Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In my day, never was longer.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Pandemic Troubles: Group Religious Observance vs. Social Distancing

Pandemic Troubles: Group Religious Observance vs. Social Distancing

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Chag Pesach Sameach to those of you who observe Passover, and a blessed Maundy Thursday to those who keep the old Catholic / Christian traditions. (Apparently the Pope will *not* be washing anyone’s feet today, and good for him setting the right example.)

Whether or not one agrees with the premise, certainly a great many people take solace from their particular group observances, and this is the season when two of the three Abrahamic traditions traditionally gather together. Passover is a celebration of group survival against an overwhelming secular foe. The Christian celebration of Easter, of course, descends directly from this — Jesus observed His last Passover feast with his elite followers before being arrested by the Roman authorities — and in the Catholic tradition I know best, the ‘annual obligation’ of taking the Eucharist (i.e., attending Mass) is mandated during the ‘holy season’ stretching from the beginning of Lent to Pentecost 40 days after Easter. Social distancing, obviously, is the opposite of such collective celebration. And Protestants, not least American Protestants, have a further tradition of defying (‘protesting’) oppressive outside authorities who attempt to restrict their understanding of how they are permitted to practice their faith. People of good faith, among the people of faith, are doing their best to keep their communities and the secular ones they inhabit safe… but not every individual’s conception of ‘safety’ is going to match those of the CDC, tragically.

Of course, it’s not just an American problem, either:

To reiterate — the vast majority of religious leaders and believers are making due adjustment to the pandemic, even in the proudly authoritarian ‘Mother Church’, even in less-developed nations where the congregation most demands personal interaction…

And yet, even the traditionally more rationalist Jewish faith community, the self-styled ‘true believers’ are more than willing to put their own communities at risk in order to pursue what they interpret as correct observance:

And the third branch of the People of the Book, the followers of the Prophet, have already had serious problems with devout believers unintentionally sparking the outbreak — Muslim businessmen from central China visiting Saudi Arabia are said to have been the ones who introduced COVID-19 to the Middle East, from where pious pilgrims returned infected to homelands all over South Asia, North Africa, and southern Europe. Ramadan is due to begin on April 24th, and the daily gatherings for pray and communal post-sundown celebratory meals are almost certainly going to be an issue for worshippers, too.

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    And yet, even the traditionally more rationalist Jewish faith community, the self-styled ‘true believers’ are more than willing to put their own communities at risk in order to pursue what they interpret as correct observance:

    I’m not sure that “traditionally more rationalist” and “ultra-Orthodox” belong anywhere near each other. It’s not just Israel either. The Hassidic communities in New York are behaving the same way.

  2. 2.

    zhena gogolia

    As you say,

    the vast majority of religious leaders and believers are making due adjustment to the pandemic,

    As is happening in my church and many other Protestant churches around the world, where strict social distancing measures are being taken.
    But now we’ll have a thread full of vitriol directed at our faith.

  3. 3.

    PenAndKey

    Whether or not one agrees with the premise, certainly a great many people take solace from their particular group observances

    I’m not sure anyone would deny that. That doesn’t make people who ignore social distancing or try to claim religious exception to such basic health mandates any less stupid. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re going to all turn themselves into amplification vectors and we’ll see another spike in deaths as a result that would be fine. Personal autonomy and whatnot, but they’re actively threatening their communities. There aren’t many people I have more contempt for than the politicians and religious leaders who are, right now, putting their “right” to conduct rituals without interference ahead of the lives of their fellow citizens.

  4. 4.

    WereBear

    It’s the fundamentalists — of any religion — that’s the problem. They are highly motivated to be a “law until themselves” and are also anti-science.

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    One of a couple hangers-on fundy churches here would not cooperate with the county shut-down order so the landlord changed the locks. Nice to see the landlord on the good side of things for once.

  7. 7.

    Jay C

    Not a good sign at all that Indian authorities are pinning the “spread”/”origin of the Coronavirus on a Muslim group – even if true, their ultranationalist government has been looking for an excuse to execute (allowing for adjustments in religious terminology) a general pogrom against all Muslims living in India (? 250 million?), and tagging them as “plague-spreaders” is only going to inflame tensions even more.

  8. 8.

    scav

    @Baud: Let alone announce themselves as the (only) moral people and thus necessarily due immediate respect, honor and deference.

  11. 11.

    Shana

    We had our seder last night via Zoom.  One of the nephews is a realtor and has an account so we could go longer than 45 minutes.  We had a bigger group of participants than we would have in a normal year with several people from NYC, two locations in Texas, two locations in Ohio, Missouri and two locations in Canada as well as our two locations in Virginia.  The Canadians posted their haggaddah for us all to follow along and participate.  It worked really well and everyone enjoyed seeing more of the family than we usually do.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    Incidentally, Kathleen Parker has outdone herself this morning.

