Nashville saw its first case of the “Spanish flu” in late September 1918. By November, 1,300 had died — 1 percent of the city’s population.

The influenza would kill almost 700,000 in the United States and 50 million globally. It was the worst pandemic in modern history. Amid the dramatic lifestyle changes brought by the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, the experience of Christians more than a century ago is worth revisiting.

As the flu spread across the U.S. in the late fall and early winter of 1918, theaters, schools, businesses and churches closed their doors for weeks. The Tennessee Health Department advised churches to suspend their Sunday meetings for Oct. 20 and 27. No one protested, and 92 churches complied.

However, the Russell Street Church of Christ in Nashville did not close its doors. The church approached the Red Cross with an offer of help. Their building became a temporary hospital because the city hospitals were turning away people. The Russell Street members, along with the Eleventh Street and Chapel Avenue congregations, poured their monetary and human resources into feeding and nursing the poor. The influenza epidemic, as A. B. Lipscomb wrote in the Gospel Advocate, had “opened up a way for the enlargement of the sympathies of Christian people.”