Wrestling with Religion

Religion in the old South Growing up in an Alabama Protestant town and a Baptist family in the 20th century, I had a clear idea what religion was, but a limited one. Most local religion was austere or invisible in the frontier tradition, all about words and the "truths" they signified, scarcely existing outside of songs, prayers, sermons, books, and pamphlets. A "mixed" religious family was one where a husband and wife disagreed about which church to go to Sunday morning. There was a Catholic church--small but thriving in 1950 as university influence made Auburn vaguely cosmopolitan--but I've heard that the church was founded by mistake. Around 1910, when no establishment of religion meant promoting all Christian denominations equally, students were required to sign a log at the church of their choice every Sunday morning. Since there was no Catholic church in Auburn, if they registered as Catholic, they could sleep in, and the story is that thes...

March 17, 2020. Last week began almost normally with COVID-19 infections few and far away, single cases making news. "Best wash your hands and not shake hands, but no fear." Then, day by day over the week, the drumbeat crescendoed  to what feels like hysteria but makes precautionary sense, like wearing a seat belt even if you've driven for years without a crash. Here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, it's all precautionary. Because the virus incubates for days and spreads from people without symptoms, next week's precautions have to be made yesterday. And because nobody's immune, it spreads explosively under normal conditions, doubling every week until it infects most of the population. The mortality rate is modest, maybe one percent (we don't know because mild cases go unreported), but that's much more lethal than flu.  As I write, there's only one case in Spotsylvania County--one out of 134,000 people and that one quarantined--so...