    WaPost:

    Now is not the time to cast blame

    The conservative enablers are starting to get a clue this is not going very well.

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    DHS hasn’t wanted the faith based community that:

    warned the faith-based community ahead of Passover and Easter about an “increase in online hate speech intended to encourage violence or use” the ongoing coronavirus pandemic situation as an excuse to spread hatred

    What actually happened is that DOJ, DHS, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) issued a Joint threat bulletin to warn Jewish American and Asian Americans that domestic violent extremists (DVEs), specifically racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) – that should be read as white supremacists, neo-NAZIs, and/or white Christian supremacists and nationalists – are using the SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 outbreak as a justification and motivation to target Jewish Americans and Asian Americans in the US. Specifically that they are responsible for creating it, bringing it to the US, and spreading it as part of their nefarious plot against white Christian Americans, which for this crowd are the only actual Americans. Here’s the actual bulletin.

    455560941-Rmve-and-Covid

  17. 17.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Jay C: This is what they do, it is the core competency of the Sangh. BJP is the political arm of this fascist organization formed during the heyday of fascism in the 20s.

    The non-BJP states that are doing the tests are being demonized. BJP IT cell trolls are actually gloating about the deaths in Maharashtra and Kerala.

  19. 19.

    Kent

    Coronavirus hits Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities – where implementing lockdown has been challenging

    I despise this sort of language.  These people have agency.  They are making their choices.

    “Challenging?”  For God’s sake, this lock-down has been “challenging” for everyone.  It isn’t any more challenging for fundamentalists to do it than anyone else.  They just choose not to.

  20. 20.

    Kent

    @WereBear:It’s the fundamentalists — of any religion — that’s the problem. They are highly motivated to be a “law until themselves” and are also anti-science.

    I have relatives who are Amish and conservative Mennonites.  In many ways they are little more than Taliban without guns.  The press talks about how Afghan girls will lose the opportunity for education under a Taliban resurgence.  But it is no easier for an Amish girl in the US to get an education than it is for a Taliban girl in Afghanistan.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: You are correct. There is nothing rational or realistic in the modern sense about the ultra-orthodox communities in the US, Canada, and/or Israel.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kent: It has been challenging in that they’ve basically told everyone else to fuck you, we’re not going to do what we’ve been told to do in the name of public health. The Israeli minister of health and his wife, both from the ultra-devout community, are both now in quarantine and being treated as they’ve tested positive for COVID-19. The rest of Israel’s caretaker cabinet and their immediate families, their staff and their families, including the caretaker PM Bibi, are all in cautionary quarantine because the Israeli health minister can’t get his head around that it is 2020, not 1801 in the Pale of Settlement.

  24. 24.

    burnspbesq

    @Kent:

    well, yeah, except that the deadly consequences of their choices won’t be confined to their own communities. Under applicable New York law, a fair number of Hasidic rebbes are arguably guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

    The First Amendment is not a suicide pact.

  25. 25.

    Barbara

    The BBC article about the pastor is instructive.  The pastor’s family, of course, has to acknowledge that the virus is worse than their conservative news sources led them to believe, but the best they can do is try to excuse their refusal to believe other news sources because “both sides” routinely exaggerate.  They cannot bring themselves to say that in this instance, only one side was exaggerating, and it was wrong, whereas, the other “side” was transmitting accurate albeit alarming information, and that this difference might actually pertain to many other matters most of the time, not just when it comes to COVID-19.  So, basically it’s still your and my fault that the country hasn’t come together as one nation under God.  Because our side exaggerates a lot too.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jay C:

    That same group, the Tablighi Jumaat, is also responsible for a plurality of the cases in Malaysia. The Malaysian chapter held its annual gathering at a mosque in suburban Malaysia, and that gathering has since become the biggest contagion cluster here.

    When the Movement Control Order took effect here in March, Friday prayers were simultaneously suspended by royal decree along with any prayers in congregation. If there has been any dissent about the suspension, it hasn’t been reported in the media. As it is, I expect the MCO to be still in effect come Eid al-Fitri because the pandemic definitely won’t be over by then.

    In fact, I think we’re going to have to watch out for illegal immigration as a potential source of new infection; a couple of days ago, there was a report of a boat carrying some 200 Rohingya (a Muslim ethnic group from Myanmar) being stopped in Malaysian waters. And Indonesia, a nation with a long history of legal and other immigration to Malaysia, is reportedly not handling its own Covid-19 outbreak particularly well.

  27. 27.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Amir Khalid: May I suggest moving to Turkmenistan? It is largely Muslim, and it has zero cases of Covid-19. Sounds like a very safe harbor in today’s environment.

  28. 28.

