For Latter-day Saints afraid of getting sick at church, new guidelines are a breath of fresh air

For years, the Lees, a Latter-day Saint family just outside of Atlanta, have been faithfully attending their congregation’s sacrament meeting only to slip out the side door the moment they hear the final “amen.”

It’s nothing personal. If anything, parents Erin and Nathan wish they could stay, talking scripture with other adults while their twin 3-year-old girls sing songs about Jesus with the other kids. It just hasn’t felt worth the risk.

Erin has a condition known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME-CFS. Her case fluctuates, meaning its severity ebbs and flows. Five years ago, she caught a respiratory virus that triggered a strength-sapping flare-up that, for a long time, made merely sitting up a triumph. Her energy has slowly begun to return, but even now she remains largely housebound.

“I cannot,” she said, “afford to get sick again.”

Church is one of her few regular outings, the entire family masking up each week for the main worship service with fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even so, all it takes is for someone nearby to launch into a wet, sticky cough to send the Lees dashing for the door.

Historically, the couple have avoided “asking for much” from their congregation by way of accommodation.

“ Part of that’s just the world is scary,” Erin said, “and I have a marginalized disease.”

They’ve recently begun to shed some of that hesitancy, however, thanks to help from church headquarters.

The couple are among those celebrating new official guidance from Salt Lake City aimed at reducing the spread of airborne disease indoors “when local transmission rates are high and for individuals [who] may be at higher risk.”

Located under the “Safety and Health for Church Activities” webpage, the one-page infographic makes it clear that all are enlisted — be it by remaining home when sick, keeping the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system running, or opening windows and doors — in creating a healthy environment where as many people as possible are able to gather. (Classroom windows in a number of Latter-day Saint meetinghouses have been screwed shut to, in some cases, guard against vandalism.)

Other guidance includes maximizing distance between individuals while minimizing activities like singing, and holding meetings in large spaces or even outdoors.

Simple. Straightforward. And, according to indoor air quality researcher Donald Milton, potentially lifesaving.

“There’s no one silver bullet for [preventing] most respiratory infections,” the University of Maryland environmental health professor said. “ But layering these [measures] on top of each other makes a huge difference.”

‘Butting heads’ with local leadership

Joe Dougherty, communications director for the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, “applauds” the church’s effort.

As do Liesl McConchie and David Eldredge, two Latter-day Saints who, like the Lees, know what it’s like to try to balance concerns over indoor air quality with a desire to engage with their faith community.

McConchie, an education researcher and consultant living in San Diego, and her family mask at all times when attending their Latter-day Saint meetinghouse, a protective measure for one of her children who is at greater risk for contracting a severe case of COVID-19.

When she asked her leaders if her family could be allowed to step outside with the sacrament, or Communion, to avoid removing their masks indoors, she said they resisted the idea for “many months.” Eventually, they reached a compromise. Her family could receive and exit the building with the sacrament if they took it in the foyer, not the chapel.

“I definitely had members of the stake presidency,” or regional leadership, she said, “who admonished me to just pray with greater faith that my family would be protected from disease by attending church.”

For his part, Eldredge, a chemist from Heber City, suffers from a debilitating lung condition that means even a minor bug can flatten him with a severe chest infection. In addition to masking, he began taking carbon dioxide readings at church a few years back, a fact he and his bishop “butted heads” about.

What the data shows

To gather data, Eldredge uses a pocket-size sensor that his company distributes in the United States and Canada. After connecting with McConchie on social media, the two teamed up and equipped grassroots volunteers with the devices. To gather readings, these fellow Latter-day Saints carried the sensors into meetings or placed them strategically in rooms where meetings were being held. Many of those measurements, McConchie and Eldredge said, were taken with the knowledge and permission of their contacts at church headquarters.

In the end, they amassed a database of almost 200 readouts taken between fall 2021 and summer 2023.

Although the majority came from buildings — a mix of Latter-day Saint meetinghouses and temples — in Utah, they were able to capture data from facilities stretching from Virginia to Japan. Types of meetings varied, too, from Sunday school and sacrament meetings to youth gatherings and sealings (temple marriages).

