2020 has been a year marked by tragedy, heartache and, unfortunately, great division. A quick glance or scroll through social media makes it very clear that our society is fragmented. Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center published a study regarding the division in the United States. They found that the U.S. is facing an exceptional political divide and most individuals agreed that Americans had fundamental disagreements about core values.

Personally, I have been most struck by the response of the Church and the Christian community to this divide. While the pandemic persists and hospitals throughout the nation are overrun, many in the Church have responded not with compassion but, rather, with contempt. The overwhelming Christian response to the pandemic is clear – resist lockdowns and government intrusions.

Obviously, this hasn’t been the response of every church or Christian person to the pandemic. However, it is clear that many see COVID-19 restrictions, like wearing a mask, as a violation of liberty and a way for the government to oppress the Church. Popular Christian leaders have propelled this thinking by teaching their followers that there is no pandemic and suing the government over mask mandates. 

For those that do not believe in masks or in COVID-19, I’m not here to try and convince you. By now, I assume that most people have made up their minds regarding the pandemic and their opinions are unlikely to change. However, I am imploring the Church and Christians to follow COVID-19 guidelines. 

I know some reading this will vehemently disagree with my opinion. You might believe that COVID-19 is being blown out of proportion, or you might think that the lockdowns and masks don’t really work. That’s fine. As Christians, however, we have an obligation to humbly and obediently abide by the authorities instituted above us. 

Fine, you might say, but what if the government persecutes the Church? Shouldn’t we resist government regulations that oppose the Bible? I completely agree. If the government tells Christians to throw away their Bibles, we should resist that. If the government starts imprisoning Christians for praying, we should keep praying. However, COVID-19 restrictions in the U.S. are not acts of persecution.

Christians in India face persecution with laws that ban conversion to Christianity. Christians in Libya face persecution by being subjected to extreme physical violence and imprisonment if they identify as a Christian. I hope you’ll agree that having to wear a mask during a church service or limiting singing in a church due to concern for public health fails to qualify as religious persecution.

I don’t think the problem is that American churches are being persecuted, but that most Christians are currently placing their political and personal priorities above the needs of others. Wearing a mask is uncomfortable. Restrictions on gatherings are inconvenient. Yet, our health and medical professionals urge us that these things will help protect others. 

You might disagree with the medical professionals. You might believe that masks do nothing and protect no one. I’m not a health expert, but I know that our nurses and doctors are telling us the hospitals are reaching max capacity. I know individuals disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19 cannot go to the grocery store because many people at the store refuse to wear a mask. 

Even if you disagree with the effectiveness of masks or the restrictions on gatherings, I urge you to consider how defying these regulations impacts our community. Every time you refuse to wear a mask, you isolate those who believe it provides protection. When you disregard health protocols, you tell others that your gatherings are more important than the safety of the community. 

I often think about how the early Christians would view our response to COVID-19. In a Christianity Today article about how Christians should respond to COVID-19, the response of early Christians to epidemics is examined, as they lived through two different epidemics. This article draws upon Rodney Stark’s book “The Rise of Christianity,” in which he explains how the early Christians responded to these epidemics.

“Christians laid themselves down, even to death, and comforted those who were dying, bringing solace to those afflicted by the deadly contagions,” the article said regarding the behavior of early Christians during these epidemics. “With their extraordinary acts of kindness, Christians were then viewed as a caring community and their faith [was] taken more seriously.

The behavior of early Christians was not marked by protests or contention, but by love. Stark argues that part of what allowed Christianity to grow during these epidemics was the fact that radical love on the part of Christians attracted more members to the Church.

Unfortunately, I fear that this would not be said of the Church’s response to the epidemic today. Christians have an obligation to respond to the pandemic with love. We have a duty to humbly submit to authority and show kindness to those around us. 

In the past few months, I have also begun to wonder about how Jesus would respond to this pandemic. If, in a hypothetical world, Jesus were here today and living through COVID-19, what would he be doing?

Jesus was not a political leader. I know that so many of you wish he was. You wish that Jesus would have encouraged us to rebel against the government and told us who to vote for – but he didn’t do that. In fact, Jesus didn’t even condemn the government. Rather than speak of the government and political figures, Jesus was focused on the religious leaders of the time and showing how those leaders weren’t actually helping the community. 

Jesus was concerned with the fact that the religious leaders of the time were hypocritical. These leaders acted as if they were righteous and spiritual, but were actually greedy and self-centered. Though these leaders said they were upholding good, religious practices, they were neglecting mercy and justice. 

