This is Christianity. It’s also common human decency. It’s also simple common sense.
The soaring sanctuary of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, in the District’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood, bustles daily in normal times with parishioners — predominantly immigrants, many undocumented. But the coronaviruspandemic has shuttered communal worship for the church, as with most congregations across the country. It has also cut off many parishioners and neighborhood residents from work and unemployment benefits. And thus from food.
And that’s when prayer took another form at Sacred Heart.
The Catholic parish became one of the U.S. houses of worship that has transformed its sacred and communal spaces into a kind of food distribution center. With gloves and masks, in small teams, mostly in silence, congregants for the past few weeks have come to the sanctuary to pack some 560 baskets of food. Beans, oil, rice, carrots. One basket for each family who needs food. The packers don’t know the names of the recipients, some of whom are fellow congregants, some of whom aren’t even Catholic.
And this point should be stressed:
“A church is more than a building, that’s in scripture. But I also feel spaces can evoke emotion. Both of those things can be true,” she said. Porter has had those feelings in virtual worship and in preparing food boxes.
“We at All Souls are very clear that the church is not a building,” said the Rev. RK Keithan, social justice minister at the church, where he says attendance online has been higher than that typically in-person. “Our building is closed but All Souls is very much open.”
This, of course, is the exact opposite of the un-Christian, indecent, and irrational behavior of the christianists, who have weaponized Christian symbolism for right-wing causes — and which have disgracefully sickened so many.