LFP LONGFORM: Is our faith up to the challenge as pandemic drags on?
Article content
As major religions mark holy milestones this month, we look at how COVID-19 has shaken our faith — that basic confidence that life is worth living in spite of it all — and trust in leaders, institutions, science, even each other. But there is hope, too, rooted in our shared history, beliefs and triumphs. Dan Brown reports.
“Faith has been broken/Tears must be cried”
— Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
When someone uses the word “faith,” it’s usually in a religious sense. That’s because most of us have a grasp of what it means to have faith — or not — in a supreme being, creator or saviour.
But in a crisis, human beings put their faith in a lot of things, not just God.
Political leaders. Science. Our institutions. The health-care system. Progress. The military. Our fellow humans. The future. Long-term care homes.
Our faith in all of those has been tested since March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, plunging us into an ordeal that has dominated our daily lives and claimed nearly three million lives worldwide so far.
Especially at this time of year, the religious among us turn their thoughts to matters of faith. Sunday is Easter for Christians, as well as the final day of Passover for Jewish people, and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in less than two weeks on April 13.
Pandemic restrictions have clobbered places of worship; though Zoom is a great tool, there’s no getting around the fact that being barred from in-person fellowship reinforces the strangeness of our lives at this moment in history.
In fact, more than a year into the pandemic, we only now may be coming to grips with what COVID-19 has wrought, with what it means to lack faith — a type of confidence or trust that is necessary to survive and thrive on this planet.
You name a type of faith, and COVID-19 has left it shaken.
Julius-Kei Kato has been teaching religious studies at King’s University College, a Western University affiliate, for 15 years. “Before it is attached to anything explicitly religious, I consider faith as a fundamental human attitude of trust, a capacity to trust in something, someone,” he noted. In Western religions, that something was traditionally a benevolent and compassionate divine being.
“From that, I define faith as the decision to continue to trust that reality (or life) is fundamentally good . . . despite all the uncertainty, suffering and absurdity that are part of it,” he said.
Does faith have a function?
“Faith’s role is to give us an optimistic attitude to life, an attitude that ‘believes’ that life is worth living in spite of everything,” Kato said.
According to the religious scholar, in its most basic sense, faith is what makes us get up in the morning to face the day and go on with life.
That sure sounds like everything COVID-19 is in the midst of destroying.
“It definitely has been a time when patience has been tested, trust has been tested,” said astrophysicist Parshati Patel, a science communicator with Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.
Her challenge has been to explain the scientific process to people so they are more comfortable having faith in science in the teeth of this pandemic. “Not everyone has an in-depth knowledge of how science works. There is so much misinformation out there and sometimes disinformation,” she said. “That is a very hard path to navigate for people: Who to trust?”
Patel observes that some have trouble understanding why public health guidelines can change over time. When researchers get more information, more evidence to use as a basis for their conclusions, they revise their findings. But that doesn’t always sit well with the everyday person.
“I understand the process and the amount of work and the amount of collaboration that goes into (something like a COVID-19 vaccine),” she said, but not everyone does.
Then, during this bleak time, came a ray of hope from an unlikely source: The landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars last month.
It wasn’t just science geeks who made a big fuss over the interplanetary arrival, Patel said. “It wasn’t just the people who normally get excited.”
The cheers the landing prompted — not just at mission control, but on social media, too — were like thunder because the symbolism was clear: It was an achievement that said to humans back on Earth, if we have the scientific and engineering capacity to land a probe on a distant world, we surely also have the ability to beat this COVID-19 thing.
“It’s not hugely surprising” the collective faith has been tested over the last 12 months, said Western historian Jonathan Vance.
“We like to know that we are in good hands,” he said, whether that means putting faith in an individual leader, an institution or even a process, like the legal system.
One of Vance’s specialties is life on the home front during the world wars.
As the First World War ended, and the Spanish flu epidemic began, Canadians were still convinced of the rightness of their cause — they kept the faith — because war-weariness hadn’t spread as much as we in 2021 might think, he said.
“We know there was dissent of all kinds,” he said. “But I’ve also been struck by how little dissent there was.”
National confidence, he added, is directly connected to the morale of a people. Though faith in political leaders has been declining over the decades, that doesn’t mean Canadians are totally without hope.
“I think we still gravitate towards people who seem to know what they’re doing, like our health leaders,” he said. While politicians politicize things, Canadians count on health leaders “to give us the straight goods.”
A better understanding of history would give us more faith in the future, Vance added.
“(COVID-19 is) not unprecedented. All of this stuff, we’ve seen before in previous pandemics,” he said. “None of this is in any way a surprise to people who understand their history. We think we have it tough, but not really.”
One of the courses Vance teaches is called Zombie Apocalypse: The History of Panic and Paranoia. Pointing to the rise of online cults like QAnon, the historian says we are going through an “anti-enlightenment” at this point in human evolution: “This is anti-rational thinking. I think we need to have more faith in our rational mind.”
And what happens in the worst case, if we lose all faith?
“Someone once said, if you lose faith, if you lose hope, you lose everything,” said Sandra Clark-Baker, a leader with the London Spiritualist Church. “The darker side of life is evidenced in those who give up on faith, give up on hope. For lack of better description, they become broken, empty.”
“Banding together in faith builds better humanity,” she said.
WE ASKED FAITH COMMUNITIES: HOW HAS COVID-19 CHANGED FAITH?
“Through the last year, we have learned more about the ways in which we do, and do not, trust one another. We’ve seen how isolating and unjust life can become for some of us. We have seen again that society only functions well where the people and institutions are trustworthy, genuinely seeking the well-being of all. Through the pandemic, some people have lost faith and others have gained it. It has been a very isolating, painful experience for most people, but it also brought some groups of people closer together. I would say that the pandemic brought most religious communities closer together — certainly, not physically, but in terms of how clearly we see the needs of others and our common purpose in responding to that.”
— Bishop Todd Townshend of the London-based Anglican Diocese of Huron
“The Catholic faith has not changed during the pandemic. It is the same Jesus Christ, the same Gospel, the same good news about our salvation. I think we can see ways that we as Catholics have changed in living out our faith. Our faith has helped us during the pandemic to appreciate more deeply that the lives of all of us in our communities are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people often overlooked — PSWs, caregivers, grocery store workers, transport workers. We have become more aware of our brothers and sisters who are alone and isolated, especially during this pandemic, and how we must reach out and support them.”
— Bishop Ronald Fabbro of the Roman Catholic Diocese of London
“From the Muslim perspective . . . it’s drawn us closer to faith. It’s really made us think about life, about how fleeting things are. The only thing that is permanent is God and God’s message. We had to reflect on that. (The pandemic) might be a message from on high. A little slap on the wrist (meaning) there’s some stuff that we need to tweak and polish up on and improve. Maybe this little jolt or alarm will help us improve ourselves individually and collectively . . . all scenarios, all possibilities are on the table. Really, you’re not just (stuck) inside your own house (during the pandemic). You have to go inside yourself.”
— Ali Chahbar, member of the outreach committee at the London Muslim Mosque
“Faith may be a constant, but our relationship with faith has clearly changed. This is a typical individual process over one’s lifetime . . . but during and after the current pandemic, our communal or generational relationship with faith has come into sudden, simultaneous transformation . . . more than anything, online services and programs have reminded us how important the ‘IRL’ (in real life) experience is to community. Whether you are a hugger or not, you probably miss being with real live people walking around and talking. And of course the food — we Jewish communities love to gather together over food. We will eagerly embrace the opportunity to ‘nosh’ freely once again!”
— Rabbi Debra Stahlberg Dressler of Temple Israel of London
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.