Beginning in March 2020, we have been subjected to a perpetual stream of verbiage from federal, state, and local government officials that seemed to be handed to them ready-made from some public relations marketing firm. On Facebook (May 21, 2020), I wondered, “What public relations firm has coordinated the slick COVID-19 marketing campaign?” You remember the slogans:
We are All in this Together.
Social Distance.
Wash Your Hands Frequently.
Stay Home. Save Lives.
Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve.
Safer at Home.
The New Normal.
Likewise, regardless of their source, federal and state Ministers of Truth, er, Health not only pushed daily all the above slogans and hailed those who imposed their Peacetime Emergency Powers upon once free citizens of the USA. Equally troubling has been the citizens’ docile approval of the authoritarian control as necessary. Those who grabbed Peacetime Emergency Powers for themselves have regularly pumped out additional restrictions and contradictory bilge that threatens not only the routine lives and livelihoods of the citizenry but even the freedoms assured us by the US Constitution and the constitutions of states which put major restrictions on the rights of government not on US citizens.
Early in 2020, it became evident that the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci was either ill-informed concerning the gravity of the COVID-19 virus or he was significantly minimizing its seriousness for some reason. This is evident from his conversation on Sunday morning, January 26, 2020, during an interview with John Catsimatidis, a syndicated radio host in New York. Catsimatidis asked, “What can you tell the American people about what’s been going on? Should they be scared?” Fauci offered a dismissive reply, “I don’t think so. The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It’s a very, very low risk to the United States, but it’s something we, as public health officials, need to take very seriously.” Fauci’s downplaying of the virus seemed out of proportion to President Trump’s action five days later when he banned travel from China on January 31. Among national voices, President Trump seemed alone to underscore the seriousness of the coronavirus. That same day, Joe Biden, who craved to become President, openly expressed disapproval and disagreement with the President’s travel ban, “You know we have right now a crisis with the coronavirus, emanating from China. . . . This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Large swaths of America’s economy were shut down, especially those states with Democrat governors who assured the citizenry, “We are all in this together. We need to close non-essential businesses, close schools and universities, close churches and places where people assemble, such as funeral homes, restaurants, and bars. Stay at home except for essential reasons for a period of two weeks to flatten the curve.” Citizens were willing to comply with a two-week pause in the ordinary activities of their lives and even take economic losses for two weeks to “flatten the curve” for the purpose of reducing demands on emergency rooms, healthcare personnel, and hospital beds. Lord Acton’s axiom is right: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Much to the dismay of people who understand the corruptibility of human nature and especially those who climb to positions of authority, governors who seized Peacetime Emergency Powers have interminably extended their autocratic prerogatives. “Flatten the Curve” for two weeks became a month, then many months, and now a whole year. When the Peacetime Emergency Power grabbers did relax their tyrannical grasp upon schools, churches, places of assembly, restaurants, and other so-called non-essential businesses, they persisted to impose heavy restrictions, the wearing of masks, and fines and prosecutions imposed by attorneys general for business owners deemed not compliant with the heavy-handed dictates by governors.
A year ago, on March 8, 2020, when governors were preparing their “stay at home” orders, during an interview for 60 Minutes (CBS), Dr. Anthony Fauci assured Americans, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences—people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” Less than a month later, on April 3, 2020, the CDC changed its recommendation to encourage wearing cloth face coverings “in public settings when around people outside their household, especially when social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” Not until July 25, 2020, did Governor Walz of Minnesota, exploiting Peacetime Emergency Powers, issue Executive Order 20-81 to require that everyone in Minnesota wear a face-covering in all indoor businesses and public indoor spaces, unless alone. Restrictions intensified. In the fall, public schools continued online education that had begun in March. An intensified tyrannical tone characterized red state governors’ Executive Orders just prior to Thanksgiving Day with hotlines made available for snitches to report on neighbors who hosted dinners with too many guests, especially guests not of one’s immediate family. The CDC as well as federal and state officials have kept shifting their orders and recommendations while continually claiming to “follow the science” even as informed citizens recognized that the so-called “science” was regularly contradicting scientific investigations being made by verified scientists.
Today, Evangelicals are perhaps more divided than we have been at any other time in recent memory. Though this division is internal its provocation has been triggered by divergent responses to two seemingly unrelated external, cultural forces that came to dominate the United States throughout 2020. First is the authoritarian overreach of government officials who have imposed their stubborn and intrusive restrictions upon congregational worship services. Many evangelical church leaders prompted fractures within their own churches when they eagerly subjected the church to the state by replacing congregating together for worship with online live attempted replications of worship services. Many followed this de-churching of Evangelicals by applying for and receiving massive amounts of taxpayer money under the Paycheck Protection Program of the Coronavirus Relief Bill in March 2020. Second, a rush to judge George Floyd’s death a racially motivated murderous act by Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, amplified the cracks in evangelical churches. Many Evangelicals took their cues from leaders who, though they may deny it, are heavily influenced by Critical Race Theory’s worldview that permeates the culture. Thus, they promptly heaped racist accusations upon fellow Evangelicals who did not link arms in solidarity with Black Lives Matter activists but instead expressed caution against leaping to the unwarranted conclusions that George Floyd was murdered or that his death was the consequence of racial hatred.