The findings alarmed them.

According to Milton, a “healthy” level of CO2 for any indoor space is below 800 parts per million. The median reading from the team’s data: 1,426 ppm, with more than 40 recorded instances of rooms that broke 2,000 ppm. In one case, a missionary training held in a room in a Heber City meetinghouse, Eldredge’s sensor spiked to nearly 6,000 ppm.

The issue is not necessarily with CO2 itself, Milton explained, but what it can indicate. Because humans exhale CO2, its levels serve as a proxy for how much fresh air is — or isn’t — getting in. High levels of outdoor CO2 can muddy measurements. And if a space has a robust filtration system, then it’s possible, the researcher stressed, to have high CO2 levels but low levels of airborne pathogens. Still, he said, he generally masks in rooms where measurements exceed 1,000 ppm — especially during flu and COVID season.

McConchie and Eldredge said they submitted their findings to church headquarters. Nathan Spencer, chief safety, health and environmental officer within the Church’s Risk Management Department, confirmed in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune that his team “received information from these members.”

According to the same statement, a church committee also ran its own indoor air quality assessments in “multiple” meetinghouses.

“The results,” Spencer said, “demonstrated safe indoor environments and that ventilation methods and processes used in meetinghouses are functioning properly.”

He then outlined that other ongoing efforts to ensure healthy indoor air in church facilities include:

• Employing “competent teams” to design and maintain safe worship spaces.

• Tasking engineers with overseeing ventilation replacement and improvement projects for existing and new buildings.

• Having an indoor air quality council meet regularly to “benchmark efforts” and “discuss ventilation best practices.”

• Consulting with outside organizations and experts on “further insights and strategies” for minimizing disease transmission risks.

• Training church facility managers on those strategies.

Covenants and air quality

Even if the readings from McConchie and Eldredge are representative, however, it wouldn’t be as though Latter-day Saint facilities are uniquely dangerous when compared to other crowded indoor places.

Studies through the years and around the world have uncovered frequent rates of CO2 well above the 1,000 ppm threshold in music venues, schools, health clubs and airplanes.

Meanwhile, calls to a handful of leaders of other faiths in Utah about their efforts around indoor air quality elicited shrugs and head scratches. An exception was the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, which recommends CO2 sensors in all its facilities throughout the state.

Although guidelines from independent organizations abound (the general rule of thumb calls for CO2 rates under 1,000 ppm), there are no official Utah or federal standards or statutes aimed at enforcement.

Instead, McConchie argues, Latter-day Saint leaders, in drawing attention to this issue, are following a higher law.

“As covenant-making people, we have a responsibility individually and institutionally to care for everyone,” she said. “This isn’t a personal responsibility thing. There are structural things that church leaders need to do when they go and open their buildings” to make it a place where the “physically and spiritually broken and vulnerable can gather.”

Tearing open the roof

Days after the church infographic‘s release, Erin Lee’s leaders called her to serve as a volunteer teacher in the women’s Relief Society.

With the infographic in hand, she felt emboldened to ask that the class implement its guidance to make it safer for her to accept the assignment.

“It was so much easier to say, ‘Here’s the link [the church’s resource on this]. Let’s have a discussion,’” she said. Equally helpful was saving herself the effort of having to come up with a plan herself.

“I don’t have to be the expert and the advocate,” Lee said. “I can just say, ‘Here’s what I need. Here’s what the church recommends.’”

Her leaders didn’t hesitate to take up the challenge, setting up a plan to open the door and windows and run an air purifier. And so, for the first time in years, Lee will be meeting regularly with the other women in her congregation.

Over the past years of “being so sick and in so much danger,” Lee said she has thought a lot about the New Testament story of the man with palsy. In it, the man’s friends are so determined to get him into the crowded room where Jesus is teaching that they tear open the roof and lower him inside.

“They found a way,” Lee said, “to make the building accessible for their friend.”

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