SO FAR THIS YEAR has been the year of deaths for high profile religious leaders. First Pope Francis died the day after Easter, just one day after making his final public appearance. Then on Fathers Day, Jimmy Swaggart was rushed to the hospital after a cardiac issue and died on July 1. And then John McArthur, megachurch pastor and bible teacher died on July 14, two days after an announcement had been made in his church that he was in hospital and not expected to live.
Full disclosure: I am not Roman Catholic, neither was I a fan of the other two pastors. But this post is not about theological differences, it is about the media frenzy both within and outside the Christian church concerning these deaths.
First of all the Pope. The death of any pope automatically triggers world-wide attention. The pope is not only the leader of the 1.4 billion members of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide, he is also a major player on the world stage. He has the ear of major political leaders world-wide. His funeral, and indeed the funeral of any pope draws world wide attention and attendance by world leaders and celebrities. That is understandable.
What is not understandable, to me at least, is the proliferation of gossip – both in official media and social media – particularly YouTube – which is one of the greatest platforms for misinformation in the world. First there were rumours during his illness that the pope will resign like his predecessor did, and speculation about who was really running the Catholic Church during his incapacity. During the lengthy hospitalization earlier this year there were rumours of his death well in advance of the actual date. And even while he was still alive – there were murmurings of who the next pope would be and who were the front runners. Officially of course, there is no campaigning and no wheeling and dealing among the cardinals concerning the election of a pope. The pope is supposedly selected by the Holy Spirit guiding the cardinals during their conclave. Cynics are of a different view. Very interesting to me is the fact that after the election of the new pontiff we are hearing “reports” of what allegedly went on in the conclave. Where are these reports coming from, given that the cardinals took a solemn oath of secrecy?
Now let’s turn our view to the Protestant side of the divide. From the time of Jimmy Swaggarts’s hospitalization on June 15 until his death on July 1 there were almost daily “updates” on YouTube and elsewhere even when there really were no new developments. Swaggart was in a coma for 16 days, a coma out of which he never woke up. But according to an obviously fake report on Facebook, he allegedly had a “special message from his death bed” for his wife, and his son indeed the church. Swaggart’s son Donny Swaggart however said publicly that his father did not regain consciousness. I tend to believe him more than the fake news on Facebook.
Throughout the more than 2 weeks of Swaggart clinging to life in his coma, there were almost daily prayer services and numerous postings on social media by people who were “praying for a miracle”, and at the same time praising the ministry of whom someone called “the Protestant Pope” – a title he certainly did not deserve, since only a small part of Protestant Christianity recognized him as a spiritual leader. His former denomination the (Pentecostal) Assemblies of God had defrocked him when he refused to submit to the discipline that they had imposed after his first moral transgression. While many of his followers downplayed that scandal, the world had not forgotten. Whenever the secular press mentioned Swaggart, they raised the fact that Swaggart had been caught – red handed as it were – not once but twice in the company of a prostitute.
The fuss about John MacArthur’s passing was not as over the top as that of Swaggart, but it also began long before he died. MacArthur had been in declining health for some time and had a number of visits to the hospital and absences from the pulpit which caused speculation on subjects like “who will replace him” and some even asked “can he be replaced?”. Of course he can. And so can the pope and Jimmy Swaggart.
Now for some perspective on these three deaths. All three were old men, aged 88, 90, and 86 respectively. Their deaths were not unexpected. Of course every death is tragic to family members like a wife, children and relatives and friends. But it is the normal progress of all humans. We grow older, our health deteriorates, and finally we die. It happens every day all over the world. Although we know that it will happen, we find it to be sad when it does occur. The more famous you are, the more widely known your death will be. But To inflate these expected natural deaths to a “world tragedy” is not only bizarre, it minimizes and degrades those deaths that truly are tragic – the deaths of martyrs, victims of violent crime, senseless war, the genocide of the holocaust, or disasters like the sinking of the Titantic or the 9/11 crime. The deaths of those and some other events move me much more.