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COVID-19: Exploring Faith Dimensions
DAILY HIGHLIGHT
#94
Juneteenth Edition: Black Churches Confront Compounding Crises

Religion plays a large role in the lived experiences of African-Americans, with an estimated 79 percent self-identifying as Christian. The majority of all African-Americans (53 percent) are associated with historically black Protestant churches, a powerful testimony to the complex histories that have shaped communities. These churches are hard hit by the novel coronavirus. At least 33 African-American bishops, reverends, and pastors who led various congregations around the country have died from the disease. The loss is of a friend and family member, but also of a spiritual leader. Bishop William Harrell Jr. was the head of St. James Community Full Gospel Church in Harlem when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and died at the age of 63.  That shocked the ministry and the family. He was, his son Jonathan Harrell said, “the backbone...our burden-bearer in the natural, the earthly vessel that was sent to handle things we were too weak to handle."

African-Americans are disproportionately contracting and dying from COVID-19. Though black people comprise just 13 percent of the United States population, they account for nearly a quarter of the country’s COVID-19 deaths. This reflects deep racial biases in the American health care system. Black clergy are responding in various ways to care, physically and spiritually, for their members. The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) has been around for almost 100 years and is the largest black Pentecostal denomination in the United States, servicing over 10,000 congregations around the world. Rev. Charles E. Blake, the presiding bishop of the COGIC, has formed a health commission to devise strategies to encourage church members to comply with CDC guidelines and prevent the spread of the disease. “Centuries of social and economic inequality most likely have caused Black Americans to suffer additional consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic, increasing the vulnerability of our COGIC members and worshipers. If we are to return to a semblance of the glorious church that we love, we must accept – follow – the recommendation of the experts and continue to engage in social distancing, isolation, and masking,” reads Rev. Blake’s statement on the COGIC website

Meanwhile, black churches in Dallas, Texas, have started opening up, not to gather in prayer (which are still held virtually), but as free coronavirus testing sites. Neighborhoods in South Dallas, where there are more people of color, have fewer sites offering coronavirus testing than whiter North Dallas just a few miles away. They also have less health care access more broadly. Frederick Haynes is senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church, which became the first of several black churches to host a free weekly coronavirus testing event. "Let's use our trusted institutions," Haynes says. "The most trusted institution in the black community is the black church."

The combination of the COVID-19 emergency and the enormous and protracted protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd has underscored the interlinking of urgent issues facing not only the United States but many nations: the predominant theme of inequality. Churches and other religious institutions are at the forefront in many situations in highlighting the urgent need for reflection and for action. 

(Based on: May 21, 2020, ABC article; June 2, 2020, Georgetown University report; June 13, 2020, NPR article; June 15, 2020, Forbes article.) 
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