Lessons from Church history and past plagues
from Christian Concern:
Tim Dieppe looks back over church history to see what lessons we can learn about responding to crises and pandemics.
It is always worth looking back at church history to learn how the church has responded to crises in the past. Last year I wrote about some Lessons from Spurgeon on Coronavirus. Spurgeon ministered during a cholera epidemic which had a mortality rate of 12.8% in some parts of London – well in excess of what we are seeing today from Coronavirus.
David Robinson has written an excellent article about Healthcare in the Early Church, which looks at how Christians responded to the Plague of Cyprian. While most with means fled the affected areas, Cyprian encouraged Christians to stay and care for others. They did so at great personal risk and won respect and converts as a result.
It is also worth looking at the Puritans and the Plague.
The witness of the Church in The Great Plague
The Great Plague of London in 1665-1666 killed over 100,000 people. That was around a quarter of the entire population of London at the time, and around a third of people in the worst hit areas.[1] Everyone personally knew people who had died. Few families were unaffected. Few streets were unaffected. Death was all around. Coronavirus is nothing in comparison. 100,000 deaths in the UK today is less than 0.2% of the population. Every single one is a tragedy, but the scale of death today pales in comparison to the plague.
Walter Bell, in his classic book The Great Plague, writes pointedly about the role churches played in a this extremely deadly pandemic:
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