Every Easter Sunday for almost 250 years, residents of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have been awakened by small groups of musicians playing the hymn “Sleepers, Wake,” before the Home Moravian church’s sunrise service.
The groups of trumpeters and tuba players that proceeded through the streets during the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World Wars One and Two have been silenced this year because of the novel coronavirus, Reuters reported.
The church – like many houses of worship across the United States – is following health officials’ urging to cancel all social gatherings of 10 or more people. A pastor and a small handful of musicians will gather in the church for a service that will be broadcast on local television and the internet.
They will go on without the spectacle of up to 300 musicians playing in a call-and-response style through the town, a tradition dating back to 1772 that in recent years has drawn thousands of believers and spectators before the 6 a.m. service.
According to Reuters, the church, which was founded in 1753 – before the founding of the United States – has closed its doors to members only once in its history, Tobiassen said. That was in 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and about 675,000 Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
