[Dialogue] 21/02/10, Spong: Pandemics and Interdependency

[elliestock at aol.com]

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Thursday December 02, 2010 

Pandemics and Interdependency

My grandfather, Augustus Maye Spong, died in the influenza epidemic, which accompanied and followed World War I. He was 57. I never knew him since his death occurred twelve years before I was born. I was told, however, of the cause of his death, as this trauma lived on in our family's history. Recently, drawn by that memory, I discovered and read a massive study of that sickness entitled The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in Human History, by John M. Barry. It was both a frightening and a fascinating literary work and one that made me aware of many things I had not known before, even while it refreshed my memory on many others.
I was not aware, for example, of the world-wide dimensions of this disease, which, according to the best and most reliable estimates, was directly responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. To put that number into perspective, the total number of deaths in World War II, including both military and civilian personnel, is reliably placed today at 100 million. This disease struck this nation with such sudden fury that perfectly healthy people would first experience a slight fever and then be dead in three days. The resources of the medical world were overwhelmed. Calls went out from hospitals and health organizations to anyone who had any nursing training, even including those who had dropped out of nursing schools, and nurses' aides to volunteer to assist the patients, who were flooding our hospitals. Funeral homes across America ran out of coffins, as did those funeral homes' ability to send for and to collect the bodies of the dead. With d eceased loved ones, uncollected and, therefore, unembalmed, still at home, the odors of death began to permeate the neighborhoods. Finally horse-drawn wagons were sent out to retrieve the dead, who were then stacked unceremoniously on top of each other as they were carted away. Sometimes small towns in the rural areas set up vigilante squads to guard the entrances to their communities in order to keep strangers who might be carriers of the virus from contaminating their people. Nothing, however, slowed this virus' rampage.
Preachers, assuming that this disease was a manifestation of the wrath of an angry deity, used this epidemic to warn people to stop their evil ways. That idea had wide credibility in the 14th century when the Black Death wiped out one fifth of Europe's population. The scandal of having two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, was the most popular reason given for God sending this extreme punishment. Although that understanding of God was not nearly so prevalent during the 1918 epidemic, conservative religious leaders still employed it, citing as the reason for God's anger the acceptance of the thought of Charles Darwin, the rise of Marxism and people in America abandoning the "old time gospel." This kind of theology has all but died today. When Pat Robertson alleged that God sent the earthquake to Haiti as punishment for the Haitians having made "a pact with the devil," to throw out the French, his words only provided fodder for the late night comedians.
On a far more profound level than this, however, Barry's book on this killing epidemic forced me to think about human interdependence more deeply that I have ever done before. One of the characteristics of the American psyche is a commitment to a radical kind of individualism. This comes out of our own frontier history and is today hailed as part of what constitutes the "American Spirit." We see that commitment to radical individualism at the expense of the well-being of society in such ways as when the National Rifle Association appeals to this aspect of our national life to oppose any limit being placed on any citizen's right to bear arms of almost any description; in the recent health care debate, where individual freedom was opposed to corporate need, and in the rising tide of negativity against "the government," which dared to rescue institutions deemed "too big to fail," lest the whole economy collapse.
There is surely a rational midpoint between a totally free market economy that operates without any or very minimal government regulation and a totally dependent society where government regulates all of life, but our political system has a hard time discovering it as each party demonizes the other, producing only gridlock and frustration. Political rhetoric in American today is so extreme that cooperation and compromise have become "dirty words." No sense of interdependence seems to exist.
Nothing reveals human interdependence, however, more than an epidemic. All classes, races and varieties of people are at risk. The influenza virus mutates more rapidly than the vaccinations can keep up. No man (or woman) is an island that is somehow separate from the environment of the rest of the world. The ability of a virus to jump from birds to human beings is what created the influenza pandemic in the first place. The ability of a virus to leap from monkeys to human beings created the AIDS epidemic. New outbreaks that had the potential to become pandemics have occurred more often than most of us would like to know since the great epidemic of 1918. There is little question that another pandemic is in our future. The question is when, not if.
National boundaries, essential to our individual tribal consciousness, offer no protection against the invasion of viruses. A disease born among the poor does not stay in the poverty community. Inner-city plagues do not stop at the boundaries of suburbia. African viruses do not remain in Africa. The idea that health care is the privilege of those who can afford it is nonsensical, when we realize that human health is so deeply interdependent. The libertarian protest against requiring healthcare assumes that disease can be contained once an infection is loosed upon the world. Preserving individualism in a radically interdependent world is a balancing act that requires genius and sensitivity. It does not lend itself to politics as it is played in partisan circles today.
So is there an answer besides "do nothing and hope for the best?" Yes there is, but I see no reason to believe that anyone in this nation or around the world has the will or the courage to do what needs to be done. First, limits must be placed on population growth. Second, the World Health Organization must be given the power to deal with pandemics and to act across national boundaries. Third, health care, including preventive medicine, must be democratized and become available to every human being. The cost of not doing this will be far more expensive than the cost of doing it. Fourth, willingness must be found on the part of all parties to put the preservation of our environment ahead of individual needs or corporate profits, and that in turn would inevitably lower the standard of living for everyone in the developed world. Is any of this likely to happen? No, because no one will surrender individual power for the sake of the good of the whole, until they are driven to do so for fear of losing all that they have.
Capitalism almost died in the Great Depression of the 1930's. It was saved by the willingness of Western governments to temper capitalism with an adequate safety net for the poor, through which no one would be allowed to fall. It involved expanding the graduated income taxes, which are in reality a "Robin Hood" program of taking from the rich for the benefit of the poor. It also involved social security, welfare programs and vast amounts of money being invested in public education, which has traditionally been the doorway out of poverty for the masses. By tempering individualistic capitalism to provide for the well-being of all, capitalism was not compromised, but saved. 
In the 2008 economic meltdown another world wide depression was averted, but only by a whisker. The economies of the developed nations of the world continue to be fragile. Nations like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal are still on the edge and nations like the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Germany and Japan carry a crippling national debt. Despite that frightening moment, there are today loud political voices calling this nation to return to the very attitudes and practices that brought us to this alarming edge, because the common good appears not to matter to those who cannot see beyond what they naively assume is their individual well-being. The public debate sounds incredulous. To cut social security and benefits for the poor because of the huge national debt and at the same time to give the wealthy of America a tax break is crazy, no matter how it is packaged. To dismantle public education while at the same time allowing off-shore tax shelters for American busines s is ludicrous. I have no desire to destroy capitalism, but I do have a desire to create basic fairness in our economic choices. How that is to be achieved in our present political climate I do not know, but I do know that it must be done, because the destiny of each one of us is ultimately bound up with the destiny of all of us. That is what reading a book on the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 did to my thought processes. 

