COMMENTARY: Religious services and ‘nonessential’ activities

In his Tuesday commentary, “Barring church services isn’t religious persecution,” Steve Chapman compares attending church during the current virus outbreak to killing unborn children. If only Mr. Chapman used his prolific skills in the service of innocent children.

Mr. Chapman could have urged presidents and governors to shut down an industry and lay off thousands in a desperate attempt to save the 623,471 children killed by parents and doctors in 2016 in the United States alone. I don’t know if any of those children had pre-existing conditions, but my understanding is that abortion is as close to 100 percent more lethal than coronovirus as you can get.

Yes, the world is a dangerous place, and there will always be risks for people of faith as they step out of their homes and gather together in worship. I was excited by the replacements for gathering together that people have suggested — reading alone or watching church online — until I spent an hour one night watching PBS cooking shows only to discover my hunger remained.

Of course, faith would be a comfort except that Mr. Chapman has suggested you shouldn’t trust in something that you can’t see or feel or touch — like a virus, for those of us whose electron microscopes have been deemed nonessential.

People of faith have been washing their hands before eating and after touching the sick for thousands of years. But then those people also believed, unlike Mr. Chapman, that Satan was real.

I was glad to see that Mr. Chapman quoted Jesus of Nazareth and his warnings about leading one’s flock away from the wolf. Jesus provides very helpful detail about those wolves: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!”

Yes, Jesus might be advocating “social distancing.” But he also might be warning us against those who tell us that watching a meal is the same as eating and that a full church — during war or plague or famine or persecution — is scarier than the waiting rooms at Planned Parenthood.

— The Rev. Howard R. Giles is pastor of Jesus the Good Shepherd Anglican Church in Henderson.