VACCINATION OR NOT: LEGAL AND RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES
VACCINATION OR NOT –
LEGAL AND RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES
©Wendell Griffen, 2021
University of Pretoria,
South Africa
September 20, 2021
Two years ago, the term Covid-19 was
not part of our vocabulary. Most people would have stumbled in speaking the term
“novel coronavirus.” The world had
survived bouts with influenza and Ebola virus in prior years. But infectious
disease experts, public health officials, physicians, politicians, lawyers,
judges, courts, journalists, and everyone else in the world did not know about
Covid-19. It did not exist in September 2019.
Two years later, Covid-19 defines how we live,
move, work, study, worship, entertain, and conduct the other rituals of
existence from birth thru death. What began as a new viral infection in one
province in China, spread across that nation, spanned the world in a matter of
weeks, and made globalism real in new ways.
Scientists and medical professionals worked
harder and faster than ever before to develop a vaccine for this highly
infectious, easily transmissible, and lethal respiratory virus. A year ago, the
best the world could hope was that researchers would succeed in developing,
testing, and producing a vaccine by late fall or early winter 2020.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was
hospitalized for a week and spent three days in intensive care after he was
sickened by Covid 19 in April 2020.[1] In late September 2020 – almost a year ago
now - US President Donald Trump was sickened by Covid 19 and flown to a hospital
where he was treated for 72 hours.[2] Those examples show that twelve months ago, world
leaders were as vulnerable to Covid 19 infection as anyone else.
By December 2020, when the Johnson and Johnson,
Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were approved for emergency use, more than a
million people had died throughout the world from Covid-related causes.[3] Given this history, one might expect that most
people would have welcomed an opportunity to receive a vaccine to protect
themselves from the most lethal biological threat to human life in more than a
hundred years.
However, vaccine hesitancy, meaning “delay in
acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination
services,” is a common phenomenon around the world. As one researcher states:
Factors that
affect the attitude towards acceptance of vaccination include complacency,
convenience, and confidence. Complacency denotes the low perception of the
disease risk; hence, vaccination was deemed unnecessary. Confidence refers to
the trust in vaccination safety, effectiveness, besides the competence of the healthcare
systems. Convenience entails the availability, affordability, and delivery of
vaccines in a comfortable context.[4]
People who are complacent about the risk of
becoming infected with the Covid-19 virus are less likely to be vaccinated
regardless to the evidence about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and no
matter how readily they may be able to obtain it. People who distrust the
safety and efficacy of the vaccine and who distrust the competence and good
faith of healthcare systems are less likely to be vaccinated despite knowing
the risk of Covid-19 disease, even if a vaccine is available, affordable, and
comfortably accessible. And even when people recognize the lethal risks
associated with Covid-19 infection and sickness, trust a vaccine to be safe and
effective, and trust healthcare providers to deliver the vaccine competently,
they are less likely to be vaccinated if a vaccine is not available,
affordable, and cannot be delivered in a comfortable way.
The SARS 19 coronavirus does not respect
geography, ideology, social status, and the other things that are commonly
viewed as why humans differ among ourselves. In the face of this common viral
threat, humanity is confronted by hesitancy to accept vaccination that has been
proven safe and predictably effective at preventing serious suffering and death
from sickness caused by the SARS 19 coronavirus.
This presentation explores legal and religious
factors surrounding vaccine hesitancy. When I speak of legal factors, I refer
to the extent that societies exercise power to influence personal behavior that
bears on public health in the face of vaccine hesitancy. By religious factors,
I mean how systems of moral and ethical belief influence personal behavior that
bears on public health in the face of vaccine hesitancy.
My premise is that vaccine hesitancy cannot be
confronted and overcome without considering how systems of societal power and religious
belief influence how humans define our individual and communal existence and
behavior. Law deals with the exercise of societal power. Religion deals with
the exercise of moral and ethical power. My premise is that vaccine hesitancy
can be affected by those forces.
The questions surrounding this premise are
real, not hypothetical. As I was preparing this presentation, President Joe
Biden announced that the United States would mandate, using the authority of
the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) to regulate workplace
safety and health, that all private companies in the United States with more
than one hundred workers require vaccination or weekly testing of their workers.
Mr. Biden also ordered mandatory vaccination for nearly 300,000 educators in
the federally funded Head Start program and at more than two hundred federally
run schools.
As one might expect,
reaction to Biden’s announcement varied depending on partisan political
affiliation. The Editorial Board of the New York Times endorsed Biden’s
decision to mandate vaccination and weekly testing for Covid-19.[5] The Editorial Board of the Washington
Post appears to support vaccine mandates also.[6] However, in a column
published in the Washington Post, one commentator denounced Biden’s decision to
impose vaccine mandates as an unconstitutional federal intrusion concerning
state powers and individual freedom.[7] Republican politicians across the United
States who oppose vaccine mandates also expressed outrage at Biden’s
announcement and have declared their intention to challenge it in the courts.[8] And although major denominations have
announced their support for the Covid vaccines, individuals are citing personal
faith as the basis for refusing to be vaccinated.[9]
Societies across the world have long exercised
the power to mandate that people be vaccinated to prevent the harms that result
when they are infected by and transmit communicable diseases. This power has
been recognized and exercised in societies that have widely varying systems of
government. It has been recognized and exercised in societies that have widely
varying systems of religion. And it has been recognized and exercised in those
societies even in the face of vaccine hesitancy. Neither concerns about the
limits of governmental power nor whether mandating vaccines infringes on
personal liberty have blocked societies from issuing and enforcing vaccine
mandates.
