The News Letter later asked me to turn this blog into a newspaper article which you can read here.
The dreadful news that more than a hundred people were infected with coronavirus at a single, legally permitted, church service in Germany earlier this month should make it transparent that we are unlikely any time soon to be returning to church worship as we hitherto understood it.
In this time of fear and death, I feel deeply deprived of connection with God. I have not received communion in more than two months; I have no idea when I might do so again. I cannot even spend time in a church praying in the presence of the reserved sacrament. I cannot kneel in any of my familiar haunts for prayer, nor can I discover new ones. A computer screen in my parents’ box room has proven a distracting and sensory-deprived locus for prayer. In my case, as a very definite extrovert, prayer is very much an externally contextualised physical process as well as an interior mental and psychological one. Prayer involves the placing of the earthly into the loving care of the heavenly, and is thus intimately bound up with place, physicality, community and body.
Worship via videoconference involves deprivation of the senses. It only involves sight and hearing; never smell, taste, or touch. The aural and visual, already overprivileged in technological societies, are mediated through a screen and a speaker, usually with poor audio and video quality. That is not to dismiss its value – certainly some people seem to have reconnected or newly connected with Christian worship via online means during the pandemic. But it can never involve the smell of incense, the taste of sacramental wine, the heat of a ray of sunshine streaming through a window, a hug, or noticing that a much loved elderly parishioner’s gait has suddenly become laboured.
Are there other ways to worship safely in the era of coronavirus?
We know that COVID19 spreads much less effectively outdoors than inside; the summer months are now upon us in these northern latitudes. Should we take this opportunity to move our worship, at least on Sundays, substantially outdoors, with whatever distancing measures recommended by our medics and scientists? (There are plenty of both among our clergy and congregations.) Yes, it sometimes rains even in the summer; wear a good raincoat and take a brolly if needed. Expect congregations to fluctuate with the weather. Expect also to be unusually visible: this is no bad thing! Christians are in danger of disappearing into the online communities of the like-minded that bedevil so many aspects of 21st Century society. Worshipping outdoors would be a powerful witness not only to Christ, but to the resilience of human community in the face of what has driven us physically apart.
Where should we worship outside? There will need to be a balance between visibility, not being so overwhelmed with external noise that worship is impossible, and respecting the needs of our neighbours for space and quiet. You may or may not have a churchyard that could work. Your town square, estate park, or village green may be perfect. Perhaps you might know of a car park unused on Sundays next to a retail park that very much was. Perhaps a farmer has a field that you could borrow.
If we start on this journey over the next month, it might just about take us through to the end of October, and by that stage, the world might be developing new ways to live safely with coronavirus indoors.
The devil is always in the details. Here are a few thoughts about issues we might face.
1. Talking spreads COVID19; talking loudly spreads COVID19 rapidly. Congregational responses might need be silent or given in no more than a whisper.
2. Singing seems to spread COVID19 very rapidly. Singing has been part of Christian worship since the very beginning, so avoiding it for the duration amounts to one of the greatest disruptions in Christian prayer life for 2,000 years. It’s certainly worth reflecting on the suggestion that this might be a time for keyboards and strings to take the lead in music-making in worship. Perhaps a professional quality mic and speaker might allow a soloist or small, physically distanced, ensemble of singers to lead worship that is both safe and edifying.
3. It must be worth considering ad orientem celebration, even in parishes which would never in normal circumstances be Catholic-inclined enough to do so. A priest celebrating the Eucharist outside would need a powerful voice to be heard clearly by the congregation without amplification, but battery-powered amplifiers are cheap and powerful these days. It would mean he or she could inadvertently spray virus-laden aerosol droplets over the congregation. It doesn’t need to be liturgically elaborate, still less the much derided Non-Communicating High Mass. (Not that there’s any reason why a congregation that was that far up the candle couldn’t go for the latter!)
4. How do people receive Communion safely? Let me combine a very Catholic suggestion with a more Protestant one. It is sufficient, albeit undesirable in normal circumstances, for the congregation to receive in one kind. Could congregations receive in the liquid specie only, from the little individual cups that Presbyterian and Reformed congregations use? These can be covered, perhaps even with PPE material, during worship. This avoids physical contact between the priest and the matter to be consumed and cups are easily sterilisable in a hot dishwasher. As Reformed congregations usually have communion less frequently than Anglicans, you might even find your friends in nearby congregations are willing to let you use their property on some or all Sundays.
5. As the numbers of people we’re allowed to meet with outside our household increase, we might also discover a wonderful new opportunity for prayer-walks and local walking pilgrimages to play a more regular role in our worshipping life. These islands are liberally sprinkled with ancient places of prayer – holy wells, little groves and woods associated with obscure Celtic and Saxon saints, pilgrims’ paths. We can literally walk in the footsteps of our fellow Christians who knew a lot more about living with plagues than we do.
6. Final thought: churches of a more charismatic tradition than mine might be able to have their normal worship bands perform with all members of the band performing behind the Perspex screens which only drummers normally use. Others will know if that is technically feasible.
This ugly and frightening new world has opportunities as well as threats. The future, in all sorts of regards, will belong to those who most rapidly accept that the old order has passed. “Behold, I make all things new” says the Lord who is love, and also mighty and terrible and far beyond our comprehension. Let us worship Him wherever we safely can.