    Kent

    @burnspbesq:

    @Kent:

    well, yeah, except that the deadly consequences of their choices won’t be confined to their own communities. Under applicable New York law, a fair number of Hasidic rebbes are arguably guilty of criminally negligent homicide.

    The First Amendment is not a suicide pact.

    I’m no arguing the facts at all.  Just the tone.  “challenging” is the wrong term.  “obstructionist” or “defiant” or “criminally negligent” would be better ones.   I get annoyed when reporters talk about religious groups as if they were toddlers.  They do the same thing when talking about Trump.

  29. 29.

    Hungry Joe

    Typhoid Mary, a real person in the early 20th century, was imprisoned for doing nothing more than working as a cook … while being a known carrier of disease. Authorities kept locking her up and warning her, but every time she was released she’d find another job and infect more people. Finally she was confined for good. Who wants to make the argument that she was an innocent woman who was simply exercising her rights as an individual to go about her business and earn an honest living, and that the State had no right to interfere?

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I suspect that any nation currently reporting zero cases of Covid-19 has merely not found them yet, having not done enough testing.

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Amir Khalid: Surely you can’t be suggesting that the esteemed Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow might be mistaken about the facts in his proud nation?

  36. 36.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Yutsano: Oddly (and unfortunately) the World Championships of Track Cycling are scheduled to be held at the velodrome in Ashgabat in 2021.

    This is a sport I follow, but somehow I was unaware that Turkmenistan had a world-class velodrome.

  37. 37.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia:

    But now we’ll have a thread full of vitriol directed at our faith.

    I hope you can take a step back so as to distinguish between “vitriol directed at our faith” and vitriol directed at grifters and con-artists who use other people’s faith to suck money and power from them, regardless of the danger they can put people it by disregarding safety measures in a time of danger to al of us.

    Or have you not noticed that not all ministers/priests/imams are pure people of faith, working on a small salary to minister to a small gathering of people of faith?

    There are huge swathes of calvinistic theocratic “ministers” who conspire together to control large groups of people so as to raise so much money they can fly around on private jets, build phony universities (Liberty University, Oral Roberts, many others under the radar) — these would be the churches who don’t allow women to become ministers, or teach Sunday School, even.

    I have no respect for these hoodlums, and hope you don’t think my disrespect for them is aimed at your faith.

    Take care, stay well~!!~

  38. 38.

    cain

    @Jay C:

    Not a good sign at all that Indian authorities are pinning the “spread”/”origin of the Coronavirus on a Muslim group – even if true, their ultranationalist government has been looking for an excuse to execute (allowing for adjustments in religious terminology) a general pogrom against all Muslims living in India (? 250 million?), and tagging them as “plague-spreaders” is only going to inflame tensions even more.

    even my moderate family are inflamed. The situation outlined to me makes no logical sense. Basically the idea that some outside muslim people are purposely spreading the disease seems ridiculous.

    This government has no idea what they are going unleash.. plus that virus is going to spread through these clashes too. Somebody is trying to do shenanigans.

  39. 39.

    cain

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This virus loves right wing ideology because it is so rigid. Since it doesn’t react and adjust behavior when attacked the virus will happily spread through their communities.

    The virus loves right wingers and poor people. :/

  40. 40.

    MoCA Ace

    @Hungry Joe: Who wants to make the argument that she was an innocent woman who was simply exercising her rights as an individual to go about her business and earn an honest living, and that the State had no right to interfere?

    Republicans!

    What do I win?

  41. 41.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Kent:

    I get annoyed when reporters talk about religious groups as if they were toddlers. They do the same thing when talking about Trump.

    I get annoyed when people talk about magic as if it were real. I guess we are both bound to be disappointed.

  42. 42.

    oldster

    “Passover is a celebration of group survival against an overwhelming secular foe. ”

    “Secular”? How so?

    The Egyptians had a rich and complex theology and plenty of religious observances. They had temples and priests aplenty. Their governmental structures were suffused with religion — lots of pharaohs claimed divine favor, or even direct divine ancestry. They would have been very puzzled to hear their culture described as a “secular” one.

    Of course, according to Exodus, the Egyptians and their religion were hostile to the Jews and theirs. But the same should be said about, e.g. the Spanish who provided the Inquisition, and it would be strange to describe early modern Catholic Spain as “secular.”

    But maybe this word is doing a different sort of job in your sentence? I can’t tell quite what it means.

  43. 43.

    A Ghost to Most

    @oldster:

    Why do religions have apologists?

    Because they need them.

    Why do religions have eschatologies?

    Because they need them

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    @Hungry Joe:

    Who wants to make the argument that she was an innocent woman who was simply exercising her rights as an individual to go about her business and earn an honest living, and that the State had no right to interfere?

    Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas. But you knew that.

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