There was one reaction that few had expected.
When the news broke that their prime minister had been taken into intensive care, most British people responded predictably enough. There was shock, of course. The pound dipped on the exchange markets, and the pundits began to speculate about who might take over.
There was also nervousness. He might look tubby on TV, but Boris Johnson is a fit 55. He runs most days and cycles rather than driving. In the 30-odd years I have known him, I can’t remember him taking a single day off sick. Indeed, illness in other people always seemed to leave him perplexed — not so much unsympathetic as utterly uncomprehending. If even Johnson is vulnerable to COVID-19, many were left thinking, then no one is safe. How does Philip Larkin put it in his poem about a passing ambulance? “Poor soul, they whisper at their own distress.”
Then, of course, there were the good wishes from world leaders and from private citizens. There were, inevitably, people who felt a narcissistic need to preface their good wishes with “Though I disagree with his politics … ” And, just as inevitably, there were people who enjoyed seeking out those narcissists to upbraid them.
So far, so usual. What was less usual was the outpouring of prayer from nonreligious people. “I have always considered myself an agnostic, but tonight I am praying,” was a typical remark from a friend of mine, a gay Conservative Party official. “I don’t know who to or why, but I am praying for the continued health of our PM, for my husband, for whoever is inside every speeding ambulance, and for those as afraid as me.”
The unlikely hashtag #PrayForBoris took off. Unlikely, I should stress, in a British context: We are less comfortable about public piety than Americans. A recorded prayer by a High Church clergyman called Marcus Walker, who is blessed with a rich chocolate cake voice, went viral: “Accept, we beseech thee, the supplications of thy servants who call upon thee in their time of trouble. We pray to thee on behalf of our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Restore him to his former health and prolong his days on Earth.”
Nor is it just Brits. According to a study by Copenhagen University, Google searches for “prayer” are on the same exponential rise as the virus itself, doubling with every 80,000 new cases. The Pew Research Center says 55% of people in the United States have prayed for an end to the virus, including 15% of those who “seldom or never pray.”
You might think an epidemic would be the last thing that would drive a nonbeliever to invocation. Plagues and disasters are troubling for those who believe in a benign maker. Theologians have all sorts of explanations for sin, but viruses are harder to reason away.
Yet, there is something about catastrophes that can make even the most rational people cross their fingers and mutter imprecations. They may not exactly know whom they are addressing, but that does not stop them from offering semibargains: “Let my child recover, and I’ll do such-and-such.”
The idea of propitiation, of sacrifice, is intrinsic in human nature. Religion is, in some ways, a communalization of human impulses, and the same notion emerged, through parallel evolution, in many civilizations. Most religions had a votive aspect — the offering of animal or even human sacrifices. C.S. Lewis had a poetic explanation for why so many pagan belief systems seemed to prefigure the paschal story: “God sent the human race what I call good dreams.”
At Easter, Christians celebrate the strangest and most shocking element of their faith. They believe that there was a single sacrifice, that it happened at an identified historical moment, and that it was so vast that it somehow made everything alright, canceling the need for any further sacrifices. That claim can never be definitively proved or disproved, obviously. But for two millennia, Christians have consoled themselves with the belief, whatever anguish they are suffering, their founder suffered worse.
That, as much as an elemental fear of pestilence, is what seems to be motivating some people who, until last month, never thought of themselves as spiritual. We have all been brought suddenly face to face, not only with our mortality, but with our powerlessness.
“I am not sure if I believe in God either,” tweeted another friend of mine, Katharine Birbalsingh, reputedly the strictest headmistress in Britain. “But I am praying now.”
“Why would God listen to you if you have never listened to him?” someone asked her.
“Because he is God,” she replied simply. Which, if you think about it, is a pretty good summary of the essence of Christianity.