Consequently, the schism among Evangelicals during 2020 derives from two seemingly unrelated issues that are much more correlated than first meets the eye. Both issues acutely affect once deeply held evangelical beliefs that are intimately connected with the message of the good news as it is in Jesus Christ.
The more recent flashpoint entails the sin of partiality, when pastors, shaped far more by cultural currents than they are willing to acknowledge, yielded to the allure of our culture’s holiness code as they pursued public assuaging of their perceived white guilt due to alleged white privilege, white supremacy, and white fragility. Many of their sheep followed them into the yawning worldview trap, and those who refused to follow found themselves rebuked for disagreeing with their culturally holy pastors and fellow sheep.
The more remote flashpoint is the sin of subjugating the Lord Christ’s domain to Caesar, when evangelical leaders, who after initially closing their churches during the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” yielded to fear and panic to close the church’s doors for several months. Having surrendered public gatherings to the whims of overbearing governors, it did not take long for Evangelicals to arrive at the simplistic notion that love obligates everyone to wear a mask in the presence of one another. Thus, whenever leaders finally opened church doors again for assembled worship, albeit greatly reduced to accommodate “social distancing,” they insisted upon enforcing their governor’s mask mandate even to this day.
Evangelicals who preach that Christian love obligates us to wear masks in the presence of fellow Christians are also eager to proclaim that we are obligated by love to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Though I have neither observed this nor heard anyone express this, David French is confident that the reason Evangelicals who object to requirements to wear masks do so as “a sign of their personal fearlessness” that “God will protect them from” contracting COVID-19 or that they have no fear of the effects of the virus. Contrary to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s claim that masks offer very little protection for the wearer and do little more than make others feel a bit safer, French states what is dubious, that it is “well-established that the primary purpose of wearing the mask is to protect those around you more than it is to protect yourselves. When I’m standing next to an unmasked family in church, I’m not thinking they’re brave or bold. I’m seeing instead a tangible disregard for the health and safety of those around them.”
It should not be surprising, but not for the reasons that French suggests, that Christians who object to mask mandates also are resistant to receiving any of the COVID-19 vaccines. Concerning believers who are not yielding to public pressure to receive a vaccine, again, French claims that they view their refusal “as a concrete demonstration of their own courageous assertion of individual autonomy.” I have never observed such a notion in the numerous people I have encountered, including whole congregations, who express their intention not to succumb to the incessant public pressure. Once again, French dogmatically asserts that their refusal is tantamount to sin because “they are endangering themselves and others.” Thus, while he concedes that it may be impossible to convince fellow Christians that they “can take a vaccine with total confidence,” perhaps it is possible to convince them that “taking risks (or enduring inconvenience) on behalf of others should be a cardinal Christian characteristic.” French insists that accepting a COVID-19 vaccine is more than either a scientific or personal issue. It is a spiritual one, a moral matter. It is incumbent upon Christians to receive a vaccine because, “If every Christian can read and understand the biblical reality that “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Similarly, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, of the Southern Baptist Convention, observes that folks from various Christian traditions are hesitant to receive any of the three available vaccines for a variety of reasons that are understandable. Recollection of the Tuskegee experiment may prompt some to look askance at the push for them to be vaccinated. Others resist because they associate the vaccines with cells derived from aborted fetuses. Moore attempts to relieve hesitancy for either of these two reasons. He devotes more space to the real group that he perceives resist vaccines because they associate them with alleged “conspiracy theories,” which Moore proceeds to dismiss as “demonstrated to be false” along with “dark claims about the vaccines.”
Moore appeals for Evangelicals to welcome the vaccines as “discovered by human beings but given by God” as a gift and prescribed by Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins for our medical relief comparable to what the Apostle Paul did when he “prescribed wine for Timothy’s stomach ailments (1 Timothy 5:23).” Moore urges Christians to accept a vaccination not merely for one’s own welfare “but for the entire community.” Why? It is our Christian duty. It is an act of love. “We can express our love for neighbor—especially the sick and elderly—by reducing the chance that we might inadvertently pass along a virus that could kill them.” Once again, Moore appeals to Scripture, to one of Jesus’ miraculous healings to enforce his message. We do not need to gather others to assist us to carry our friend to Jesus, climb up onto a precarious roof, tear open that roof, and let our friend down into the crowded house where Jesus is so that he can heal our friend. No! “All we are asked to do is to get a shot.”
Are French, Moore, signers of the BioLogos Statement on Science for Pandemic Times, and numerous pastors correct when they insist that Christian love obligates us to receive a COVID-19 vaccine? I intend to answer this question in my next blog entry. For now, as we are on the very cusp of completing one year under several governors’ Peacetime Emergency Powers and the radically altered and sparse congregating together of God’s people as the church, let this blog entry refresh your memory concerning how voluntarily many Christian churches have become subjects of the state because their pastors and elders have given to Caesar what belongs to God. The reasoning that led church leaders to subjugate Christ’s people, the church, to numerous governors’ unlegislated orders and the thinking that regards any resistance to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine as a failure to love one’s neighbor falls far short of the kind of thinking to which the gospel of Jesus Christ obligates Christians and ministerial leaders.
Until next time. . . .