As the pandemic seems to be easing in the US (or at least responses to it), and everyone wants to get back to normal ASAP, I think churches are particularly vulnerable to the danger of returning to business as usual. I have long loved this quote from Annie Dillard and find it powerfully relevant right now, not just with regards to the pandemic but also with how the malignant polarization of US society has infected the churches.
Annie Dillard: “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” Teaching a Stone to Talk
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