The death cults

Recently there have been some hopeful signs that our policies of social distancing and physical isolation, for all their massive economic cost, are beginning to "flatten the curve" and slow the spread of covid-19.  But there's a powerful force working against us, actively facilitating and amplifying the further proliferation of the virus.  That force is religion.

Again and again over the last two weeks, the arrogance, ignorance and stupidity of religious leaders has spread misery and death or the threat thereof.  An Arkansas church held a group event that infected 34 people.  Another in Illinois held a revival meeting which sickened dozens more.  Yet another in Washington (the early epicenter of the pandemic in the US!) went ahead with choir practice, infecting at least three-quarters of the attendees.  Preachers in Louisiana and Florida have been arrested for defying bans on large gatherings (and learned nothing).  Over 70 infections have been linked to a single California church.  This Ohio megachurch looks like another such tragedy waiting to happen.  Liberty University's defiance of the rules has made it a viral hot-spot.  Almost every day, it seems, yet another example surfaces.  And remember, the people who attend these events aren't just putting themselves at risk.  They're endangering anyone else with whom they come in contact later -- you and me, potentially.

In some states where the governors are wingnuts, religionist influence has meant that religious gatherings are exempt from lockdown orders -- a gigantic loophole for the virus.

The pattern is not limited to the US.  In South Korea, much of the propagation of the disease was caused by the secretive Shincheonji Christian sect.  France's worst early infection cluster spread from an Evangelical church in Mulhouse.  In India, a Sikh religious guru returning from coronavirus-wracked Italy immediately went on a preaching tour of over a dozen villages before dying of covid-19, endangering thousands of people.  About one-third of that huge country's total confirmed covid-19 cases trace back to a single mass gathering at the Tablighi Jamaat Islamic missionary center in the Delhi area in mid-March.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty and limited technology make social distancing and working from home difficult in any case, churches persist in making things even worse by bringing together great numbers of people in dangerous conditions.

Why does this happen?  For one thing, in the US, Evangelicals are less willing to recognize the threat than most other groups are.  One Pennsylvania pastor even denounced those who take precautions as "sissies" and "pansies".  Much of religionist "thinking" about the pandemic is based on medieval drivel about "chastisement" and "a fallen world".  Many seem to believe that their religious devotions confer some kind of immunity, as with this already-notorious Ohio churchgoer who insisted she couldn't get sick because "I'm covered in Jesus's blood" (echoing religious songs about being "washed in the blood of the lamb" -- why do Abrahamic religions love such revolting metaphors?).  It's science-denial and flat-out superstition, something which has long been a hallmark of hard-core Christianity.

To give credit where it's due, the Catholic hierarchy has closed almost all its churches in response to the crisis.  But traditionalist Catholics have been raging against this.

The rejection of science in favor of medieval superstitious belief that magical objects and rituals can protect against disease is not harmless.  The conviction that participation in religious mumbo-jumbo is more important than life itself is not harmless.  The behavior triggered by these delusions now threatens thousands, perhaps millions, with a miserable death -- and all too many of those who die will be innocent victims who don't themselves follow such ludicrous ideas, but are inadvertently infected by the devout.  When this is over and the final body count is under way, never forget who played such an outsize role in making the disaster so much worse than it needed to be.