Epidemics, Pandemics, and the Doomsday Scenario

September/October 2008 · Historically Speaking 29 Religious Responses to Epidemic Disease: A Roundtable* THANKS TO THE SEMINAL WORK OF WILLIAM MCNEILL andAlfredCrosby, historianspay much more attention to the impact disease has had in history. Historians, however, have been slowerto considerthe nature andvariety of religious responses to epidemicdisease. To help readers think aboutthis relatively neglectedtopic , we invitedAndrew Cunningham to comment ingeneralterms about religion andwidespreaddisease in the West. We also askedDavidArnoldandHoward Phillips to explore two specific cases outside of Europe—onefrom India, the other from SouthAfrica. Then we commissionedDuane Osheim to use these essays to comment on the overalltopic of religion andepidemicdisease in history. Epidemics, Pandemics, and the Doomsday Scenario* Andrew Cunningham Sudden and fierce outbreaks of disease have always proved traumatic to societies, and one of the major responses has customarily been apocalyptic fear and the search for scapegoats or divine messages. This was true of the Black Death of 1348 as it was still true of AIDS in the late 20th century. For centuries in Christian society people have made direct connections between the outbreak of epidemic disease and Doomsday. Not only were epidemics and pandemics thought to herald the end of the world, in the sense that they were punishments for the sinful, but pestilences had been among the signs of the Second Coming that Christ himself had warned his followers to watch for (Matthew 24.3-13). It is not only the pain, suffering , and many sudden deaths that make people so afraid in an epidemic, but also the accompanying disruption of civil society, especially as the food supply often breaks down, the living cannot cope with burying the dead, and those who can flee fast and far. An epidemic is a disease that literally "falls on the mob" (demos in Greek). The term has been current since antiquity. An epidemic is any disease that kills many people, kills them quickly, kills them in an unpleasant way, and which usually is arbitrary in its manner of action, not being choosy as to whether the victims are old or young, fit or unfit. The apparendy arbitrary manner in which epidemics kill is one of their most important features, because it renders most precautions irrelevant. A pandemic, by contrast, is a term coined from the Greek in the 19di century to characterize an epidemic that is everywhere (pan in Greek), or at least all over the known world at a given time. It is This roundtable is sponsored by a grant from theJohn Templeton Foundation. 'This article is pardy based on chapter 4 of Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The FourHorsemen of theApocalypse: Religion, War, Famine andDeath in Reformation Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001), where full citations for all quotations can be found. "Vigil of the dead." A 14th-century miniature from Paul Ourrieu, Les Heures á l'usage d'Angers de la collection Martin Le Roy (Pour les Membres de la Société, 1912). an epidemic writ large. The term is meant to convey the scale and spread of the outbreak, not its greater severity or mortality. Journalistic usage of the term is much looser, however, and primarily, I think, because of the resonance of "pandemic" with "panic," English-speaking journalists tend today to use the term without discrimination for any major outbreak of disease. But stricdy speaking the great pandemics of the past of which we have any record are only these: 1. 541 A.D.: the so-called "Plague of Justinian ." 2.1348-49: plague, known since the 19th century as the Black Death. 3.1490s: the sexually-transmitted disease known in the past as "the pox" or "the French disease." It is today usually assumed to have been syphilis. 4.1490s: typhus, the deadly disease of diose crowded together in unsanitary conditions , such as besieging armies or besieged towns, prisons, etc. 5.1831-32: cholera. 6.1890s: plague, from China to Europe. Possibly the same disease as 1348-49, but more probably not. 7.1918: "Spanish flu." Killed 20 million people in seventeen weeks. 8.1980s to the present: AIDS. But while the list of pandemics is quite short, the list of epidemics (if we could make it with any degree of accuracy) would be very...