That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

When I wasn’t continuing my series of lectionary devotions, this week I wrote about a small Christian movement that went 350+ years without taking Communion and recorded a podcast about race and sports. Elsewhere:

My bread rarely looks as good as this – Creative Commons (Martin Lindstrom)

• My supply of yeast is running low, but while I’ve got it, I’ll join others in coping with COVID quarantine stress by baking bread.

• Why is it so difficult to model the spread and effects of this virus?

• In a recent survey, about one in eight respondents said their church was continuing to hold worship services, even as more and more states are telling citizens to stay at home.

• If that describes you and your church, please read this warning from one of this country’s most distinguished, most devoutly Christian scientists.

• Ruth Graham shared one more update from the campus of Liberty University, home to the most confusing response to coronavirus in all of higher ed.

• History isn’t always inspiring, but Bruce Hindmarsh surveyed the long history of Christians caring for others in the midst of terrible disease.

• We’re all looking forward to getting back to pre-COVID routines, but is it possible that some of our recent changes in behavior will become more permanent? After all, that’s happened before in American history…

• If not permanent, it’s certainly possible that some changes will recur in a few months. For example, some colleges are already preparing for remote education this fall and winter.

(For some insight into adapting to education under quarantine, read The Paris Project, a new blog from one of the contributors to our Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education book.)

• Beyond that, well…

• Maybe Americans will now remember the value of the liberal arts, a model of education that prepares citizens for crises like this.

• I’d almost forgotten that AP tests are coming up…

• Here’s a historical analogy for COVID you might not have seen yet: the cholera crisis that shut down the German city of Hamburg in 1892, long after that disease had disappeared from western European cities.

Lewis preached “Learning in Wartime” at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, which our Bethel students visited in 2017 as part of our WWI travel course’s day in Oxford

• I recently mentioned C.S. Lewis’ sermon “Learning in Wartime” in an Anxious Bench post on the value of continuing to study all kinds of history. At the same blog, Andrea Turpin this week elaborated on why Christian scholars, “as a sign of hope… would continue learning about weighty matters not directly related to the coronavirus.”

• If you want to learn about other kinds of history… How’s this for a provocative title: “Did Britain Win the American Revolution?”

• Are progressive Christians too obsessed with fundamentalism? One seminary professor thinks so.

• One last non-COVID item: one of the most prominent women in the Baptist world resigned from her position as a seminary president.