Acts of God: SC congregations wrestling with best way to deal with COVID-19 pandemic

I had the opportunity last week to attend a meeting with fellow clergy at Hilton Head Hospital to hear comments from the two Tenet CEOs representing Hilton Head and Coastal Carolina hospitals. That experience left me with more questions than answers, which is probably how a lot of Americans feel these days regarding what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be in our respective communities.

The religious community has to deal with a variety of questions, starting with how to keep our congregations safe.

Religious institutions and their boards of directors and clergy are making decisions whether or not to close their facilities, with announcements coming rapidly.

Should clergy take special precautions before entering the hospital? What about weddings, adult education classes and bar mitzvah services? What about funerals being held in the sanctuary of the house of worship?

These are just a few of the immediate concerns and decisions that are being discussed throughout the country, even as the Centers for Disease Control and others weigh in.

God

Where does God fit into the mix of decision-making? Where do the ethics of our respective religious traditions stand when it comes to making decisions?

What should we be praying to the Divine Creator for as we brace ourselves for the possible onslaught of patients who are infected, whether or not they are symptomatic of the coronavirus?

I can think of a few issues that might deserve our consideration.

I agree that we should look to God to overcome our fears and to give us hope that we can overcome this deadly virus. Scripture gives plenty of guidance toward prayer for our well-being and that of our fellow congregants and the nation as a whole.

Let’s also pray for others as well who are impacting us in both positive and negative ways.

Let us give thought to prayers concerning those who are hoarding desperately-needed supplies and who sell them on platforms at exorbitant prices. These people see an opportunity to make a buck but do they realize that they are preventing folks who cannot afford the basic necessities that will be important for them to maintain their hygiene, such as hand wipes and hand sanitizers?

Prayers

Let us pray for our hospital administrators and medical directors to be transparent with the communities they serve about what they can and cannot do for the public.

Their willingness to reach out to the local community with factual information about the services that hospitals will provide, such as testing of coronavirus patients, or providing a coronavirus response team that will gives us a better understanding as to how our community is doing and coping with the psychological stress that we are all facing at this hour.

Simple questions, like whether a volunteer church committee should continue to visit patients on behalf of their house of worship, require the hospital administration to keep the religious community in touch with the impact of the coronavirus, which changes day to day.

Let us also pray for the medical workers who do the heroic work each and every day.

A friend of mine who is an internist on the West Coast in a town similar in size to Hilton Head Island told me that she is considering resigning her privileges in the hospital because she does not feel comfortable at her age attending to the patients with the coronavirus in the intensive care unit. The hospital beds are all already taken. She too needs strength and she must make critical decisions that go to the core of her being as a physician. She is concerned as to whether the hospital in her community has enough respirators and beds to accommodate a sudden increase of coronavirus patients. Medical workers are human beings too. They have families and want to live as much as all of us. They deserve our prayers as well.

Let us pray for the clergy and the boards of directors who stand by the principle of providing worship and sanctuary to their parishioners.

They must balance their mission to provide services and bring God’s presence to those who enter their communities for solace and inspiration, with the real concern that a deadly virus could infect people sitting in their pews.

Is canceling services a betrayal of their mandate, or the wise decision to save lives?

Congregants also need to search within to see where they can make accommodations to the fact that so many of our religious communities in the Lowcountry belong to the most vulnerable population to the coronavirus, which is those over age 65. Compassion and stretching emotionally is also critical at this time.

Sometimes all we have are questions, and the answers aren’t always clear to us.

But at least we can share the questions with our community, and through our individual prayers we can find the best in ourselves and in our communities.

Rabbi Brad Bloom of Hilton Head Island writes on matters of faith.