Friday's News & Ideas - 2/4/2022

Quitting online church is abandoning the one for the 99
Religion News Service: With online church, disabled people were welcomed to church in more ways and more often than ever before. Let’s keep that up.

I am not proof of the American dream*
The New York Times: A curious thing happens when you offer up your life for public consumption: People start to interpret your biography, to explain to you what they think it means.

Episcopal team to launch virtual reality church services in metaverse, all avatars welcome
Episcopal News Service: A team led by Episcopal clergy is developing a church space in VR called Web3 Abbey, and they plan to welcome the first worshipers to their avatar-friendly liturgy on Feb. 28.

How 18th-century Quakers led a boycott of sugar to protest against slavery
The Conversation: Buying items that are fair trade, organic, locally made or cruelty-free are some of the ways in which consumers today seek to align their economic habits with their spiritual and ethical views. For 18th-century Quakers, it led them to abstain from sugar and other goods produced by enslaved people.

The Vietnamese workers Japan depends on are falling through the cracks. One Buddhist nun is trying to catch them.*
The Washington Post: The 43-year-old’s temple is a one-stop shop for Vietnamese migrants who have struggled to find a home in Japan, and fills a gaping hole in the social safety net of the world’s third-largest economy.

The Spark

Why are so many Americans still dying of COVID?
The seven-day average is now 2,500 a day, higher than at any point in the last two years outside last January — before vaccines, at the height of the most devastating phase* of the pandemic, Intelligencer says.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers