Maps showing Covid deaths associated with the failure to vaccinate and the decline of the Christian Right

CDC, July 2, 2021

I don't have much empathy for people who don't want the vaccine (cf., "Heidi Larson, Vaccine Anthropologist," New Yorker).  Given that greater than 95% of the deaths and hospitalizations from covid now are amongst the unvaccinated, I can't think of a stronger message or indicator of the "self help" benefits of vaccination.

Although I do have a newer appreciation for people saying they won't get vaccinated because it was developed so fast.  I am participating in a Phase 3 vaccine trial for another disease, and the Phase 3 period for the study is three years.  That being said, the technology and science of the successful covid vaccines have been in development for many years, so it's not as simple as "you need a lot of time."

I wasn't really understanding the hoax stuff either (e.g., "South Dakota nurse says some patients deny COVID-19 is real, even as they die from it," Nexstar, and "Their neighbors called covid-19 a hoax. Can these ICU nurses forgive them?," Washington Post), but a piece by NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg, "The Christian Right Is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It," has given me a lot of insight into this.

I was reading a different article ("A horn-wearing ‘shaman.’ A cowboy evangelist. For some, the Capitol attack was a kind of Christian revolt," Post) which equated the right wing religious fervor around Trump, Qanon, etc. as an indicator of a time of religious fervence, not unlike the period where "new" religions like Mormonism were created in the 1830s.   From the article:

Many forces contributed to the attack on the Capitol, including Trump’s false claims of electoral victory and American anger with institutions. But part of the mix, say experts on American religion, is the fact that the country is in a period when institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight. 

That has created room for what Yale University sociologist Phil Gorski calls a religious “melee, a free for all.” 

“There have been these periods of breakdowns and ferment and reinvention in the past, and every indication is we’re in the middle of one of those now,” he said. “Such moments are periods of opportunity and creativity but also of danger and violence.” 

Some scholars see this era as a spiritually fertile period, like the ones that produced Pentecostalism or Mormonism. Others worry about religious illiteracy and the lack of supervision over everything from theological pronouncements to financial practices.

The Goldberg piece extends this thinking and it reminded me of a pretty insightful paper I wrote as a sophomore in college, comparing the rise of hasidism in Poland in the 1600s in response to pogroms with how the Islam religion remained the one area that opponents to the Shah of Iran could organize within in.  The only major social or cultural institution that the Shah had not challenged was religion, making it a vehicle for change and challenge against the state.  Like how hasidism was more fantastical, Islam in Iran became more forceful, angry, and zealotric.

Evangelical Christianity is on the decline according to research cited by Goldberg.  She contrasts that to the relatively recent time, during the Bush Administration, when it was at its height, and the reaction to social and cultural changes challenging traditional forms of religion has been deep.

At the same time, plenty of people are maintaining their religiosity but disconnecting from more traditional church institutions, removing "guardrails" and peer pressure that can influence their behavior.  From the Post:

Pauline Bauer, Stephen Baker and Jenna Ryan were among the thousands who descended on the Capitol in protest of what they falsely called a stolen election, including some who saw themselves engaged in a spiritual war. For many, their religious beliefs were not tied to any specific church or denomination — leaders of major denominations and megachurches, and even President Donald Trump’s faith advisers, were absent that day. For such people, their faith is individualistic, largely free of structures, rules or the approval of clergy.

Vaccination is just one more element caught up in the decline of the Christian right.

Belated seasons greetings and churchgoing in the time of covid

I haven't been writing much because changes to the Blogger posting function make writing much more laborious, and because I am still depressed by the election, and how Democrats were pretty much trounced, except for the presidency, not to mention what Trump's continued existence says for democracy ("What We Get Wrong About America's Crisis of Democracy," New Yorker; "Americans’ acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy," Guardian; "Republicans closely resemble autocratic parties in Hungary and Turkey – study," Guardian; "Is Trump's 'coup' a dress rehearsal?," New York Magazine).

I'm not religious.  I'm intellectually Jewish but have grown up in a Christian culture.  It happens that I am a fan of religious architecture, even though I am agnostic at best--some things sometimes you can't shake even if intellectually you know faith is pretty much a loser.

I guess in Christianity the tension between the Old Testament (vengeful and cruel) and New Testament (social justice, loving, forgiving) is reproduced in society more generally such as the difference in outlook between Republicans (vengeful, blaming, individualistic) and Democrats (more focused on the collective and mutual aid).

St Margaret’s church in south London is being used as a food bank distribution centre, supported by the Trussell Trust. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

An article in the Guardian, "If the Church of England worships online, how can its historic buildings survive?," about the impact of pandemic related meeting restrictions on churches, and how some churches are responding in creative and innovative ways, which increases rather than diminishes their relevance, is relevant to my earlier writings on churches and urbanism, codified here, "Churches, community, religion and change," last in 2015 (although I do "update" it from time to time in the comments section as I come across relevant articles and findings).

Photo: St. Bridget's church in Glasgow, Scotland (ANSA).  Fixed pews make churches inflexible spaces.

A photograph in the article of the St. Margaret's Church in South London, showing the worship hall used for a food bank, reminded me of my experience going to the Liverpool Cathedral when I visited the UK in 2018.  About churches as flexible spaces.  (I've written about church social halls as flexible spaces here, "Ground up (guerrilla) art #2: community halls and music (among other things).")

I went there because there was an art exhibit, using the cavernous hall to show the "Museum of the Moon" (more) which had been written up in my local newspaper before I left.  

The Cathedral, the largest in Britain, also has a Tracey Emin neon sculpture ("Award for Cathedral's Emin Work," BBC) which was placed as part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture program in 2008.

I was intrigued because the church doesn't have fixed pews, which means that the space can be flexibly used.  

My understanding is that it was designed that way deliberately (although I never got around to confirming it), so that the church space could be multipurpose.

And later that weekend, the same space was used for what the church called the "Summer Arts Market," basically an art fair, within the church.  They also do this in the winter.

Years ago I wrote some pieces related to the point Washington Wizards team owner Ted Leonsis made about the arena or stadium being a platform ("Stadiums and arenas as the enabling infrastructure for "money-making" platforms").

Simon Jenkins points out in the Guardian article that some churches are more than doubling their pre-pandemic attendance with the addition of Zoom-based services.  

He wonders what that means for church buildings, although he argues it's an opportunity for renewal as well.   

In my piece, I made a similar point but in a different way.  I wrote that churches, especially megachurches, are organized at the scale of a metropolitan area.  It means that they get much greater attendance and membership, but it comes at the loss of connection to a particular community or neighborhood.   

Although this has happened anyway, because only a few religions maintain a tight geographical bound between the community and the place of worship, because of how religion is practiced.  This is especially the case for Islam--which requires daily practice ("Can This Muslim Community Create a Model for Rebuilding Detroit?," The Nation); and Orthodox Judaism, which forbids the use of mechanical devices on the Sabbath, so people live within walking distance of their synagogue.

Dream of Detroit is an Islamic initiative focused on revitalizing the neighborhood around their church building.  And in nearby Oak Park, in the late 1980s, the State highway department built a deck across a local freeway to facilitate a community's ability to walk to and from synagogue ("Who knew? There's been a freeway deck in Oak Park, Michigan over I-696 for almost 30 years").

Interestingly, in Utah, especially Salt Lake City, the Mormon Church historically built churches around the idea of people living close and walking to church ("A Brief Introduction To Mormon Urbanism").  

Although I believe that the practice of walking to church has waned, as most churches have big parking lots, and even before the pandemic it was rare to see people walking to or from church.

As "out" groups become mainstream, place-based institutions and affinities are at risk

The Toronto Star has an article, "As the queer community spreads out, can the gay village remain vital?," about the potential decline of the city's Gay Village, as the LGBTQ community becomes more accepted and people feel less need to live in gay-specific neighborhoods to be safe and accepted. (This has been an issue in DC and other cities for a long time.)

Although the article also mentions cohort-specific issues, that the older Gay community may be less conscious of difference when it comes to transgender identifications. From the article:

Like many young LGBT Torontonians, Rosenberg-Lee lives and works in the west end, and he travels to the gay village very rarely, either to attend social events during Pride month in June, or to access transgender specific resources at the 519 community centre or the Sherbourne Health Centre. If these opportunities ceased to exist, he’s fairly certain he wouldn’t visit the village at all.

This is the dissonant truth about Toronto’s gay village. For at least a decade, a lot of young queer life in Toronto has coalesced outside the village proper, in smaller bars along Queen St. W. and Dundas St. W., or in Kensington Market, Parkdale, and Leslieville.

Even though Church St. between Wellesley and Carlton — a colourful strip of bars and clubs offering drag performances and trivia nights — still remains the heart of the city’s gay village and a popular address of LGBT tourism in Canada, it is not necessarily the heart of LGBT activity in the city.

Similarly, I commented on a neighborhood e-list awhile back about the discussion of issues around the "black" Douglas Memorial United Methodist Church on H Street NE as the neighborhood whitens ("Pastors Part Ways After Partnership Between Black and White Congregations Dissolves," Washington City Paper).

The irony of that case is that when the neighborhood became majority black in the 1950s, the then white church had to change its focus to remain relevant in a changing neighborhood.  Now the black church faces change as the neighborhood changes again.

... I was at a conference yesterday where one of the presenters does research on the impact of changing communities ("gentrification") on black churches.

Yes there is impact.  No the impact is not particularly new, even if it remains wrenching to the people and institutions facing change.

But to me these issues are no different from how "mainline" churches have declined in cities as ethnic groups--e.g., Polish Catholics, Lithuanian Catholics, German Catholics, Irish Catholics in Pittsburgh all had their own specific churches, which were place-based, and as people assimilated and moved to de-ethnicized communities those churches declined (see "Churches, community, religion and change").

Most churches follow their congregation as the members move outward (e.g., synagogues especially--first they moved further out into the city's outskirts, and oftentimes later out of the city entirely, as members moved further outward and no longer had residential connections within the city).

These are issues of what the "Chicago School of Sociology" called "ecological succession" as it related to neighborhood, community, and urban change, although then they argued that as people became better off they moved farther away from the center categorically, and as they left, they were replaced by new immigrants who then re-started the same kind of process.

From the Encyclopedia of Chicago article, "Chicago Studied: Social Scientists and Their City":

A second subtheme concerned the changes such succession implied in community institutions. In the 1930s, Samuel C. Kincheloe studied church succession, and Everett Hughes studied the real-estate board. In the 1950s, Morris Janowitz published his study of the community press. Later students were to study hospitals, jails, and cultural institutions. Again and again, the theme was underscored. Community institutions were both stakes and actors in the continuous ebb and flow of ethnic groups.