Coronavirus, Christianity, and the Great Stupid Rebellion

Reliquary of St. Cyprian

I remember learning, in Confirmation Class, that Christianity passed from an outcast religion to the spiritual mainstream in the middle Third Century AD. Once oppressed by the Empire, because it preached that power came from somewhere other than Rome’s blessing, Christianity became first acceptable, then widespread; then, by the Fourth Century, it became the Empire’s official state religion. What, we awestruck middle schoolers all wondered, had happened?

The conventional Christian explanation is: Cyprian’s plague. Named for the Carthaginian bishop who left the most detailed accounts, this poorly understood disease wracked the Empire for thirteen years, leaving so many dead that the Empire’s two economic drivers, the military and agriculture, both nearly collapsed. Yet somehow the Empire survived, and Christianity had multitudes of new converts. Supposedly, outsiders were impressed by Christians’ handling of the plague.

When imperial bureaucrats, the aristocracy, and priests of the state religion fled, Christians brought blankets, food, and clean water into the infection zones. They believed (according to the conventional accounts) that, if Jesus touched lepers and menstruating women, two major classes of unclean people in His era, that they shouldn’t fear touching plague patients. Some Christians, according to Cyprian, contracted the disease. But survivors credited Christians with their survival.

This lesson struck me during recent news of how American congregations have handled the COVID-19 outbreak. We’ve heard news of megachurches holding packed services, risking hundreds, even thousands of lives. Though it’s too early to have consistent statistics, regional reports suggest church may be one of America’s largest vectors of infection. People are dying needlessly in the name of God.

In fairness, I probably understand these motivations. These Christians believe their faith will protect them from suffering, and if they become sick they will, as described in Cyprian’s sermons, become ennobled and saintly. Avoiding church, for these Christians, suggests lack of faith in God’s healing principles and the life made new by Christ. They refuse to live in fear; some, I suspect, yearn to become martyrs to the cause.

Yet I think this misses the lessons St. Cyprian taught. Those early Christians didn’t become martyrs because they didn’t fear death; they weren’t holy because they kept attending church. They became holy because they braved the outside world, the exact opposite of what the rich and powerful did. Today, news trickles in that the rich are fleeing us peons, fearing for their lives. Christians have an opportunity to flow in the opposite direction.

Instead, Christians, especially White Christians, are congregating to publicly display their fearlessness, mainly to each other. Like drag racers and amateur daredevils, these would-be modern martyrs mostly seek one another’s approbation and glory. They aren’t rushing into short-staffed hospitals with blankets and clean water, as Cyprian’s Christians did; if anything, they’re denying the reality of the world to receive a stained-glass version of this world’s glory.

I’m reminded of the German Peasants’ Revolt of 1524. Inspired by Luther’s Reformation, German citizens rebelled against the Holy Roman Empire, and also against the Roman church. As in Rome, Germany had a state religion, and church and state conspired to maintain social order, with themselves on top. Citizens demanding government reform, plain-language church services, and “communion in both kinds,” rose up in arms against these twin tyrants of power.

Most important for our purposes, these rebels believed that, having God’s implicit blessing, they were impervious to violence. They believed that swords could not cut them, that bullets (guns were a new and terrifying technology) couldn’t pierce them. To nobody’s surprise, they were wrong. So many peasants died brutally that the Reformation nearly ended, and Martin Luther, then a fugitive from the gallows, risked death to return and quell the uprising.

Today’s megachurch Christians apparently think themselves heirs to St. Cyprian’s noble martyrs, refusing to fear the disease wracking the land. But if their faith doesn’t motivate them to comfort the suffering, while fighting the unjust powers that allowed this disease to fester, they belong to a different class of Christians. They’re closer to Thomas Müntzer’s doomed Radical Reformation. And if they don’t change the path they’re on, they’ll die just as uselessly.

St. Cyprian gives Christians a model to follow. Multiple sources, both Christian and secular, have reminded us recently that Cyprian’s Plague was a massive turning point, for Christianity specifically and Western civilization generally. But Cyprian’s Christians were brave and holy, not foolhardy. When I see megachurch congregations admiring themselves for fearlessness, I don’t see sacred bravery, I see stupidity. Sometimes, God lets the stupid just die.