It started with a rumor on social media. Is a traveling religious revival that believes COVID-19 is a sign of the end times really coming to New Ipswich to spread their gospel – and potentially the novel coronavirus – to the surrounding area? The answer was yes, as Torben Sondergaard’s group The Last Reformation made its way to New Ipswich in August for a week-long evangelical event.
Group representatives initially told the Select Board that The Last Reformation would likely not follow the state’s COVID-19 social distancing and quarantine guidelines, despite traveling through a series of coronavirus hotspots on their way to New Ipswich. This alarmed residents around the region who’d been largely able to avoid a COVID outbreak to that point; some locals even closed their businesses for the week.
“Any event of this scope, at this point in our time would raise concerns, especially when you have the organizers say they don’t feel the need to practice COVID-19 protocols to protect everybody. I think that’s certainly getting under people’s skin,” said town administrator Scott Butcher at the time.
But by the time the tents were set up at State Representative Paul Somero’s Lord’s Valley property, Sondergaard had agreed to follow the rules. Nonetheless, the outcry from concerned citizens reached the state house, prompting Governor Chris Sununu to issue an order requiring masks for gatherings of 100 people or more and send the highway department down to put up traffic signs warning those entering New Ipswich of the high COVID risk.
Whether it was the masks, the social distancing, or just good luck, there did not appear to be a COVID-19 spike corresponding to The Last Reformation’s visit, though there was some collateral damage. Some have speculated that the oddly placed, ominously worded traffic sign on a corner of Route 124 may have been a distracting factor in multiple car crashes that week, including a rollover that killed two Jaffrey men. And in what could only be classified as an “act of God,” a mighty microburst lifted the revival tent off the ground as it was being taken down, leaving several injured and hospitalized as the tent poles came crashing back down to earth.