Month: May 2020

If DNA is destiny, it took an unexpected turn when the grandson of legendary World War II commander General Claire Lee Chennault was growing up.General Claire Lee Chennault (1890-1958), who commanded the legendary Flying Tigers and later the 14th Air Force in China, landed on the covers of Time and Life magazines during WWII. (U.S. Air Force)New York-based jazz musician Paul Sikivie says he was brought up with “a sense of awe” regarding his grandfather, one of the most storied commanders in the Asia theater during that war. But “he belonged to the world at large and not so much to me.” Sikivie is one of two grandsons of Chennault and his second wife, Anna. His mother is a noted medieval Chinese literature specialist, his father a Belgian-American physicist. “I wanted to be a geneticist for a while after ‘Jurassic Park’ was made into a movie; I never thought about Chinese language and literature as something for me,” Sikivie, now 37, recalled as he looked back on his childhood aspirations. By age 14, Sikivie knew he wanted to be a musician. Four years later, he knew his calling was jazz. “St. Thomas by Sonny Rollins came on NPR and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said of jazz’s enduring appeal. Paul Sikivie plays the bass alongside vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant at a memorial concert for Lawrence Leathers held on Feb. 3, 2020, at Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center. (Frank. Stewart/Jazz at Lincoln Center)Would that have made sense to his grandfather, who landed on the covers of Life and Paul Sikivie, right, in a family photo with his parents, Pierre Sikivie and Cynthia Chennault, brother Michael, and grandmother Anna Chennault, in an undated photo. (Photo provided by Cynthia L. Chennault)Perhaps his grandfather would also understand the notion of the “band of brothers” that has also been central to Sikivie’s journey as a musician. Lawrence Leathers, a noted drummer on the New York jazz scene, was one of them.  Leathers, who died last year, “was like a brother to me. I learned a lot about being present and always reaching for the next level from being around him and playing music with him,” Sikivie said. Sikivie, Leathers and pianist Aaron Diehl often played as a band, traveling both in the United States and other parts of the world — including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where General Chennault had once set foot. Looking toward the future, the jazz bassist said, “I am continuing to learn how to organize my thoughts, feelings, values into music; there’s really no limit to the ways [in which] this can be accomplished.” 
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While the White House looks ahead to reopening houses of worship, most Americans think in-person religious services should be barred or allowed only with limits during the coronavirus pandemic — and only about a third say that prohibiting in-person services violates religious freedom, a new poll finds.
The survey by the Center for Public Affairs Research suggests that, even as President Donald Trump projects eagerness to reopen, many religious Americans are fine with waiting longer to return to their churches, synagogues and mosques.
Among that group is 54-year-old Andre Harris of Chicago, a onetime Sunday school teacher who has shifted his routine from physical worship to the conference calls his church is holding during the pandemic.
Harris, a Methodist, said that until “either there’s a vaccine, or if we know that things have calmed down, I am not comfortable going back to the actual building.”
Just 9% of Americans think in-person religious services should be permitted without restrictions, while 42% think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48% think they should not be allowed at all, the poll shows. Even among Americans who identify with a religion, 45% say in-person services shouldn’t be allowed at all.
White evangelical Protestants, however, are particularly likely to think that in-person services should be allowed in some form, with just 35% saying they should be completely prohibited. Close to half – 46% — also say they think prohibiting those services violates religious freedom.
That constituency’s support for some form of in-person worship underscores the political importance of Trump’s public calls to restore religious gatherings as a symbol of national recovery from the virus, as energizing evangelical voters remains a key element of the president’s reelection strategy. Trump won praise from some evangelical leaders for citing the aspirational ideal of “packed churches” on Easter during the first weeks of the pandemic, though his goal didn’t materialize on Christianity’s holiest day.
Trump has since consulted with religious leaders on a phased-in return to in-person worship.
“It’s wonderful to watch people over a laptop, but it’s not like being at a church,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall on Sunday. “And we have to get our people back to churches, and we’re going to start doing it soon.”
Vice President Mike Pence is set to meet with faith leaders Friday in Iowa to talk about their reopening of worship. Iowa is one of several states, including Tennessee and Montana, where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease as stay-home orders imposed to stop the virus run their course.
That’s in line with the preference of Patrick Gideons, 63, of Alvin, Texas, who said worshipers “should be able to do what they want.”
“If they want to be able to hold church the way they normally do, they should be able to do that,” said Gideons, a self-described born-again Baptist.
As houses of worship wrestle with when to reopen, draft guidance by a team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that offered recommendations for faith gatherings has been shelved by the Trump administration. While those guidelines aimed to help religious organizations use best practices to protect people from the virus, leaders in various denominations have already initiated their own internal discussions.
“Churches are very aware of the implications of people gathering in their buildings,” Kenneth Carter, president of the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, said in a recent interview about the draft CDC guidance.
Compared with in-person religious services, Americans are more likely to favor allowing drive-through services, although most still say there should be limits. Overall, 25% think that those services should be allowed without any limits, and 62% say they should be allowed with limits.  
The Justice Department last month sided with a Mississippi church in its legal challenge to local limits on drive-in worship. Still, the poll found 56% of Americans say prohibiting drive-in services does not violate religious freedom.  
White evangelical Protestants were more likely than those of other faiths to favor allowing drive-through services without restriction, at 40%. In total, those who identify with a religious faith are more likely than those who do not to favor no restriction on drive-through religious services, 28% to 15%.  
As many houses of worship have paused in-person services during the virus, a sizable share of religious Americans have used technology to connect with their faith. One-fifth of religious Americans said they watched live streaming religious services online at least weekly in 2019 — but since the outbreak began, that has risen to 33%.  
About a third of evangelical Protestants streamed services at least weekly in 2019, but about half do now. Among Catholics, the share streaming services weekly has increased from 11% to 22%.
For members of the Southern Baptist Convention, when and how to resume in-person worship “would be a congregation-by-congregation decision,” Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a recent interview about the draft CDC guidance.
Moore predicted that some virtual worship would continue even as different areas transition back to in-person gatherings. Part of his work in offering resources to inform decisions, Moore said, involves “preparing churches for the fact that reopening probably won’t be one Sunday when everything goes back to the status quo.”
“Instead, there’s going to be probably a lengthy period of time where multiple things are happening at once,” Moore said.
 
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