Author: Michelle Dryden

Pink shared a picture of herself from the hospital after fracturing her ankle.

 

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“Saturday Night Live” closed out its last “Weekend Update” segment under a Donald Trump presidency with a final round of jabs at the president as well as some self-deprecating humor about its hosts. 

 

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Like officials in Arizona and Georgia, Justice Brian Hagedorn is a longtime Republican who is now under fire for ruling against President Trump’s challenges to the election.

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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — His motorcade thunders around Delaware, snarling traffic. Everywhere he goes, a security team envelops him and a pack of journalists trails behind.

Yet President-elect Joe Biden enters his church, St. Joseph on the Brandywine, with startlingly little interruption.

Wearing a dark suit and medical mask, Biden slipped into a polished wooden pew near the back of the sanctuary for a recent Saturday evening Catholic Mass. He was one of only about 40 worshippers with attendance limited by the coronavirus pandemic. His row was empty except for a Secret Service agent sitting on the aisle and others stationed around the sanctuary. They had flak jackets under their dress clothes.

This is one of the last places where Biden can at least try to blend in, a luxury that probably will fade away completely when he takes office next month. Once he arrives in Washington, the trappings of the presidency — and the eagerness of the city’s residents to be near power — could make a casual church visit nearly impossible.

A Biden transition team official refused to say which church Biden might attend in the nation’s capital or whether he might return to Delaware for services, at least to start. Washington’s COVID-19 measures restrict large indoor services, and many churches have moved services online.

Biden says Americans should be allowed to attend church during the pandemic “safely,” and his transition team has underscored the importance of heeding local restrictions. Still, if he does become a regular Washington churchgoer, Biden will have plenty of choices.

Four Catholic churches sit within 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of the White House. As vice president, Biden attended Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington’s tony Georgetown neighborhood, where the nation’s only other Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, frequently went to Mass before his inauguration.

Also nearby is New York Avenue Presbyterian, which maintains the pew where Abraham Lincoln once worshipped. Even closer is St. John’s Episcopal Church, walkable across Lafayette Square from the White House for the presidents who have made a historic practice of worshipping there at least once.

St. John’s was thrust into the headlines this summer when police forcibly dispersed protesters so President Donald Trump could pose with a Bible outside its butter-yellow front doors. But its status as the “Church of Presidents” dates to James Madison, and it’s accustomed to the special scrutiny that comes with hosting commanders in chief.

The Rev. Luis Leon, rector at St. John’s from 1994 to 2018, said congregants were very good about high-powered visits: “They treated the president’s experience of worship as they would treat their own experience of worship.”

The VIP presence nonetheless had its own specific effects on churchgoers’ behavior. Leon joked that, on days when the reserved “President’s pew” was occupied, the church “would get tilted” because so many congregants wanted to sit on the same side of the sanctuary as the chief executive, hoping to shake his hand during the Episcopalian exchange of the peace.

While Trump often consulted with spiritual leaders in the Oval Office, he never adopted a home church in Washington. He preferred private prayer, including with the Rev. Jentezen Franklin, a Georgia-based megachurch pastor who recalled at least 10 visits with Trump on faith matters.

Franklin said the outgoing president “always was so receptive” of spiritual encounters.

“When we first started meeting with him, we asked him, could we pray with him? And he was very open to that, very thankful,” Franklin said.

Former President Barack Obama and his family attended the historically Black Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in the early days of his administration. But a competition emerged among the city’s houses of worship to attract the first family, and the Obamas ultimately never settled on a full-time church home in the capital.

Joshua DuBois, who was Obama’s faith adviser during his first term, recalled the search for a church as “a beautiful challenge.”

“On the one hand, President Obama wanted to worship as often as he could with local congregations, and to worship God and be in community with others in his new home,” DuBois said. But “we were acutely aware of the disruption of a presidential visit and wanted to be mindful, to limit that disruption as much as possible.”

President George W. Bush often opted to worship at Camp David during his years in Washington.

The Clintons were the last first family to regularly attend church in the city. They became members of Foundry United Methodist Church, just north of the White House on 16th Street, where then-teenage Chelsea was active in the youth group.

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, then-Foundry’s pastor, said he would help minimize crowding by asking the congregation to remain seated at the end of the service for the Clintons to exit.

“Anytime he seemed to be a little sleepy I thought to myself, ’Well, at least today I can serve the people of the United States by giving their president a bit of a rest with my sermon,’” Wogaman said.

For now, Biden’s churchgoing remains low-key.

He attends Mass nearly every week at St. Joseph’s — a yellow church built in 1841 on land donated by manufacturing magnate Charles I. DuPont — less than five minutes by motorcade from his lakeside home in Wilmington. Biden sometimes goes on Saturday evening but most often on Sunday mornings, attending with his wife, Jill, or his adult grandchildren, though more frequently coming solo.

Biden attended Mass on Friday to mark the anniversary of the deaths of his first wife and daughter, who were killed in a 1972 car crash and are buried at the church cemetery. His son Beau, a former Delaware attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015, is also buried there. Biden occasionally attends Mass at other churches, such as St. Joseph’s in downtown Wilmington, or St. Edmund near his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

On this Saturday evening at St. Joseph’s, the Rev. Glenn Evers didn’t acknowledge the incoming president in the congregation’s midst, instead cautioning anyone worried about “an opportunity to catch” the virus to stay away from the traditionally crowded Christmas Eve afternoon Mass. Most pews were roped off to ensure social distancing, but parishioners nearby could hear Biden softly reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

When Evers asked them to turn and greet their neighbors, they tried not to gawk at the president-elect, who offered warm but quick smiles in return.

Biden’s traveling press pool waited just outside the church grounds, and bomb-sniffing dogs checked the area long before anyone arrived. Biden entered the church a few minutes late and was the first to exit at the end of the service, keeping disruption to a minimum.

He did that so effectively that the only sign he had ever even been there was a Secret Service agent, who lingered to hold the door open for others who filed out a few minutes behind the president-elect.

“We’ve inconvenienced you enough,” the agent said. “It’s the least I can do.”

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Schor reported from Washington.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

— Associated Press

 

CANTON, S.D. (AP) — The Nativity stable at Canton Lutheran Church will be silent this year, breaking from a community tradition of gathering for a live Christmas performance. Instead, churches in this rural corner of South Dakota are grappling with how to approach an Advent filled with quiet mourning after the coronavirus tore through the region.

Church announcements are marked not with parties and performances, but with deaths. South Dakota and North Dakota, states largely spared from the worst of the pandemic during the spring and summer, have seen a frightening pace of death since October. The states’ per capita death over the fall was almost double that of even the next worst-off state.

Even as congregations mourn, they are finding new significance in Advent, when Christians mark the long, dark nights leading up to Christmas as they prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

“Advent is the season when we look forward, and long and wait for that new life to come upon us,” the Rev. Tim Thies said. “We’re a people hurting for hope.”

The church’s annual Nativity performance often draws a crowd of thousands to Canton, a city of about 3,500 people nestled against the Big Sioux River dividing South Dakota from Iowa. People come to see the camels, the angels who ascend on a hydraulic lift — and of course, the infant Jesus, played by one of the church’s newest arrivals.

Not this year.

The church canceled the live show, fearing that a large gathering would add to the virus’ toll.

“There’s just a void and you can’t fill it,” Thies said.

Community grieving also has been halted, even as the impact of the deaths from the virus has rippled, said Cheryl Johnson, a member of Canton Lutheran. Memorial services for some people were postponed; others had small graveside gatherings.

“These were pillars of the community,” said Johnson. “There should have been hundreds of people at those services.”

One man who died operated a construction company that built many of the homes people live in; another operated a manufacturing business that was a big employer. Many from the older generation were faithful donors to the churches that run charities in town.

Canton Lutheran’s congregation has lost 12 members over the last few months, from COVID-19 and other causes, Thies said.

The virus has been a crucible on the neighborly harmony that is the pride of many towns. Impassioned debates over politics and mask requirements, the unrelenting discomfort of isolation, the pain of losing loved ones and the pressures on medical workers have all compounded into discord.

Churches saw needs arising, even as they waded through divisions.

The Grand Valley Lutheran Church, a 126-year-old congregation of mostly farming families a few miles south of Canton, shut down services during the early days of the pandemic. But the Rev. Lance Lindgren — who later died of the virus — was adamant that the church continue to provide some form of worship, so hymns from the church organ streamed over Facebook.

The church did everything it could to meet spiritual needs, while still attempting to keep people safe. It purchased an FM transmitter so worshippers could listen from their cars, and Lindgren held drive-through communion. As the weather grew colder, Eric Scott, the congregational president, measured off the church’s fellowship hall to separate chairs by 6 feet (1.8 meters).

“At those times, people were really looking for something, and going back to their faith, going back to God,” Scott said.

Then Canton was hit by a wave of cases. The 77-year-old pastor died on Nov. 3.

“With the passing of pastor Lance, the first question was: What do we do now?” Scott said.

Grand Valley was not the only area church reeling from loss. The pages of the local newspaper, The Sioux Valley News filled with obituaries. The nursing home began marking deaths with small, white crosses on its front lawn.

Churches asked members to gather outside the nursing home, laying hands on its brick walls to offer prayers for residents and staff.

“It was a powerful moment where we were coming together in faith,” said Clay Lundberg, the pastor of the United Methodist Church in Canton.

Still, pastors struggled with how to comfort their congregations.

“We’re called to be the hands and feet of Christ, but how do you do that when you can’t touch somebody? How do you do that when you can’t give them a hug?” said Thies, the pastor at Canton Lutheran.

He and other pastors said they’ve been going back to the basics of ministering to their congregations: making phone calls, writing letters, and trying to make their presence felt.

“We don’t want people to slip through the cracks and be lost in these terrible pandemic days,” he said.

Church members who usually organize the live Nativity performance thought the congregation needed a message of hope, so they recruited the shop class from the high school to assemble a stable, even if it remained empty of people.

”(It’s) a reminder to the people — that this is the true meaning of Christmas,” said Dorothy Trumm, a 76-year-old church member.

At Grand Valley, the congregation decided to forego some of its midweek Advent services, but felt that continuing Sunday services and delving into the grief was what Lindgren would have wanted.

“I look at this pandemic as an opportunity,” Scott said. “We’re in waiting, and it’s waiting for something good.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

— Associated Press