since recording its first case March 6. Forty-eight of the newly identified patients live in Charleston County, according to the Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Four more patients died after contracting COVID-19. They were elderly residents of Anderson, Beaufort, Lee and Richland counties, DHEC said.
“Every day that we unfortunately have to report these losses is a reminder of how serious this situation is and the obligation we all have to help prevent the loss of additional South Carolinians,” said DHEC medical consultant Dr. Brannon Traxler. “Social distancing and staying home can help save lives.”
With 210 new coronavirus patients, #southcarolina records 1,293 total cases and 26 deaths https://t.co/HEgqUUIsxj #covid19 #publichealth #pandemic
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 1, 2020
This is a real patient’s story. In fact, it is a lot of people’s story — at least some version of it. Across the world, people with signs and symptoms of Covid-19 are testing negative and wondering what it means. They are not showing up in the statistics, and they are left in limbo about what to do next.
The problem may be with the test. Current coronavirus tests may have a particularly high rate of missing infections. The good news is that the tests appear to be highly specific: If your test comes back positive, it is almost certain you have the infection.
The most common test to detect the coronavirus involves a process known as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR, a jumble of words that describes a method capable of detecting virus particles that are generally present in respiratory secretions during the beginning of an infection. From a technical standpoint, under ideal conditions, these tests can detect small amounts of viral RNA.
In the real world, though, the experience can be quite different, and the virus can be missed. The best the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can say is that if you test negative, “you probably were not infected at the time your specimen was collected.” The key word there is “probably.”
“Research coming out of China indicates that the false-negative rate may be around 30 percent. Some of my colleagues, experts in laboratory medicine, express concerns the false-negative rate in this country could be even higher.” https://t.co/JgoEiN4F4Q
— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) April 1, 2020
In his contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, Reinhard Hütter describes two approaches to the Christian life. One approach views God as standing behind the human being, with the world lying before him as his ultimate field of engagement. The other approach views the human being as standing before God, with the world coming to him as a gift from God’s fatherly hand in order that it, along with the human being, might ultimately be ordered to God.
In too many cases, contemporary Reformed and evangelical approaches to anthropology exhibit the former approach rather than the latter. Renewing theological anthropology will, above all, require recovering the latter approach, which locates human beings where they should be located: a little lower than the angels, over the animals, in Christ, in the presence of God, from whom and through whom and to whom are all things (Rom 11:36).
This, in the end, is the awe and wonder of what it means to be human. “What is man?” The psalmist asks. Following Scripture, the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers: man is the creature whose chief end it is “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”
“What is man?” Psalm 8:4 asks. Theological anthropology can help us address this question. Dr. @ScottRSwain, President and Professor @RTSOrlando, shares his thoughts. https://t.co/t73XgZM0FQ
— Reformed Seminary (@ReformTheoSem) April 1, 2020
Imagine you are in a small boat far, far from shore. A surprise storm capsizes the boat and tosses you into the sea. You try to tame your panic, somehow find the boat’s flimsy but still floating life raft, and struggle into it. You catch your breath, look around, and try to think what to do next. Thinking clearly is hard to do after a near-drowning experience.
You do, though, realize two important things: First, the raft is saving your life for the moment and you need to stay in it until you have a better plan. Second, the raft is not a viable long-term option and you need to get to land.
In April 2020, the storm is the Covid-19 pandemic, the life raft is the combination of intense measures we are using to slow the spread of the virus, and dry land is the end to the pandemic.
This, from two who understand #COVID19 as well as anyone, is frightening. And a must read:
We’re just clambering into a life raft. Dry land is far away https://t.co/LauUrTJSXK via @statnews @mlipsitch @yhgrad— Rick Berke (@rickberke) April 1, 2020
Assume that everyone you see is infected with the coronavirus.
If you absolutely must leave home, keep your distance from others. And limit where and how often you go.
Don’t touch anything you don’t have to outside your home. Don’t touch your face unless you just washed your hands.
Assume that you are one of the many people with symptomless COVID-19. Cough into your elbow, not your hands. If you don’t feel well, stay home….
About a week ago, South Carolina had just eclipsed 300 coronavirus cases.
That number has since grown to over 1,000.
(visual by @nathanielcary) pic.twitter.com/pQf7jRvUAZ
— Jason Clary (@IamJClary) April 1, 2020
Almighty God, who hast restored our human nature to heavenly glory through the perfect obedience of our Savior Jesus Christ: Keep alive in thy Church, we beseech thee, a passion for justice and truth; that we, like thy servant Federick Denison Maurice, may work and pray for the triumph of the kingdom of thy Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
#OTD 1 April 1872: death of F.D. Maurice, Christian Socialist. https://t.co/ImYbDd8HmB pic.twitter.com/miwXewurfP
— Caroline Murray (@Prof_hedgehog) April 1, 2019
Listen to it all and the composer’s website is there [I first learned of this through Preston Trombly].
Thanks be to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which thou hast given us, for all the pains and insults which thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, now and for evermore.
St Richard of Chichester, bishop, Chancellor of Oxford University, & patron of Sussex, died #OTD in 1253. This was the site of his shrine: pic.twitter.com/xIvbgg0NF7
— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) April 3, 2017
But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them.
–Mark 10:14-16