I think the problem is identifying the behavior as a problem characteristic of the church or sect. This seems like victim blaming to me, especially when there have been there are countless mistakes being made across nations, religions, and organizations.
An alternative framing, which I believe to be more productive, is for the entire community to take ownership. "we messed up, we need to do better"
At a time like this, we need to partisanship aside and and focus on solutions, not blame. There will be plenty of time for a post-mortem after the crisis has passed.
In normal cases I would agree: e.g., I'm very much against the xenophobia shown by some Koreans against Chinese (and now, vice versa, it seems -_-). Unfortunately, this Sincheonji cult is something special.
I'm sure they didn't intentionally contract coronavirus, but once they did, their behavior went so far into gross stupidity territory that it's hard to distinguish from malice. Even after all national news blared for several days that hundreds were infected by their mass gathering, many of these cultists are still hiding their identity, not responding to authorities, and most infuriatingly, they are still going on about with their business, spreading disease everywhere.
A few hours ago it was revealed that a worker at Daegu Airport was Sincheonji cultist, he went to the Sincheonji meeting on 2/16 and kept working between 2/17-2/21, well after the news broke out on 2/18, and now he was diagnosed positive. Some 25k people were estimated to pass through Daegu airport during these days. WTF.
That sounds like abhorrent and stupid behavior, but I'm still unclear on how it is specific to their cult. Do they not believe in viruses or something? Do we see other people in society working while ill or hiding their identities? Has this been seen in China or other locations?
I don't claim to have all the details, but worry that some group is being scapegoated while a larger problem is being ignored.
The NPR article in particular was pretty bad [1].
>Critics say the disease may have spread within the church quickly because of the way that it worships. "Shincheonji followers hold services sitting on the floor, without any chairs," packed together "like bean sprouts,"
> "A bigger problem is that they shout out 'amen' after every sentence the pastor utters, pretty much every few seconds. And they do that at the top of their lungs,"
Eh, in case you misunderstood the passage, "like bean sprouts" is not some kind of racist(-ish) metaphor: it's a common Korean expression to describe a place packed with people, like rush hour subways.
I guess NPR shouldn't have used the expression literally.
I just felt the whole article was undermined by the focus on religious nonconformity.
It will be interesting to see how the subject is white Protestants passing the virus at church and work. I doubt their religion will be framed as the problem.
The religious aspect also obstructs the more interesting questions of privacy
An alternative framing, which I believe to be more productive, is for the entire community to take ownership. "we messed up, we need to do better"
At a time like this, we need to partisanship aside and and focus on solutions, not blame. There will be plenty of time for a post-mortem after the crisis has passed.