Instead, societies have
balanced the interests of public health and safety with respect for individual
liberty. Where vaccination is mandated, societies have recognized exceptions
based on religious faith if unvaccinated persons do not threaten public health.
The Biden vaccine
mandate announcement is an example. Workers who are not vaccinated will be
required to undergo weekly testing for Covid-19. In that sense, the weekly
testing option is an accommodation to people who cannot be vaccinated due to
health issues or based on religious objections.
I maintain, therefore,
that vaccine hesitancy is not affected by whether governments have the power to
mandate vaccinations. Nor is the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy driven by
whether and how health and personal liberty – including religious – concerns of
unvaccinated persons are accommodated. The power to mandate vaccinations
includes the power to accommodate individual health and liberty concerns in
ways that do not jeopardize public health and safety.
There is nothing new
about societal regulation of individual behavior, even when the regulated behavior
does not, in and of itself, threaten others. Private land can be appropriated
for public purposes so long as landowners receive just compensation for the
land even when landowners object to it being used for those purposes and
dispute the purchase price offered by the state to acquire it.
Governmental power to
regulate automobile safety is the basis for automobiles being sold with seat
belts that must be worn and alarm systems that must be present to alert drivers
to fasten the seat belts, even for car owners who prefer automobiles without
seat belts, without alarms, and who consider a governmental mandate to wear seat
belts an infringement on personal liberty. Societal power to regulate
individual behavior in the interest of public health and safety is as old as
laws against robbing, killing, raping, and cheating others.
While some religions have
considerations, concerns, and restrictions about vaccinations in general,
reasons for vaccination, or specific vaccine ingredients, most religions do not
prohibit vaccinations. The Jehovah’s Witness sect originally denounced vaccination
but revised its doctrine in 1952.[10] The sect now affirms that
whether someone is vaccinated is a personal decision and that vaccinations are
not prohibited by Scripture. Because vaccine mandates include exceptions and
accommodations based on religious belief, the mandates do not infringe on
religious freedom.
Intellectual honesty
compels us to admit that current expressions of vaccine hesitancy based on
opposition to vaccine mandates are not grounded in threats to personal liberty
and religious expression. Instead, they are objections to the idea Howard
Thurman termed “the experience of universality that makes all class and race
distinctions impertinent.”[11] They are open warfare against the view Martin
Luther King, Jr. often expressed when he said “It really boils down to
this: that all life is interrelated. We
are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made
to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”[12]
Thurman and King were
Black Baptists preachers in the religion of Jesus. Neither man held public
office or wielded governmental power. Their appeal, however, is echoed by
President Biden and other political leaders who recognize, at least concerning
the global Covid-19 pandemic, that idolatry to personal privilege threatens
communal health and safety. Vaccine mandates challenge the Cain-like attitude
that personal freedom and power can be used to the detriment of others with
impunity.
Implicitly, vaccine
mandates affirm a value cherished throughout the world in every religion and
affirmed by every legal and political system. That value system holds that all
people are neighbors. It holds that each of us owes a duty to not harm other
persons. Each of us deserves protection from self-centered people who choose to
exercise their personal freedom in ways that threaten others.
President Biden and
other politicians do not attribute their decisions to mandate vaccinations to
religious concerns. Their concerns are utilitarian. They want to protect people
from being infected, sickened, and from dying from Covid-19 so schools and
businesses can remain open and so workers can be paid to produce goods and provide
services.
Nevertheless, the
political and economic benefits from vaccine mandates do not invalidate the
moral and ethical grounds that support such mandates. Instead, Biden and other
politicians who support mandates show that reverence for the inter-connectedness
of all humanity produces positive results. No group in a population will be
safe from the threat of Covid-19 unless the entire population is safe. No
society will be safe until the world is safe.
The “universality of
experience” Howard Thurman extolled, and the “inescapable network of mutuality”
King preached about make vaccine mandates political, economic, moral, and
ethical imperatives. President Biden and other politicians may not say so, but Covid-19
is providentially exposing the world to the consequences of disregarding the
moral and ethical pleas, admonitions, and warnings of Thurman, King, and other
prophetic voices. We are seeing what happens when people refuse to obey the
“love thy neighbor as yourself” values that have been the bedrock of justice
and peace.
And in that sense, much of the opposition to
vaccine mandates shows how moral incompetence threatens human survival. A year
ago, there was no vaccine available in the world to treat this highly
transmissible and life-threatening disease. Now although free vaccines are
available across the United States, people are refusing to be vaccinated. Some
politicians in so-called “red states” – including in Arkansas where I live –
openly object to vaccines being required.[13] It is heart-breaking to know that people are
becoming infected, sickened, and risk dying because they refuse to be
vaccinated, refuse to wear face masks, and refuse to follow public health
admonitions to practice social distancing.
