Preaching Goes Viral

300209

Living Through This Pandemic

Bryce Westrick

Columbus, Ohio

43230

Judaism, general

As a twenty year old college junior, labeling myself as an expert on religious studies would be one of the very last things I would consider doing. Although I have had my fair share of experiences, doing so would be a disservice to the more knowledgeable peers of mine who have outstanding additions to the archive. Throughout this pandemic, I’ve spent a fair amount of time around other people through my job almost exclusively. Working in a restaurant, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and getting to know a plethora of amazing individuals who come from all walks of life. As I worked in the spring and summer, religion would come up as a semi-frequent conversation topic solely due to how curious all of my coworkers’ (and myself included) were about how all of each other’s congregations were responding to the pandemic. Among my colleagues, we had individuals who were Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Presbyterian and Lutheran. Through lengthy and enlightening discussions with my coworkers, we were all able to learn that each of our congregations were actually handling the COVID-19 pandemic in incredibly similar ways. Each of our places of worship had made the decision to cancel in person prayer within two weeks of each other, and to this day, are still all not holding full-capacity in person prayer sessions. Although my coworkers and I do not make up the perfect representative sample of American places of worship, it was beyond interesting to learn about how different places of worship, expanding across multiple denominations of multiple religions, all handled their strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic in incredibly similar ways.

westriba

Personal story, social media or blog post, unpublished material, etc.

September 15, 2020