{"id":17600,"date":"2020-05-11T10:32:42","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T15:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=17600"},"modified":"2020-05-11T10:51:28","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T15:51:28","slug":"what-did-dc-churches-do-when-the-spanish-flu-struck-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=17600","title":{"rendered":"What Did DC Churches Do When the Spanish Flu Struck Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>For more resources related to COVID-19, visit our new site:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/covid19.9marks.org\/\">COVID-19 &amp; The Church<\/a>. You can read Caleb&rsquo;s earlier article on the subject here: &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/article\/how-dc-churches-responded-when-the-government-banned-public-gatherings-during-the-spanish-flu-of-1918\/\">How DC Churches Responded When the Government Banned Public Gatherings During the Spanish Flu of 1918<\/a>.&rdquo;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>* * * * *<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For four long weeks, as Washington D.C.&rsquo;s church bells and congregations remained silent, a deadly sickness took its toll: 23,000 infected, 1,500 dead.<\/p>\n<p>During that same time, Christians across the District waited for the Department of Health&rsquo;s ban on gatherings to be lifted.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> Finally, that day came. On Tuesday, October 26, 1918, the commissioners announced that theaters, moving picture houses, and dance halls would be permitted to re-open on Monday, November 4, and that churches would be permitted to gather again on Thursday, October 31.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to the Saturday edition of <em>The<\/em> <em>Washington Times<\/em>, &ldquo;Pastor and congregation will meet again tomorrow, after having been separated for four weeks by the &lsquo;flu.&rsquo; Some of the churches will have special services to celebrate the abatement of the epidemic and the reopening of their services.&rdquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> For instance, Rev. Gove Griffith-Johnson preached on &ldquo;The Great Epidemic and Its Cure&rdquo; at Immanuel Baptist Church.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> Most pastors, however, preached sermons on the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contrary to all expectations, the closing of churches for the month of October in 1918 did not result in decline and ruin, but in revitalization and growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":17632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[176,1856,327],"class_list":["post-17600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-history","tag-coronavirus","tag-life-together","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/graph-1-1-1-1.png?fit=819%2C396&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17634,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17600\/revisions\/17634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}