By Bob Allen
People affected by the Ebola virus are not just potential carriers to be shunned and feared but persons of dignity and worth created in the image of God, said Sunday morning’s preacher at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
An outbreak of the often-fatal illness going on in West Africa since March now carries a name and a face for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated congregation, with news last week that a woman in quarantine since contact with the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States is a church member.
Britt Carlson — an intern in Wilshire’s groundbreaking pastoral residency program that prepares young preachers through supervised ministry experience similar to that received by medical students who work in hospitals — said Oct. 5 that anyone reading a newspaper or watching television news knows that a lot of people are in a panic because Ebola has arrived in Dallas.
“What we’ve been trying to do as a church this week in light of the news about Eric Duncan and Louise Troh is to stop people from treating them like they aren’t people with stories,” Carlson said.
Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, in critical but stable condition in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, moved to Dallas from Liberia about a week before he got sick. Troh, who had a child with Duncan in Liberia before coming to the U.S. 16 years ago, remains in quarantine but is showing no symptoms.
George Mason, senior pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church, says the couple recently decided to get back together and were planning to talk to him about performing their wedding before Ebola struck.
Mason described experiences of the past week as “a terrible privilege.”
“It’s certainly a terrible thing that’s happened, and we are mortified by it like everyone else, and we’re prayerful about Eric’s condition and for her,” Mason said Monday night on CNN. “But at the same time, she’s one of us.”
“She’s part of our church,” Mason said. “She is a full-fledged member. We love and care for her, and this is what we do as a church. We treat people as people and not as patients.”
“There is a medical aspect to this,” he said. “There are all sorts of other consequences, but she’s Louise, and we remind her of that. She’s a child of God, and she’s part of our lives.”
Carlson said in her sermon that Wilshire’s experience with the media has been good, but there are those out there “who have been unkind and who have more of a political agenda, who have used Eric and Louise for their own ends, to make their own points and who have not treated them with the full dignity of human beings.”
“What we need to try to do is to tell an alternative version of this human drama,” she said. “Our job is to remember that Louise was baptized here this summer and that the whole family are our neighbors, and most of all to remind ourselves and others that they are first persons and not patients.”
Mason, who managed to visit Troh and members of her family in quarantine earlier in the day, said on CNN that she was “really cheered” by news that Duncan is now being treated with experimental medicine.
“She’s been looking for some good news,” Mason said. “It’s been anxious for her. Since he took the downturn she hasn’t been able to speak to him by phone or anything.”
During the visit, Mason said he delivered a packet of about 100 notes written by church members.
“Her face just lit up,” he described the scene. “She was really thrilled to get that communication. I was able to leave a Bible with her, and we were able to talk at a spiritual level, because that is our contribution to this.”
Asked if he took precautions during the visit, Mason said, “There’s no reason to take too many precautions, because we know how the Ebola virus spreads.”
“Because they are asymptomatic, there really isn’t that much to worry about,” Mason said. “But just in case I did keep three feet of distance and did not touch them.”
“They were very respectful,” he said. “They wanted to make sure that that was true as well.”
Previous story:
First U.S. Ebola case hits home for Baptist church in Dallas