What the Church once knew about health and safety but is always in danger of forgetting

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Pastor Foley

The church has now entered into dangers far greater and longer lasting than those presented by any virus. We have ceded to the state the right to define for the church the meanings of health and safety, and we have consented to constraining our community life according to state-mandated means to achieve these definitions.

The church has an inviolable responsibility to articulate, steward, and model the holistic theological understanding and practice of health and safety entrusted to it through its Lord, its scriptures, and its faithful members throughout history. Questions of health and safety are never value-neutral, nor are they “secular” questions outside of the church’s realm of responsibility, experience, and expertise. The church’s historical and scriptural frameworks of health and safety, while not inherently incompatible with nor mutually exclusive of those of the state, are not identical to the state’s, nor subordinate to them, nor less comprehensive, nor less binding on the Christian, nor less attentive to physical well-being, nor less caring of those outside the community of faith.

To the contrary, they are eminently more so. The church is required to include in its understanding and practice factors not recognized or regarded by the state. Where the church’s models share factors with the state’s models, the church’s models often weigh those factors substantially differently. For example, Christian models of health and safety emphatically reject the inherent problematization of assembly, the prioritization of one’s own personal protection, and the practice of isolation as a preventive or therapeutic strategy.

When the church’s practice dissents from that required by the state, it does so humbly and transparently, seeking concord where possible, and accepting punishment where concord is not possible.

The church’s historical practices of health and safety are deeply principled and arise from millennia of reflection, sacrifice, and prayer. It is not these practices, but rather the uncritical abrogation of them in favor of submission to the state’s alternative practices, that the church must regard as reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous.

The church need not and cannot constrain its theological, communal, and financial responsibilities and resources to a state-defined, state-administered model of health and safety. This is especially true in the worst of times, because it is in such times that our understandings and practices of health and safety are needed the most.

The church has been on the front line of the battle against plagues for thousands of years. It is a battle-hardened, experienced, wise, compassionate, collaborative, humble leader when it remembers what it already knows. If the greatest care that a church can think to show its neighbors during times like these is not to meet, then we have already succumbed to something far worse than the Coronavirus.

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Coronavirus hasn’t slowed the persecution of Christians in China

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Pastor Foley

The Coronavirus is not the only new challenge facing Chinese Christians this winter. A new and stricter set of regulations governing churches went into effect in February. And these new regulations are likely to challenge Chinese Christians long after the Coronavirus outbreak is controlled.

Because the news from China is all about the Coronavirus, people may think that persecution of Chinese Christians by the government is somehow “on hold”. But the virus has given authorities new excuses and ways to crack down. For example, in Korea many churches switched from live worship services to live streaming of services online, due to the Coronavirus, whereas in China, churches went from live services to no services, as a government crackdown on live streaming of religious services continues.

But the live streaming ban is only a small part of the renewed Chinese government crackdown on churches that is happening even during the Coronavirus outbreak. In November 2019 the State Administration of Religious Affairs released Order 13, the “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups” which went into effect February 1. Article 17 of that Order states: “Religious organizations must spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as national laws, regulations, rules to religious personnel and religious citizens, educating religious personnel and religious citizens to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, supporting the socialist system, adhering to and following the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Chinese churches continue to show boldness and resilience despite the wave of crackdowns that began in February 2018. In September 2018, 439 Chinese pastors signed a declaration of faith written by Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church explaining why they could not involve themselves and their churches in the government’s political wishes but instead must only focus on preaching the gospel.

Many of the document’s signers, including Pastor Wang Yi, are now imprisoned or have paid a high price through persecution. That is why we translated this document into Korean, Chinese, Russian, and English and posted it at www.chinadeclaration.com. We have been calling on Christians in Korea and around the world to add their own names to those of the 439 Chinese pastors who originally signed it. In this way we can stand with them, make sure they are not cut off from the worldwide body of Christ, and show the Chinese government that the global church is continuing to support our brothers and sisters in China.

So far 3,561 people have signed the online petition since we first posted it last summer. Our goal is to reach 4,390 signatures—10 signatures of support on behalf of each Chinese pastor who originally signed the document. Then Dr. Foley and I will deliver the petition to the Chinese Embassy in Seoul in April, as the Lord permits.

You don’t need to worry that your information will be given to the Chinese government. When we deliver the petition, we include only the first name of each signee, along with the date and confirmation that we have verified its validity. It is a safe, powerful, and effective way to stand with Chinese Christians and churches, not only during the Coronavirus, but as long as the ‘plague’ of Communist Party persecution continues for them.

You can read and sign the petition at www.chinadeclaration.com.

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How did the author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs respond to the Coronavirus of his time?

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Pastor Foley

John Foxe never liked being called a martyrologist (he regarded his work as church history), but the author of Acts and Monuments of the Christian Church, popularly called Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”, turned to the martyrs as exemplars when in 1563 he wrote a pamphlet to encourage and comfort Londoners caught in the grip of plague:

And thus being armed with the power and strength of Christ, pass through this storm, be it never so rough and sharp to the flesh, having before your eyes so many examples of good men which passed the same way before you: the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs of Christ, who in their extremities passed through greater torments, some racked, some torn to pieces, some sawed asunder, some stoned to death, some hanged by one member, some by another, some broiled upon coals, some burned with flaming fire; which they notwithstanding abode with patience. But especially casting up your mind and beholding the death of Christ, learn thereby to die and not to fear death, not to murmur against God. For if he did abide a smarting passion, and that in his middle and best age: think yourself not better than he.

Just as with his “Book of Martyrs” (the first English edition of which was published that same year), Foxe urged Londoners not to fear “bodily death” as the plague bore down on them:

For what is the estate and condition of all men but mere mortality; that is to say, not so soon born to this world as dead to God. And what does it change then when a dead man dies, who is dead already before he begins to die; whether to die sooner or later: as all men be who are born of Adam. For where Christ says in the gospel, let the dead go bury the dead: what does he mean but that we should understand thereby no difference between those who are dead and those who are still alive?

It was hardly abstract theology–Foxe knew of no such thing in any of his writings, and in this case, he wrote not only as a theologian and pastor but also as a parent whose own daughter died in the plague the year he wrote. It makes the conclusion of his pamphlet, entitled “A Prayer to be Said Over Children” in time of plague, all the more personal:

And forasmuch as the pains of the same poor child seem grievous and vehement, we beseech thee to mitigate the vehemency thereof, that by the relieving of it, we also may be comforted, dealing with it according as it shall seem good to thy divine wisdom, whether by death to call it or by life to restore it, so that whether it goes, or tarries, it may be thine, and at last with thine elect be made partaker of that blessed resurrection, when thou shalt appear.

The plagues change, but the God who comforts us in the midst of them does not.

The John Foxe quotes (adapted to modern English by me) come from his 1567 pamphlet entitled A Brief Exhortation, fruitfull and meete to be read in this heavy tyme of Gods visitation in London, to suche as be Sicke, where the Ministers do lacke, or otherwise cannot be present to comfort them, as cited in Warren W. Wooden’s masterful book, John Foxe (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983), pp. 89-90.

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