– John Shelby Spong
 




Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Peggy Goldsmith, via the Internet, writes: 
You wrote in one of your columns recently "One reads the writings of some of the figures of history like Irenaeus, Polycarp, John Chrysostom and even Martin Luther for documentation of the deep anti–Semitism that has marked Christianity over the centuries." In those writings, Jews were described as "vermin" and "unfit for life." How do you think those writers reconciled the fact that Jesus is a Jew?
Peggy Goldsmith, via the Internet, writes: 
You wrote in one of your columns recently "One reads the writings of some of the figures of history like Irenaeus, Polycarp, John Chrysostom and even Martin Luther for documentation of the deep anti–Semitism that has marked Christianity over the centuries." In those writings, Jews were described as "vermin" and "unfit for life." How do you think those writers reconciled the fact that Jesus is a Jew?



Dear Peggy, 
Prejudice is never rational. I grew up in a southern Christian church, Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I was taught that segregation was the will of God, that women were by nature inferior to men, that homosexuals were either mentally sick or morally depraved and that Jews were all Christ killers. Interestingly enough, the Bible was quoted to justify each of these prejudices. 
Most of my anti–Semitism I actually learned in that church through my Sunday school material. I never met a good Jew in Sunday school. Jews were always pictured as dark, sinister figures who had names I was taught to dislike, such as Annas, Caiaphas, Sadducees, Pharisees and Judas Iscariot. Jews were only portrayed as the enemies of Jesus and of Paul and the ones who brought about the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecution of Paul. 
No one in my Sunday school ever told me that Jesus was a Jew. When I looked at pictures of him, he did not look like my image of what Jews were supposed to look like. He had blond hair, blue eyes and fair skin. I thought he might have been a Swede! 
No one also ever told me that all of Jesus' disciples were Jews, that Joseph and Mary were Jews, that Paul and Magdalene were Jews or that all of the authors of the various books in the Bible were Jews either by birth or in the case of Luke alone, by conversion. 
So it is easy for me to understand how it was that Christians through the centuries, out of a deep, rampant and uninformed hatred, simply repressed the Jewishness of Jesus in order to continue their persecution of the Jewish people. It is also embarrassing and regrettable to realize that so much of our cultural anti–Semitism has been nothing less than the gift of the followers of Jesus to the world. 
Once we raise history to consciousness, it is imperative that we act to dismantle it. That is the only way I know to be faithful to the Jewish Jesus. 

– John Shelby Spong






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