So, when I think about how Jesus would act today, I think it would look a lot like it did over 2000 years ago. He would come in humble submission, willing to serve the vulnerable and downtrodden members of society. He wouldn’t be in the front line of the protest against government regulations or in the courtroom suing the state. I think he would be comforting the family who just lost a loved one or sharing a meal with the nurse who just worked a 12-hour shift. 

You can still be concerned about the government. You can still be concerned about who gets elected and what policies are put in place. However, we must recognize that those concerns should never outweigh one of our greatest commandments: love thy neighbor. 

Rev. Dr. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III, who has more than 40 years of community and congregational service, came to William Jewell College to discuss religious freedom at his event, “Right-sizing Religious Liberty and Why It Matters.” This lecture was part of the Baptist Joint Committee’s 2019 Shurden Series of lectures.

Wright-Riggins is the former CEO of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, he served 20 years as a pastor at Macedonia Baptist Church in South Central Los Angeles and he served on the board of the Baptist Joint Committee for 20 years. He is currently the first African-American mayor of Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

During his lecture, Wright-Riggins criticized how the “political and religious right” have hijacked religious freedom to suppress other kinds of freedom, and noted that although America has religious liberty, some religions receive more benefits than others. As an example, he provided an anecdote of a Muslim friend of his who had received threats and had his store vandalized because of his religion. He also proposed some solutions to this problem.

“In the fight for religious liberty, may I suggest we get woke,” Wright-Riggins argued.

After the lecture, there was a reception where Wright-Riggins talked with students and answered some of their questions. Overall, his lecture was well-received, despite some minor disagreements about smaller details, and the discussion held afterward was a valuable experience for all in attendance.

Visitors pay their respects Oct. 29, 2018, at a memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue after a shooting there left 11 people dead in Pittsburgh.

On Oct. 27, a horrific shooting took place at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, claiming the lives of 11 innocents. The attacker, Robert Bowers, is known to have posted anti-Semitic jeremiads online, especially on far right websites with lax speech oversight like Gab. The attack shone a harsh spotlight on anti-Semitism in the U.S. and more broadly the intersection of religion and politics in the country.

Despite the frequent articulation of a separation of church and state first expressed by President Thomas Jefferson and endorsed by most presidents since then, religion is very much an active part of the U.S. public policy.

This fact should not come as any surprise: one of the U.S. founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, invokes a creator deity, the national motto since the days of President Eisenhower has been “In God We Trust” and the Pledge of Allegiance extols “One nation, under God.” Politicians are endlessly mentioning religion and religious values in speeches.

The U.S. is a much more religious nation than most of Europe, and religion has always played an active role in its politics. Religious groups have served a great benefit in the United States: religious groups helped drive the abolition movement and the civil rights movement. Though in fairness it must be said that while many northern religious groups helped drive abolition, religious groups in the South also helped defend slavery.

There is, however, a darker aspect to religion in the United States. Since the inception of the nation, Christianity has been the dominant religion in the U.S. and intolerance towards other religions has periodically swept the country.  

Christianity  has been used as instrument to incite hatred and fear of other religions. Historically, rampant anti-Semitism has raged through the United States at regular intervals, and since 9/11 there has been a surge in Islamophobia that has yet to dissolve.

Prejudice concerning religion has always occupied a role in U.S. politics. In the 1920s, one of the first major Catholic contenders for the Presidency, Al Smith was defeated, in part, due to a virulent wave of anti-Catholicism sentiment across the country. In 1960, the first Catholic president, President Kennedy had to repeatedly confront and address questions on how his religiosity would affect his actions.  

These divisive sentiments stirred up by demagogues, fearmongerers and morally debased politicians are definitely not representative of Christianity in the United States as a whole but can end in tragedy as it did in the shooting.  

President Trump’s victory in 2016 emboldened white nationalists and other fringe groups that advocate hate. That is not a partisan opinion, it is merely the fact that there has been a surge in hate speech, hate crimes and other similar reprehensible conduct since the election of the current president. The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville showed the troubling trend that has only accelerated with time.  

Anti-Semitism, specifically, and intolerance cloaked in religion, broadly, is once more on the rise in the United States and in Europe, and political entrepreneurs are stoking it. One just has to look at Hungary, where the authoritarian regime of Viktor Orban is blatantly harnessing it to incite hatred of Jewish philanthropist George Soros and of Muslim immigrants. In the U.S. one need only recall President Trump’s “Muslim Ban” to see religious-based intolerance growing.

