The latest
Chicago clergy on seeking God in the age of COVID: ‘The church has left the building’
As Chicago wrestles along with the rest of America about how best to reopen, clergy of diverse faiths across the city and suburbs say the reopening debate has turned a spotlight on the changing face of religion in the era of COVID-19.
That new face, etched by forced technological pivots, will affect how America worships long after congregants return en masse to the church edifice.
“We’ve always taught that the church is not the building but people who gather in it, so this has been a challenge for the membership to grow up and now live the faith,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Catholic Church in Auburn Gresham. “It has also pushed churches to think outside the box about how we are supporting members while being disconnected physically.”
That’s only the start of the challenges.
Reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika has the full story.
News
9:09 a.m. ICYMI: NBA says it’s talking with Disney about resuming season amid COVID-19 pandemic
The NBA is in talks with The Walt Disney Company on a single-site scenario for a resumption of play in Central Florida in late July, the clearest sign yet that the league believes the season can continue amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The National Basketball Players Association is also part of the talks with Disney, the league said Saturday. Games would be held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, a massive campus on the Disney property near Orlando.
NBA spokesman Mike Bass said the conversations were still “exploratory,” and that the Disney site would be used for practices and housing as well.
“Our priority continues to be the health and safety of all involved, and we are working with public health experts and government officials on a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure that appropriate medical protocols and protections are in place,” Bass said.
7:10 a.m. Downstate judge blasts Pritzker’s stay-at-home-order: Full transcript
LOUISVILLE, Ill. — Point by point, the judge in downstate Clay County on Friday ticked off the many ways he found Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order had devolved into “insanity” and become “completely devoid of anything approaching common sense.”
Clay County Judge Michael McHaney complained that recently legalized pot shops had been deemed essential over generations-old family businesses. People had been led to believe they could avoid COVID-19 at Walmart but not at church.
And to top it off, McHaney complained that Pritzker’s family members had traveled between Illinois and Florida and Wisconsin during the coronavirus pandemic, contrary to Pritzker’s own stay-at-home order. The judge said, “when laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled.”
“Americans don’t get ruled,” McHaney said.
Read reporter Jon Seidel’s full story and transcript of the judge’s ruling.
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Analysis & Commentary
7:10 a.m. I have learned to wear a mask against the pandemic called racism
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes — Paul Laurence Dunbar
I was born in a pandemic, shaped in the waters of strife, separated from my mother’s life-yielding placenta, thrust into a world infected by hate.
I am black and male. Born in the USA. I wear the mask. I cannot leave home without it. This is a matter of survival.
I have learned to wear the mask. Not the one that fits over my nose and mouth snugly and held at my ears. The mask that pretends that I am not who I am. The mask that makes my male blackness less threatening, more palatable. That projects a veiled image of me.
The pandemic called coronavirus is not my first dance. It will not be my last. I am well- acquainted with the pandemic that is racism. With that unique strand of race-based hate in this land of the pilgrim’s pride, stricken since 1619 by the indelible curse called slavery. A resistant virus, it was bathed more than 400 years ago in the ancestral African blood of the Middle Passage and stamps 21st century racism’s DNA.
