Love of Neighbor During a Pandemic: Navigating the Competing Goods of Religious Gatherings and Physical Health
- PDF / 517,648 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 33 Downloads / 165 Views
Love of Neighbor During a Pandemic: Navigating the Competing Goods of Religious Gatherings and Physical Health Tyler J. VanderWeele1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In light of the present pandemic, many religious communities have been asked to suspend their services and meetings. From the perspective of these communities, this comes at considerable cost to the spiritual good that these religious services bring about. Empirical evidence also indicates that the suspension of these services will have costs concerning physical and mental health as well. However, in the case of a pandemic, because it is an infectious disease that is the concern, love of neighbor arguably does entail the suspension of services for the sake of the preservation of life for others. Religious communities and individuals can, and have, found ways to partially offset the losses from not being able to meet. These have included increased personal and family prayer and devotion, video-streaming of services, and online prayer and discussion meetings. While none of these fully compensates for the loss of in-person meetings, the sacrifice entailed may itself be seen as a means to greater love of God and love of neighbor. Keywords Religion · Service attendance · Pandemic · Health · Love · Hope · Suffering
Commentary Many religious communities currently find themselves in a difficult position: their principal activity of meeting together in religious services is being severely limited by the present pandemic. Services have, in many places around the world, been suspended so as prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). To some secular commentators, this closing of churches, synagogues, and mosques seems like an obvious conclusion—surely, they argue, these “inessential services” can * Tyler J. VanderWeele [email protected] 1
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Religion and Health
be postponed, just as sports matches, until the crisis is under control. For believers, the situation is more complicated. These religious services are not just social gatherings, like a weekly card game with friends. Rather the religious services constitute a critical means to what is considered the most important ultimate end of communion with God. Believers might well argue, and many have, that the spiritual goods that they seek are in fact more important than physical health. While the arguments considered below concern a distinctively Christian perspective, analogous issues arguably arise in other religious traditions as well. Within the Christian tradition, for example, a case might be mounted on Biblical grounds. In the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Mark, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”, or in the first letter to Timothy ascribed to Saint Paul, “while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life a
Data Loading...