There may be cause for hope if one turns back to history. As noted above, prior to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, anti-Catholic sentiment was, as historian Arthur Schlesinger puts it, “[the] deepest bias in the history of the American people.” The Bosses of the Democratic Party were reluctant to sign on to JFK’s campaign for just that reason, yet with the election of Kennedy, a seeming dissolution of much of the anti-Catholic sentiment seems to have occurred.

While the Catholic Church has still occasionally been the target of fury and outrage by the American people, most recently with sexual abuse allegations, anti-Catholicism as a significant political force has not re-coalesced since Kennedy’s 1960 victory.

If Catholic prejudice could be rooted out in such a way, it is not outside the realm of possibility that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia may be rendered impotent in the future as well.

Photo courtesy of Brendan Smialowski/Getty-AFP.

Horne had originally planned to be a pastor and attended seminary school at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. At seminary, his fascination with religion began.

“I became interested in religion as a phenomenon to study in seminary, mostly from reading Peter Berger’s book, ‘The Sacred Canopy’ (I would go on and rely heavily upon this book, and his ‘The Social Construction of Reality,’ in my doctoral dissertation.) I was fascinated with Berger’s conception of anomy, alienation and false consciousness as it related to another book I read in my undergraduate career at Univ. of Missouri, Columbia (after I left Indiana University): Erving Goffman’s, ‘The Presentation in Everyday Life,'” Horne said.

Seminary caused Horne to have more questions, which led to him completing his doctorate at the University of Oxford.

“I went to seminary to get questions answered. Instead, I read Berger—while also learning that the meaning of the Bible’s story was up for interpretative grabs—and only struggled with more questions. So, I went from there to Oxford to write a dissertation on the book of Job, suffering, false consciousness, and Goffman’s notion of the front stage and back stage of our lives.”

Upon completing his dissertation, Horne’s mentor recommended he apply for a teaching position at Jewell. Even though Horne submitted his application late, he got the job.  

When asked if there was a significant memory or favorite story he would carry with him from Jewell, Horne recalled a particular story that stood out to him.

“Of course, I’ll never forget the student who took me out for a coffee upon graduation to inform me that he was making something of his life by starting a marijuana farm, in Missouri, no less—this was the cutting edge in entrepreneurship, I guess. Hell, he may have been right,” said Horne.

Over the course of the following academic year, courses in the department of religion at Jewell will be discontinued. While Horne is saddened by this decision, he understands the logic of it.

“I’m sad that the Religion department will discontinue (my colleague Dr. Benz will continue to teach religion in the History department). Religion is not going away, in fact it is more likely coming back (e.g., ‘The Revenge of God’). But, for Jewell it is mere cost-benefit and there’s no escaping that at this time in the college’s life. I understand that,” said Horne.

After he retires, Horne plans to build his piano tuning and technology business and will be an adjunct professor for Jewell when needed.  

“Plans after retirement? Well, to make a living, I will do what I have done at various stages of my life: build up my piano tuning and technology business. I am a registered piano technician in the Piano Technician’s Guild and have experience that goes back to my apprenticeship in a rebuilder’s shop between the ages of 13-17. I plan to stay in Liberty and see what challenges are around the corner,” Horne said.

When asked if he was excited about his retirement, Horne says part of the excitement is in the unknown of retirement.

“It’s the kind of excitement a runner feels when she is at the starting line, she doesn’t really know how it’s going to turn out, she hopes she doesn’t stumble over the starting block…she knows it’s a new race. So, it’s that kind of excitement.”

Horne says that the thing he will miss the most about Jewell is the community of learning.

“What I’ll miss about Jewell is the community of learning. This is hard to explain to people who don’t work where learning is taught. I’m the one who has probably shown the most progress in learning, simply from being around colleagues who are so thoughtful and smart, in so many disciplines, with so many different life experiences that motivated them to learn. I’ll miss that the most. There will always be good individual students and smart people; but community of learning is rare,” said Horne.

Horne hopes to be remembered as a member of this community of learning.

“When you talk about a legacy you realize that legacies themselves usually last half a generation if at all. So, I’m really not looking for that kind of legacy, I’m far more interested in, if students ever remember that they had a course with me, what I would like for them to remember is that I loved to learn and that really is it…if anything, I would like to be remembered as someone who really, really tried to induct students into a community of learning,” Horne said.

Photos by Mykala Crews.

[Editors’ Amendment: Phrasing within this article was susceptible to misinterpretation. Hence, the following phrase was removed and amended from this article: “This year, Jewell announced that religion courses would be discontinued.”]