Doing Theology in Pandemics

Facing Viruses, Violence, and Vitriol

Zachary Moon

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666709889, 9781666709896
• eBook ISBN: 9781666709902
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The COVID-19 era will be remembered not only for the tragic global public health crisis, but also for the continued police violence against persons of color, the courageous activism that continues to rise up to confront racialized violence in all its forms, and the perpetuation of white nationalist rhetoric from the highest government elected offices. Everywhere we look, we find trauma and pain, and we find resilience and resolve. This volume, featuring leading theological scholars and religious leaders, is rich in analysis of the plagues we are facing and equally rich in the resources, practices, and inspirations that will carry our efforts to build a more just world.

1

The Pandemic Paradox

George Floyd, Moral Injury, and the Sustainability of Social Movements

Rita Nakashima Brock

After months of devastating pandemic news, George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Witnesses at the scene expressed disbelief, dismay, shock, outrage, horror, and grief, and several tried to save him. There had been many, many more police killings of black men, women, and children before, often with video documentation. Why then, was there such a massive global response to this particular killing?

One reason, I suggest, was the global pandemic itself, which created the conditions for an apocalypse, an unveiling of moral truth in the midst of the collapse of powerful malevolent systems. US media coverage had maintained a steady stream of distressing news about the deep public divide on following guidelines to contain the virus as infection rates climbed, a division sown by an incompetent president supported by White supremacists. Media stories began to use the term “systemic racism” as death rates in Black, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and Latinx populations rose faster and higher than in White populations.1 Reports also began to correlate the president’s use of the term “China Virus” with a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.2 By the end of May, racism had already become a major, pandemic-related news story.

During our first one hundred days of solitude, there were no palliative “bread and circuses”3 to distract a distraught public. Without the collective amusements of live sports events or theater performances, movie premieres or festivals, dinner parties, and holiday celebrations, our one shared experience in real time was pandemic news. The video of the murder of George Floyd buried news of COVID-19 as, in our confinement, his excruciating death unfolded before our collective, unnerved eyes. In the United States, it became the most viewed news story in June, by far, despite both the plague and the crucial political primary season.4

The world was able to watch the agony of a nine-minute murder in its entirety because, unlike panic or pursuit shootings with jerky, blurry images and muffled sounds, there was no moment when news reports stopped or blurred the video to avoid showing the graphic taking of a human life. The killing unfolded in real time, as three policemen crushed the air from Mr. Floyd’s body and the main killer “took a knee” on his neck—I believe as a deliberate mockery of athletes’ protests against police killings of Black lives.5 As Floyd’s murderer proceeded implacably, we became witnesses who shared the anguish of the bystanders desperately trying to save him until he took his last breath.

#BlackLivesMatter protests erupted on all seven continents—in the midst of a global pandemic.6 In many countries and US cities, protesters included lists of names of people who had been killed by police, and conversations about racism and police violence happened in places where it had never been discussed before.7 On June 6, hundreds of surfers, a sport not usually associated with social justice movements, held a memorial “Paddle Out” ritual for Mr. Floyd and other Black victims, organized by Black Girls Surf in Santa Monica, California. It took place on a segregated beach that, despite desegregation in 1927, was used by Black surfers for many subsequent decades as the only safe beach. Paddle Outs were also held at many US beaches, in the waters of the Pacific Islands, and along the shores of four-continents.8

The US protests were unprecedented. Racism in policing became impossible to deny to the point that some White people, who had never joined a protest before, were shocked enough to organize Black Lives Matter protests. Protests erupted in 40% of all counties and in all fifty states, as well as in five US-occupied territories—even in towns and suburbs that had few, if any, Black residents. Black Lives Matter signs appeared in front of White places of worship, businesses, and people’s homes. Eight to ten percent of the population participated in one or more protests, and 93% of them were nonviolent.9 Demonstrations lasted nearly the entire month of June as the anti-racism protests expanded in focus. Confederate monuments began to be contested and removed; previously published books on racism topped best seller lists; and momentum gathered to declare Juneteenth a national holiday.10

According to one social scientist, about three and a half percent of a country’s population is required for a nonviolent movement to cause a revolution or change in government, and nonviolent movements are the most effective at making such change.11 Emerging after the killing of Trayvon Martin, #BlackLivesMatter has become the largest mass movement in US history. As a nonviolent, Black-initiated, anti-racism movement, it is decentralized, attentive to intersectional issues, and has three women founders, of whom two are queer.12 It is also the most diverse in race, national origin, ethnicity, age, and gender identity.13 While historically, social change in the US has been accomplished by a small minority of activists, one hopeful sign for political and social change emerging from the current pandemic apocalypse is its sheer size. Public engagement far exceeded the three and a half percent threshold at its height.

George Floyd’s murder also resonated with the Christian passion story, which is one reason it touched some people deeply enough to send them outdoors to risk their lives during a plague. Like the crucifixion of Jesus, witnesses, many of them female, watched a man die a slow, excruciating death at the hands of official agents of the state. As the spirit was cruelly crushed from his body, he commended his spirit into his deceased mother’s hands. His recorded last words were: “I can’t breathe” and “mama,” which motivated White suburban women in Portland, Oregon, to create a “wall of moms” to stand between the protesters and police forces in several US cities. The group was later disbanded due to its failures to work with Black women, but in its short life, it was another sign of the awakening in White America to the long history of official violence conducted with impunity, to systemic racism, and to White privilege.14

The moral outrage that erupted in June 2020 was global, massive, and heartening, as people with privilege awoke to systemic racism and joined the ranks of Black ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Pandemic Paradox
• Chapter 2: Re-Storying and the Joy of Becoming
• Chapter 3: #BlackFearsMatter
• Chapter 4: Feeling Our Way through an Apocalypse
• Chapter 5: Traumatized Bodies and the Slow Work of Theology
• Chapter 6: Mourning, Raging, Loving, Learning
• Chapter 7: Readings for Resilience
• Chapter 8: You Can’t Do This Alone
• Chapter 9: Religious, Spiritual, and Moral Stress of Religious Leaders in Pandemics