So far so good with the response to COVID-19 — and now for some easing of restrictions. On 29 May it was announced that church services in New South Wales would no longer be banned, though certain restrictions would continue to apply. This decision has been welcomed by church leaders with assurances that guidelines would be carefully followed.
However, it might be worthwhile pausing a moment to consider whether this is truly an offer the churches should take up.
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Australia has been very fortunate in its experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. That good fortune has been the result of swift political action and widespread compliance to rules set out by the government on the advice of the Chief Medical Officers of both state and commonwealth jurisdictions. This has been widely regarded as a success story, so far. The curve has been flattened. Our experience has been so much better than most other countries, as is born out by the infection and deaths statistics.
But the operative words here are so far. Political leaders and Chief Medical Officers alike keep repeating that there is a long way to go, and that the virus is both potentially deadly and active in the community. All the physical distancing rules and hygiene advice remain in place for normal social contacts.
The recent announcement provides for an exemption from other specific rules that banned church services generally. The number allowed on the premises is a maximum of fifty persons, provided this can be done by allowing four square metres of space for each person on the premises. No one else is allowed on the premises. Furthermore, all those present must provide their name and contact details — including a telephone number or email address — to a person who is delegated to receive this information. That information must be kept for four weeks and only provided on a request from the Chief Health Officer for COVID-19 contact tracing.
The NSW Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant, also said:
Places of worship will be asked to find alternatives to practices that might spread the virus, like group singing, sharing books and even passing around the collection plate to reduce infection risks.
Presumably, this mean that there can be no administration of Holy Communion without complicated practices which observe physical distancing rules and entail no unprotected handling of the elements. These somewhat eased restrictions came into place on 1 June 2020.
The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney set out his response immediately following the government announcement:
Our first concern is public safety and where risk cannot be minimised, then some churches will not be able to re-open their buildings. But I was able to assure the Premier that Anglican churches are well prepared to return to normal services, within the limits of the 50-person maximum, appropriately distanced. Hand sanitisers will be available at each entrance, along with signage indicating that anyone with symptoms such as fever or cough, should not attend. Church premises will be thoroughly cleaned between services and designated ushers will record the contact details of each person who attends.
Given what is involved in such an undertaking, even a modest-sized parish would have to organise at least two services throughout the week, and some parishes up to five or six services. It is serious consideration.
What the state government has laid out are strict and detailed restrictions, but we also know that this virus often finds a way around our best efforts. Throughout the world, we have already seen church services at the centre of COVID-19 outbreaks. If we allow for an uncertain incubation period, the phenomenon of asymptomatic carriers, and some time for the uptake of the eased restrictions to take effect, we are not likely to see the implications of these new changes for quite some weeks. We are still in very uncertain territory and the risk can in no way be said to be minimal.
Moreover, taking up the government’s decision to begin easing restrictions will not restore the church services we remember from February of this year. These services will be hollow versions of their former selves, and deeply problematic. They will lack Eucharists and probably also baptisms. The absence of a service of the Eucharist may not bear down so much on those churches that don’t offer weekly Eucharists, but a liturgical offering that has no real possibility of either sacrament is really a rather meagre offering. These services will be like nothing we have ever seen before.
The problem facing the churches and their leaders is not so much whether can we do this, but rather how do we think in a sufficiently Christian way about this After all, Christians, and a fortiori the churches and their leaders, should be thinking about this in terms of some relevant fundamental character of Christian faith.
Australians generally have shown remarkable concern for others and patience in difficult times. The distinctive challenge facing Christians and church leaders is that they are committed to both care of the other and the practice of patience because of the very nature of the religion they profess. For Christians, these are central elements in our faith.
Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan is remarkably relevant to the present dilemma. Jesus tells a lawyer he will inherit eternal life if he keeps the law summarised as, “Love God and love your neighbour.” The parable answers the question of who is my neighbour. A man is beaten and robbed but neglected first by a priest and then by a Levite, two religious leaders. A foreigner (Samaritan) approached the victim and cares for him. The conclusion Jesus draws from the parable is that this foreigner was truly obedient to the law. The religious officials failed.
The point isn’t that religious leaders habitually fail. Far from it (though, of course, it is true that the record of institutional churches over the last hundred years has been rather blotted by the revelations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse). In our present situation, Jesus’s parable and Christian moral teaching generally provide a much more profound commitment to love the neighbour than general human generosity.
Christians also have greater obligation to be patient in the face of difficulty. It is part of the way Christians are meant to live in the world, motivated by the hope they have in Christ. The earliest generations of Christians faced social and political pressure, even persecution. One of the most common moral themes they thought and wrote about was patience. Let me offer an example.
In 204 CE, the Christian writer and teacher Tertullian produced a work titled On Patience, which marks the beginning of something like an African theological tradition of patience. Patience was not unknown in Roman culture, but it generally applied to what slaves had to exhibit or what a soldier needed in order to achieve a difficult end. For Tertullian, however, patience was the highest Christian virtue and was to be the mark of all Christians, regardless of their class or social position.
Patience, Tertullian says, is founded in the character of God which can be seen in the revelation in the person of Jesus, his life and character and death: “God allows himself to be patient.” Impatience is living without hope. The Christian hope provides the assurance to live lightly in this life. Such living, he says, is the source from which the Christian lives a life of peace. Patience enables the Christian to live the life of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10) and a life of love. Tertullian could have gone on to show that patience is the first mark of the love that Paul commends in 1 Corinthians 13, or he could have quoted the character of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness generosity faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Cyprian wrote a follow-up to Tertullian’s treatise, with On the Good of Patience. He reinforces Tertullian’s arguments and applies it to the conflicts in the church in Carthage, where he was bishop. As he watched his church fracture and be diminished, he urged them to put their trust in God and be patient.
The challenge for Christians and church leaders now is how far we will allow these two fundamental elements of the faith we profess — the care of others, and the duty to be patient — to shape our responses to the recent offer of the government. That offer leaves significant and unknown risks that cannot be totally or even fully reasonably managed.
Do we really want to run the risk of further infection for the sake of getting back together in church, even when our gatherings are not going to happen in a way that is theologically or historically recognisable? Or would we not be better to reach back into the resources of our own faith and commitment as Christians, to prefer the love of neighbour over diminished church services? Would we not be better to wait and engage more deeply with the Christian virtue of resilient patience?
I would rather not look back on this period as a time when one or more churches decided they wanted their services and became sources of a second COVID-19 wave of infections. I would much rather look back and see a Christian witness from the churches that was marked by wisdom and caution and a manifestly unselfish overriding care for our neighbours — and thereby demonstrated the Christian virtue of patience. I think that would be a reasonably Christian way to think about this.
It seems to me that we have more identifiably Christian reasons to postpone our church services, and to prioritise the care of others. Frustrating though such a course may be, it offers the possibility of a renewed experience of and witness to the priority of Christian patience.
I ask the churches to think again. We should not take up the government’s offer at this time.
The Rev. Dr Bruce Kaye is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University, and the former General Secretary of the Anglican Church of Australia.