Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fifth Plague of Egypt
Lockdown
AR Kneen asks some awkward questions
Freedom used to matter. People used to care about it. We used to say: ‘it’s a free country’. Debates on television mentioned ‘liberty’, ‘rights’, ‘civil liberties’, ‘privacy’, ‘independence’ and the like. But not now that the country is pretty much under house arrest. People are advised not leave their homes. Over-zealous policeman are stopping people allegedly out without good cause. All businesses not deemed ‘essential’ were told to close, making hundreds of thousands of people unemployed. Whereas, in the past, the closure of a plant resulting in the loss of several thousand jobs would be worthy of discussion, hardly a word is said now on behalf of hundreds of thousands of unpaid people. GP surgeries are closed. Operations, medical procedures and treatments have been cancelled. Churches, too, are shut down and sporting events, concerts and other gatherings are prohibited. Clubs, restaurants and pubs – all shut down. Schools are closed. Suddenly, the idea that children must be in school or their parents will have to answer to the state is set aside. Free assembly is banned. Human contact is severely curtailed. The new term ‘social-distancing’ is incessantly mentioned. This pertains to physical distance, which is prescribed at 2 metres.
Some individuals are so gripped by fear that they are unable to process information properly. People are informing on their neighbours, as often happens under totalitarian regimes. Indeed, the police have set up hotline websites to facilitate informing. The media stoke the spirit of fear. There is little rational discussion of facts, of alternatives – and nothing is put into context. There are suicides and women are reportedly being beaten behind closed doors. Continue reading
Thoughts on the First Easter
The Entombment of Christ, Caravaggio
Thoughts on the First Easter
by David Ashton
Desperate times, desperate measures. A global “Act of God” has significantly impacted on “faith” communities. Churches everywhere are closed to worshippers and communicants, because of another oriental virus. The Pope at Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury recited the Lord’s Prayer alongside “millions around the world” – with what heavenly answers we are not told. Christians have gone into a catacomb of prudent self-isolation, like everyone else.
Could this be a punishment, like the ancient deluge, for human impiety? Or a sign, along with earthquakes, locusts, and rumours of war, of the Second Coming of Christ, a salutary surprise indeed for those who do not even believe in the First? If no minor miracles cure the lepers of this modern disease, is a major miracle on its way, at long last, to shut down the whole mess?
With more livelihoods threatened than lives, the Bishop of Chelmsford compared our isolated households to fourth century hermitages, hoping our cities would resemble those north African deserts, its occupants meditating on the walk of Jesus to the cross. “On Easter Day, a new reality was born. When this is over, may God spare us from ‘getting back to normal’. We await a resurrection.”[1] Sanctimonious pulpit patter aside, how precisely the ecclesiastical bureaucracy conceives “resurrection” surely directs enquiry into its Biblical source. Continue reading →
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