Headlines from Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and more
April 27, 2020
Covid-19 has killed multiple bishops and pastors within the nation’s largest black Pentecostal denomination (Washington Post: April 19, 2020: )
The Church of God in Christ, the country’s biggest African American Pentecostal denomination, has taken a deep and painful leadership hit with reports of at least a dozen to up to 30 bishops and prominent clergy dying of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Link to story: coronavirus.https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/04/19/church-of-god-in-christ-pentecostal-coronavirus-kills-bishops/
Harlem church mourning 11 members who died from COVID-19 (NBC News: April 22, 2020)
Two Southern Churches Reclose Indefinitely After Pastor Dies and Leaders, Churchgoers Catch Coronavirus (Newsweek: April 19, 2020)
Pastor Who Defied Social Distancing Dies After Contracting Covid-19, Church Says (New York Times, April 14, 2020)
Gerald O. Glenn, the bishop of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Va
Pastor who criticized coronavirus ‘mass hysteria’ dies from illness (New York Post, April 7, 2020)
This New York pastor says his parish lost 44 people to coronavirus
By Bethany Vale
There’s a voice in my left ear. It tells me to wear a mask to the store and avoid crowded venues because the COVID-19 epidemic is serious, hospitals are overwhelmed and many have died. The voice in my right ear is bold and reckless. It says, “Don’t worry about the Coronavirus because it's just a normal flu epidemic. Don't look at those pictures of lungs filled with fluid. It's all a conspiracy to destroy Trump's economy, keep you home and keep you depressed. Don't wear masks to stores because masks don't work. Forget that medical professionals wear them eight hours a day to protect themselves. Doctors don't know anything. They're just a bunch of hacks. Don’t mind those pictures of Jared Kushner and his Republican buddies wearing masks. Their lives are more important than yours, so please, do as they say and not as they do. Live your life as normal. Don't worry about sitting close to people. Get your ass to church! Never mind those ten news stories about pastors who died and spread corona to their congregations. It’s all fake news reported by FOX, CNN, and MSNBC. Be sure to enjoy the movie theater because if you don’t, those poor teenagers at the concession stand will lose their jobs, and that’s more important than your life and the safety of your children. Speaking of kids, you might as well let your children play in the sandbox with other kids to build their immune systems. If they get sick, they probably won’t even die. Just slap a little ointment on their COVID toes and put them to bed. Be sure to hug your grandchildren. If you get sick and die, it's okay because you're pretty old anyway, and you’re just a burden on our collapsing social security system. Don’t look to other nations for successful strategies to deal with the virus. Never mind that countries like Czechoslovakia and New Zealand dramatically slowed the virus with mandatory masking policies. Never mind that social distancing has been practiced since medieval times. Other countries are backward anyway. Screw those shit hole places."
My grandparents were big on going to church. If they were alive today, I would advise them not to go until the epidemic ends. That's love. Any voice that urges you to seek danger is not the voice of love. It's not God's voice. It's the voice of an uncaring ruler who needs the evangelical vote. Be honest. Would you tell your grandparents to go to church right now? I've been collecting church news stories for a blog. It's horrifying. There's a lot more to this than the isolated story I decided to post. I'm all for the country getting back to work with precautions, but we should not be encouraging the elderly--our most vulnerable segment of the population-- to enter crowds. Most of us wouldn't even let our teenagers attend a crowed dance hall right now. I'm all for getting the economy rolling in most respects, but churches and stadiums are a different matter. With so many people packed into tightly spaced seats, the potential for the virus to spread is greatly magnified. When large numbers of people catch the virus from one event, they bring the virus home to their families and to others in the community. The cases can easily magnify exponentially. The idea is to stop the spread so that we can get the numbers down and go back to a normal life one day. If we continue encouraging people to visit large churches, concert halls and stadiums, we could prolong this crisis for many years. Would Trump himself set foot in a church right now? Would he approve of his young son's desire to go to a church or concert hall? He's an admitted lifelong germophope. I'll bet he's washing his hands twenty times a day right now. He was caught on film angrily telling his chief of staff to get out of his office because the guy coughed! Our highest level Republican officers have been caught on camera wearing masks, yet Republican rhetoric urges us not to wear masks and not to avoid crowds. The message is crystal clear. "Do as I say and not as I do." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5LZBDrjVY
Over a dozen classified reports that were presented to President Trump in January and February included stark warnings about the spread of the coronavirus. Instead of telling us, he called the virus a democrat hoax and said it's no worse than a normal flu. While the general public went around spreading this disease and dramatically increasing the numbers, three Republican senators and one Democrat senator dumped millions in stock. Now that we finally know how dangerous and widespread the virus really is, Trump wants to force the governors to reopen churches, and he actively encourages people to get back to church. Any voice that urges you to seek danger is not the voice of love. It's not God's voice. It's the voice of an uncaring ruler who needs the evangelical vote. Below, I have posted JUST ONE news story about two pastors who died after spreading the virus to their congregations. I can show you several more news reports like this. I've been collecting church news stories for a blog. It's horrifying. I'm all for the country getting back to work with precautions, but we should not be encouraging the elderly--our most vulnerable segment of the population-- to enter crowds. I'd love to get the economy rolling, but churches and stadiums are a different matter. With so many people are packed into tightly spaced seats, the potential for the virus to spread is greatly magnified. When large numbers of people catch the virus from one event, they can bring the virus home to their families and to others in the community. The cases can easily magnify exponentially. The idea is to stop the spread so that we can get the numbers down and go back to a normal life one day. We could prolong this crisis for many years. Would Trump himself set foot in a church right now? He's a lifelong germophobe. He was once caught on film angrily telling his chief of staff to get out of his office because the guy coughed! (I can provide links to footage of him doing that.) Our highest Republican officers have been caught on camera wearing masks, yet Republican rhetoric still urges us not to wear masks and not to avoid crowds. The message is crystal clear. "Do as I say and not as I do." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN5LZBDrjVY://www.newsweek.com/two-southern-churches-reclose...
I keep telling people that the freedom to debate is a blessing beyond measure. Without opposing forces in the media, we'd have a situation like in China where the government controls the press and only tells us what it wants us to know. Back in November, when the senior judicial analyst of Fox news sided A recent study showed that half the Twitter accounts pushing to 'reopen America' are bots anyway.