who noted this reaction of Christians to the plague.
A century later, the actively pagan emperor Julian would complain bitterly, of how the ´Galileans´ would care for even non-Christian sick people. While the church historian Pontianus recounts, how Christians ensured that ´good was done to all men, not merely to the household of faith.´
The sociologist and religious demographer Rodney Stark claims, that death rates in cities with Christian communities may have been just half that of other cities.
This habit of sacrificial care has reappeared throughout history.
In 1527, when the Bubonic Plague hit Wittenberg, Martin Luther refused calls to flee the city and protect himself. Rather he stayed, and ministered to the sick. The refusal to flee cost his daughter Elizabeth her life.
But it produced a tract - “Whether Christians Should Flee the Plague” - where Luther provides a clear articulation of the Christian epidemic response: We die at our posts. Christian doctors cannot abandon their hospitals, Christian governors cannot flee their districts, Christian pastors cannot abandon their congregations, the plague does not dissolve our duties: it turns them to crosses, on which we must be prepared to die.
For Christians, it is better that we should die serving our neighbor, than surrounded in a pile of masks we never got a chance to use. And if we care for each other, if we share masks and hand soap and canned foods, if we are our brother’s keeper, we might actually reduce the death toll too.
~bron~
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