A United Methodist Insight Column
Whenever disaster strikes, United Methodists are typically among the first on the scene through the United Methodist Committee on Relief. UMCOR is unusual among charities in that 100 percent of its contributions go directly to aid; the United Methodist Church pays UMCOR’s administrative costs.
That’s why UMCOR Sunday is so important – it provides the funds for administration to keep the aid flowing out to those who need it. Relief funds come from the generous donations of individual United Methodists and congregations, all of which go directly to the designated need, such as U.S. disasters. By giving on UMCOR Sunday, we help people twice over.
Click here to learn more about how and when you and your congregation can observe UMCOR Sunday this month. Be sure to follow the link to stories about how UMCOR has helped people around the world. Those stories will lift your spirits as we trudge on through the coronavirus pandemic.
Prayer provides COVID coping tool
Here we are on the first day of March already, and yet something of a pall hangs over U.S. society and the United Methodist Church at the same time. While United Methodist movers and shakers are trying to fathom what a second postponement of General Conference will mean for the denomination’s future, folks in pew and pulpit are coping instead with the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, AKA The Plague That Will Not Pass.
One of the newsletters that I read regularly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, carries an interesting article in its March 1 issue: “The psychological pandemic: Can we confront our death anxiety?” In the article psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton and psychoanalyst Charles B. Strozier examine how America’s denial of death has been exacerbated by the constant unseen threat of the coronavirus.
Drawing upon their professional experiences, the two experts conclude that the pandemic has layered another level of death fear on top of the twin dangers of nuclear threat (yes, it still exists) and climate crisis. Because of COVID restrictions and the virus’ invisibility, people are unable to mourn adequately for the 500,000-plus people who have died from COVID-19, nor are they able to shake their dread of being infected themselves. Not even the advent of vaccines is relieving these fears. They write: “They feel stalked by it [COVID-19] but unable to find the inner resources to deal with its ubiquitous effects.”
Contrast the psychological pandemic with another kind of “pandemic” – a widespread interest in prayer and how it works. Emily McFarlan Miller of Religion News Service looks at three recent books on prayer that offer both existential reflections on prayer as a coping mechanism during the pandemic and as a spiritual discipline that transcends transient crises. In other words, spiritual experts are finding that those who pray regularly, even when it seems their hearts aren’t in it, cope better with the ongoing burden of the pandemic and are able to foresee a time when the pandemic will end.
As much as I appreciate the psychological assessment of pandemic fear, I’m in favor of prayer for dealing with the many crises that confront us now. After a year of participating in the twice-a-day online prayer sessions held by Insight’s sponsoring congregation St. Stephen UMC in Mesquite, TX, I’ve learned about more varieties of prayer and how prayer accesses a connection to the divine that dispels fear and engenders faith and hope. I can’t explain it in psychological terms; I only know that when I miss a prayer session now, I feel uneasy and incomplete. My fellow church members often say the same thing.
I’d like to know what kind of role regular prayer plays today among individual United Methodists and their congregations during this lengthy pandemic. Click here to email your stories to Insight for consideration for a future column.
Media Mentions as of March 1, 2021
Joy As Cyclone Idai Survivors Receive New Homes – New Zimbabwe.com
White nationalists are once again using Christian symbols to spread hate – USA Today
Colorado White supremacist who planned to blow up synagogue sentenced to federal prison – The Denver Post *
The Equality Act can become law — if Democrats will add religious exemptions – The Washington Post *White evangelicals’ dominance of the GOP has turned it into the party of resistance – CNNI, too, was once a soldier of the apocalypse: Why White evangelicals must choose between reform and American extremism – Time
Minnesota churches build faith in COVID-19 vaccine, give shots of hope to those in need – Star Tribune *
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Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.