GOD, OUR FORTRESS IN PANDEMIC AND CALAMITY
“In the actual moment history is made, it is usually made in terror and confusion” Tom Junod scribed in his iconic “The Falling Man” reflection on the September 11, 2001 attacks. Junod rightly observed the relentless responsibility of the photographer to record what they see knowing that “history” will formulate around their images later. In the moment, it just happens in chaos and blood. As we weather our own tumultuous season, we must consider how we will distill the lessons of this moment from the snapshots of our experiences.
In 1918, millions died of influenza, and history, still reeling from the First World War, hustled to catch up. Christian faith and practice also hurried to meet the cultural whirlwind of war and pandemic. It was then that the editors of the The Book of Common Prayer took up the task to update the Bible-study and devotional tool used daily by their Anglican churches and other related denominations. However, since these edits took years to progress through the vetting process, a particular reading responding to the 1918 pandemic did not appear in print until 1928. By all accounts, this seemed to be a decade too late. Yet, as if dictated by Providence, this prayer appeared the same year as another wave of the dreaded H1N1 Influenza burned its way across the globe. Under the title of “In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality,” the prayer turned the reader towards God:
O Most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee to you for comfort. Deliver us, we beseech you, from our peril; give strength and skill to all those who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure; and grant that, perceiving how frail and uncertain our life is, we may apply our hearts unto that heavenly wisdom which leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[1]
The powerful disease served to remind so many of their own weakness. While some suffered spiritually from this power vacuum in their lives, the prayer called worshippers to use this moment to return God to this seat of Lordship. Only He possessed superior wisdom, power, and certainty. Like any crisis, time would tell if the lessons of revival would last. Of course, the Anglicans weren’t the only ones attempting to make the calamity of 1918-19 a learning experience. Public health officials rallied to codify habits and policies in the American psyche but with mixed results. Dr. Nancy Tomes wrote of this aspirational viewpoint in 2010:
“The influenza pandemic offered a teaching moment in which masculine resistance to hygiene rules associated with mothers, school marms, and Sunday School teachers could be replaced with a more modern, manly form of public health, steeped in discipline, patriotism, and personal responsibility.”
In 1920, the Montana State Board of Health pleaded:
Our memories of this and other epidemics should not fail. Let us hope that through preparedness in health organization and in the education of new generations we may prevent a repetition of the terrific losses which influenza has const in the past three years.[2]
In reality, the public health lessons-learned were not long remembered. Fortunately, the 1928 outbreak was much weaker than its more famous sibling, but it still caused widespread illness and death. In 1930, Edwin O. Jordan reflected on the recent return of the disease in the American Journal of Public Health with the sad commentary: “in the field of prevention little real progress has been made.”[3]Tomes added that “should pandemic influenza return in its guise as “destroyer and teacher” we would no doubt have many humbling lessons to learn.” If so many of the public health lessons were forgotten in less than 10 years, what became of the spiritual lessons learned?
Lisa Fischbeck considered the same question a few months into the events of 2020:
In this season we are also invited to consider the ways the coronavirus pandemic will shape our worldview and that of our spiritual descendants in decades that follow. Who and what will we trust? Will we be more inclined to hoard out of scarcity or to give out of abundance? How will we make decisions, plan for the future, assume certainty and control, or not? How will we talk about God, about Church, about sacrifice? How will we pray?[4]
Fischbeck and thousands of others today echo much of the same language of past health officials and boards. Can our experiences become teachable history in the coming years, or will they fade quickly? Perhaps a glimmer of hope for Christian believers rests in the reality that disease has historically been a formative moment for religious faith. The reformer Martin Luther helps us answer these modern questions when we reflect on his personal experience with the deadly trinity of bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic plagues that ravaged medieval and early modern Europe. Ray Howell illuminates Luther’s context nearly two centuries after the infamous Black Death of 1347-51:
“For over 300 years there were outbreaks of the disease, including the summer of 1527 in Wittenberg. The entire university left town, most professors and their families fleeing the city, but not Martin Luther. He felt God was calling him to minister to those dying of the plague. He was ready to do battle with the Prince of Darkness himself.”[5]
And face the Devil, he did. Two of his brothers died along with numerous clergy who offered hope to the sufferers. Luther tirelessly served the sick while fighting his own depression and the justifiably terrifying risk to his pregnant wife Katie. Howell continues:
The personal strain of living in this world that was “devil filled” threatened to undo Luther. He was slipping into depression, an ancient foe that Luther battled his entire life. But he found great strength and solace in the word of God, especially Psalm 46. “God is our fortress and our strength, an ever-present help in time of trouble.”
Composing the now famous hymn most likely between 1527-1529, Luther drew on personal and community sorrow to bolster a firm reliance on God. When the world felt its most unsteady, Christ offered the only reliable foundation:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing:
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work his woe;
His craft and power are great,
And armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God's own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Today, we must consider how our Christian response to our own time of great calamity will prepare us for future challenges. Like a stone of remembrance to our struggles-past, these spiritual mile-markers stacked during hardship will wait as ready beacons to guide us on our next trek through the Valley of Shadow. Will we forget our unfailing bulwark as we have forgotten so many other lessons? Luther urges us forward with confidence that we have hope on our side: “Christ Jesus, it is He!” Onward into the abyss, our Polaroid-memory snapping away as experience develops into history.
[1]https://www.dailyoffice2019.com/morning_prayer/2020-9-8/
[2]From The Tenth Biennial Report of the State Board of Health, 1919-1920, 63. Quoted in: “No More War, No More Plague:” The Spanish Influenza Pandemic Toll on Montana,” by Todd S. Harwell, Greg S. Holzman, and Steven D. Helgerson, https://mhs.mt.gov/Portals/11/education/WWI/HarwellFlu.pdf.
[3]Nancy Tomes, “Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862334/, 20.
[4]“In Times of Great Sickness and Mortality,” (25 March 2020), https://www.ecfvp.org/blogs/3770/in-times-of-great-sickness-and-mortality#jump.
[5]“One of our greatest Christian hymns was written in a global pandemic,” https://www.the-dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/columns/2020/05/15/ray-howell-iii-one-of-our-greatest-christian-hymns-was-written-in-global-pandemic/41759063/