God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath

by N.T. Wright

For the last three hundred years the western world has regarded ‘religion’ (the very word has changed its meaning to accommodate this new viewpoint) as a private matter: ‘what someone does with their solitude’. The Christian faith as a whole has been reduced, in the public mind, to a ‘private’ movement in the sense that – so many say – it should have no place in public life. Thus I can still go shopping in the crowded little off-licence (in America, the liquor store) on the corner; but I cannot go and sit in the ancient, prayer-soaked chapel across the street. Worship becomes invisible. Shutting churches will appear to collude with this. By saying that we will temporarily abolish corporate worship and join with others only on live-streamed services from the vicar’s living room, we may seem to be agreeing that really we are just a group of like-minded individuals pursuing our rather arcane private hobby. The danger with e-worship is that it can turn into P-worship – the Platonic vision of ‘the flight of the alone to the alone’. Since there are cultural pressures in that direction already, it’s important that we should recognise the danger.