Pestilence is a biblical scourge that afflicts the world once more. Yet whereas, in a pre-scientific age, infectious disease was attributed to divine disfavour, its physical causes are now understood. When Christians gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus, they  do so under voluntarily observed constraints, to stop the spread of infection, that are scarcely less onerous than those that applied at Christmas in 2020.

Everyone has undergone worry and hardship since the emergence of a novel coronavirus almost two years ago. Many have suffered tragedy. Today it is worth reflecting on the sacrifices made by Christians in this crisis. They have found their ability to worship curtailed, even to the point of the closure of churches for much of last year. This has not stopped congregations throughout the nation from doing their utmost to alleviate hardship and help those who are isolated and grieving. They will know, too, the still worse fate of Christian populations worldwide that are facing severe repression. Not only respect but gratitude is due to them, from fellow citizens of all faiths and none.

Church leaders, notably Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, have weathered objections during the crisis for supposedly being too willing to acquiesce to secular demands to abandon collective worship. The criticisms are misplaced. As the great Protestant ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, concerning the social obligations of the churches: “Sometimes we must prefer a larger good to a smaller one, without the hope that the smaller one will be preserved in the larger one.”

The larger good, during the pandemic, has been to protect the vulnerable. Discharging this commitment has often come at the cost of the spiritual nourishment and sense of communal belonging that Christians derive from collective worship, including hymns and the Eucharist. Yet congregations have embraced this civic obligation. In doing so, they have not only followed the counsel of the archbishop and other church leaders, but adopted the selfless example of the head of the Church of England. The Queen, through example rather than exhortation, made a decisive intervention in the campaign to get people vaccinated. And even at the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years, she observed the requirements of social distancing, though everyone would have understood if she had required the solace of a companion by her side.

The church has long shown a scrupulous concern for public health amid crisis and catastrophe. In the wake of the Quarantine Act 1721, designed to contain the spread of plague, a London curate called Thomas Lewis issued a pamphlet urging that the dead no longer be interred in churches (a practice that provided a healthy revenue stream for parishes). Lewis and his contemporaries knew nothing of the germ theory of disease, and hence of how viruses spread, but he understood perfectly that Christian discipleship requires adapting customs to safeguard the living.