Pandemics are a fact of history
The effects of the coronavirus have had an impact on every sector in society, not the least of which has been in the domain of organized religion. The most obvious has been the shift from worship in person in a building to the proliferation online services.
The closing of congregations altogether last year, followed by the extremely limited numbers permitted in worship services and the ban on sung music has hit a number of places very hard. Those of us in the clergy have been sharply criticized for not doing enough to stand up to the government on one hand, and on the other for knavishly allowing people to pray out loud. Your author has endured significant shouting matches behind closed doors on whether Catholics can receive the Eucharist on the tongue, which mercifully our local bishop has permitted again.
On the positive side, the Gallup Poll reports that 19% of Americans felt their faith had grown stronger during the pandemic, compared to only 3% who said their faith had been weakened.
What is not appreciated is the sad fact that national pandemics are a part of human history and they occur on a regular basis. In the United States, there have been at least three major pandemics and many minor ones.
In 1832, 1918 and now in our own day disease has swept across the nation and world. These three major pandemics were not the only ones — smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria and others have all ravaged the land. In each of these, there have been voices blaming the diseases on the most colorful possible causes, such as business and governmental conspiracy in our times, and in previous days the blame was laid at the feet of an angry God, the sins of the people, Irish Catholics, the Jews, bad air, various ethnic groups and unchecked immigration. In the 19th century, one outbreak was blamed on gravediggers, who were accused of spreading disease to increase their business.
In the Influenza epidemic of 1918, it is not clear how many people died, but globally the estimates suggest that it was at least 50 million people, of whom 675,000 were in the United States. For populations weakened by hunger and economic collapse caused by World War I did not improve things. Because of the danger of the influenza, people were asked to wear masks and churches and synagogues were often directed to close their doors. These regulations were not always popular.
In 1918, we find a number of events followed the closures which will sound familiar to modern ears. Some pastors complied with the regulations and others did not. In Kentucky a Baptist minister directly defied the ban on public services and found himself arrested in his own pulpit by the local police. A congregationalist minister objected to the closing of churches because the absence of regular services would terrify people even more than the influenza would do. In St. Louis, a Roman Catholic priest was hauled into a police station and accused of allowing over 200 people into his church to pray. The priest replied that the people had gotten in through a side window and he had not noticed them climbing in.
An Anglican bishop in South Africa declared that while the 1918 influenza was not a manifestation of God’s wrath, it was a direct result of men and women not living as the Creator had told them to. He declared that “certain conditions … laid down by the Creator as necessary to our health, have been neglected … We know already that fresh air, cleanliness, nourishment, are our allies in contending with this disease, and that on the other hand, foul air, dirt, poor and insufficient food, are enemies entrenched in the households of thousands of people in this country … we who tolerate such conditions are guilty before God and humanity … .”
About a century before the 1918 influenza, the world experienced a series of epidemics of cholera, which became widespread. In 1817, a cholera epidemic broke out in India, which spread to Indonesia and China. This plague killed hundreds of thousands of residents and at least ten thousand British troops in India. Cholera outbreaks continued in the 19th century, arriving on American shores in 1829 and becoming acute in 1832. An unknown number of people perished, but enslaved laborers in Washington, D.C., complained that they had to bury at least 12 or 13 people per day. Historians estimate that the United States as a whole lost 5% to 10% of its population. Because river travel was a major part of trade, the disease spread by boats to Canada to the north, Mexico to the south and it was particularly devastating among the Native American tribes in the West.
At the time, medical science was at best primitive. Treatments for cholera in the early 19th century still included bleeding, pouring boiling water on patients, tobacco smoke enemas, consumption of large amounts of mustard, and of course, opium. The germ theory of transmission of diseases had yet to be discovered, but doctors of the day blamed such plagues on “miasma” or clouds of bad air arising from swamps and graveyards. Based on this theory, many villages kept bonfires burning in the streets to drive away the evil fumes, and military bases assisted by firing cannon shots into the air in the hopes that the smoke and vibrations would reduce the miasma.
As we might expect, religion was equally colorful in its response.
The Department of Theology at Hanover College declared, “We regard cholera as the judgment of God upon a sinful nation, an intemperate, ungrateful Sabbath-breaking nation, a nation which has robbed and spoiled the Indian and withheld that which is just and right from the enslaved African. Cholera will go where it is sent. Best advice: Be ready for death. Death stands at your door. Repent of your sins.” A Presbyterian minister in Lafayette, Indiana, said of the epidemic, “It came as a Divine Volition. The natural history of cholera shows that it is in modern times the appointed scourge of the human race. At the root are avarice, superstition and intemperance.”
Pandemics are a fact of history we would like to ignore, and many people assume it is never going to happen again. As of this writing, almost 5,000 people in San Bernardino County and another 5,000 in Riverside County have died in the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the New York Times, in the United States there have been 31.4 million cases, resulting in 563,000 deaths. In all of this, credit for heroism must be given to the doctors, nurses and medical staff who have served on the front lines of this modern plague. But gentle reader, please do not think that this will be the last time.
Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor emeritus of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at gnyssa@ verizon.net or follow him on Twitter @Fatherelder.