When a Virus Comes to Church

While I was driving to the church this morning, NPR news was reporting that many religious congregations are rethinking their worship practices in the light of the increasingly prevalent and dangerous viruses that get passed around during flu season every year. Holy Water, shaking hands, hugging, Holy Communion taken from a common cup, and kissing the Torah are all obvious ways that viruses can be passed around. These practices, however, have been deeply rooted in meaningful worship experiences for a very long time. It’s hard to let go of them.

In the last church I served as Interim Minister, the worship bulletin routinely carried this statement:

We value the opportunity to share the peace of Christ with one another in our Sunday morning worship experience. So that we might preserve its positive quality for all, we ask that you be sensitive to the needs of your fellow worshippers with regard to how the peace is passed. In some churches the peace is passed with a hug. While hugging can certainly happen here, we invite persons always to ask permission first. People differ in their desires for and comfort with physical contact, so we try to be respectful of those differences.
During cold and flu seasons, some persons might request that there be no contact at all, including handshakes, to protect against the spread of disease. Please don’t take it personally. Of course, at any time you are invited to communicate your welcome of one another and to share the peace of Christ with your warm words.

While the hygienic benefits of a policy like this are obvious, we cannot simply adopt them without acknowledging deeper significant issues. Christianity has always been ambivalent about human bodies and human touch. Some passages in the New Testament (usually taken out of context) suggest that matters of the spirit (or mind) are “godly”, while matters of the flesh (that means human bodies and emotions) are intrinsically evil. Sexuality typically is seen to be suspect and most human desires surely lead to trouble. On the surface of human experience these ideas carry a lot of truth. For example, it is true that sexual contact can be used as a way to avoid intimacy. But just because sexuality can be used inappropriately, that doesn’t make it evil in its essence.

But, human life and experience is not confined to the superficial. I am reminded of the famous study on infant survival that was done right after World War II. During the rocket attacks in London, many infants were orphaned, and these babies were cared for in large well-run orphanages. While the basics of food, water, clothing and protection were given to all the children, only a certain segment of them survived. The essential factor turned out to be the availability of touch. Those babies who were not held enough, that is to say who did not experience enough human touch, did not thrive. Only those who were touched enough were able to survive. There are those who worship in our churches who do not receive any touch apart from that occasional ritual touch in church (or when they go to a physician).Even adults need loving touch in order to thrive. (Of course, abusive touch is another matter altogether, for children and adults alike.)

Loving touch is vital to human beings, so when we make rules that limit touch, we must be aware of what we are losing, and we must attempt to recreate those lost, but necessary, experiences in other ways.

From the perspective of that human need for relationally based touch, we can identify many layers at which touch can happen. And not all of them require physical touch. So let me suggest that we need to touch minds – and we do that through deep conversation and dialog. We need to touch spirits – and we do that through prayer, worship, singing together, and even through our communal “play.” We need to touch emotionally – and we do that by laughing and crying together and by mutually deep listening to the emotional foundations of our deepest held beliefs.

While we go about adopting approaches to limit the spread of viruses (and I strongly recommend that we do), let us also adopt approaches to maximizing human being-to-human being contact in as many other ways as we can. Let’s find ways to celebrate together, to grieve together, to sing together, to play together, to listen deeply and respectfully to one another, and to address the legitimate needs of the world around us together.

But don’t forget to use your hand sanitizer.

Wayne Gustafson
“Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” Gracie Allen
The United Church__of Christ