The global COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted several instances of churches violating state issued and scientifically recommended guidelines designed to keep populations healthy and to prevent the further spread of the disease. While these instances are minority responses to these orders, they nonetheless raise questions about the rationality of ecclesial belonging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I draw on the work of William James and W. E. B. Du Bois to articulate a conception of ecclesial belonging as a social epistemological process engaging a complex, fluid multiplicity of knowers of various scales. I argue that, in this view, ecclesial rationality involves the construction of a concatenation of internal and external practices individual believers and groups can traverse so long as they consistently satisfy a plurality of desiderata. I suggest that what is irrational about religious-based defiance of COVID-19 guidelines is the church-sanctioned severance of internal from external practices. I suggest that this behavior is supported by a failure to grasp the demands of ecclesial rationality rather than embrace them, and that this conception of rationality may have been eroded by the value-neutral skepticism of secular rationality.

中文翻译：

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纯粹经验世界中的教会财产：威廉·詹姆斯，韦伯·杜波依斯和危机中的宗教理性

全球COVID-19大流行已经使教会违反国家颁布的一些事例成为焦点，并科学推荐了旨在保持人群健康并防止疾病进一步传播的指南。尽管这些实例是对这些命令的少数回应，但它们仍然引起了人们对于应对COVID-19大流行的教会归属的合理性的疑问。在本文中，我将借鉴William James和WEB Du Bois的著作来阐明教会归属的概念，这是一种社会认识论过程，涉及到各种规模的知识者的复杂，多变的多样性。我认为，按照这种观点，教会理性涉及构建内部和外部实践的串联，只要信徒和群体始终如一地满足多个愿望，他们就可以遍历。我建议，基于宗教的对COVID-19准则的蔑视是不合情理的，是教会批准的内部与外部实践的分离。我建议这种行为是由于未能把握教会理性的要求而不是接受教会的理性所支持的，并且这种理性的观念可能已被世俗理性的价值中立怀疑论所侵蚀。