In this sense, opponents
to vaccine mandates who profess to believe in the sanctity of human embryos are
hypocrites. It is hard to take people seriously who assert that embryos deserve
governmental protection from abortion while they try to prevent governmental
vaccine mandates that protect people from becoming infected, sick, and dying
from Covid-19.
But the vitriolic
opposition to vaccine mandates in the United States is more than hypocritical and
hubristic when one considers its consequences for human health and safety. When one considers the health and
safety implications of that opposition on vulnerable persons, and especially
children, the opposition to vaccine mandates takes on a heinous character.
Remember that the
issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are complacency, confidence, and
convenience. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given full approval to
the vaccines for Covid 19. Vaccine mandate opponents have not produced any
evidence showing that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are unsafe and ineffective
therapies to protect people from becoming infected with the SARS 19 coronavirus
and prevent serious illness and death in those rare occasions when
“breakthrough” infections occur. Vaccine mandate opponents do not argue that
health professionals lack the competence to administer the vaccines. People in
the United States have better access to free, safe, effective, and properly
administered vaccines for Covid 19 than anyone else in the world.
So, it is heartbreaking to observe
so many across the U.S. who are willing to let that nation’s unvaccinated
children pass through the fire of the COVID-19 variants by refusing to
vaccinate themselves and by opposing vaccine mandates. Much of the vaccine resistance
is taking place among so-called “Christian
conservatives” who are rejecting a
vaccine that would protect themselves from the sickening and lethal
effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus despite pleas from respected scientists and
physicians to do so.
More than 650,000 people in the United States have died
because of COVID-19.[14]
The Delta variant can infect people who have been vaccinated, though breakthrough cases remain exceptional
and are without the extensive
sickness and risk of death that occurs when unvaccinated persons are infected. Currently,
none of the existing vaccines for COVID-19 have been approved for children 12
years old and younger. With this population of children still at risk for contracting COVID-19, one would think that people who
love and want to protect defenseless children from becoming infected and sickened would receive vaccinations and
support vaccine mandates.
Medical and scientific experts urge that unvaccinated people wear facemasks to protect themselves from exposure to
COVID-19. However, many are objecting to wearing face masks and object to governmental mandates
that face masks be worn. They are doing so
when the Delta variant spreads like wildfire throughout the United States,
causing sickness, suffering, hospitalizations and deaths of unvaccinated adults
and children.
Meanwhile, families that are in arrears on rent and mortgage
payments for apartments and homes are no longer protected from eviction because
the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated an eviction moratorium
issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent the transmission of Covid-19 among
unsheltered persons.[15]
Consequently, millions of unvaccinated adults and children
face the prospect of homelessness or taking shelter in communal housing
arrangements without the benefit of space
to social distance or a mandate to wear masks.
In addition, millions of
unvaccinated children are in states that prohibit mask
mandates, including mandates that masks be worn in schools.[16]
Unvaccinated and unmasked
children now sit in crowded classrooms. Some of them have been infected with
the Delta variant, and are infecting schoolmates,
teachers, and school staff workers. The infected students, teachers and school
staff workers take the Delta variant into their homes and neighborhoods,
thereby exposing other persons, including elders, to the risk of infection.
In
this sense, the vitriolic opposition to vaccine and mask mandates reminds me of
the ancient worship of Molech.
We are causing children to pass through or walk into a fire called the COVID-19
Delta variant. Children are being sickened and dying because people who claim
to love God and believe in personal liberty refuse to be vaccinated and wear
face masks. The
American Academy of Pediatricians has reported that after declining during the
early part of the summer, child cases of Covid 19 “increased exponentially,”
with more than 750,000 child cases of Covid 19 added between August 5 and
September 2. About 252,000 child cases were added the last week of August
alone.[17]
People who deliberately expose children to the risk of
sickness and death by refusing to wear masks, by discouraging others from
wearing masks, and by refusing to be vaccinated, are not honoring life, protecting
children, or loving God and their neighbors. They are sacrificing children,
much like religious people did who practiced the ancient idolatry of worshiping Molech.
The fact that they do so in the name of personal liberty and
religious freedom shows the hypocritical, hubristic, and idolatrous perverseness
of American “exceptionalism.” At a time
when the entire human population is threatened by a viral pandemic that can be
stopped if adults are vaccinated, wear face masks, and practice social
distancing, politicians and religious people in the society with the greatest
supply and access to free, safe, and effective vaccines for the SARS 19
coronavirus are insisting that people who can receive vaccination are legally
and morally entitled to refuse vaccines, refuse to wear face masks, and
congregate at will, because they are Americans. An appreciable amount of their opposition to
vaccine mandates is fueled by social media and other deliberate exercises in
misinformation, disinformation, and societal disharmony.[18]
In 1979, the E.F. Hutton investment firm marketed
itself on television with a commercial in which someone would mention that E.F.
Hutton was managing their investments. Immediately, people near that speaker
stopped what they were doing to overhear the conversation, leading to this
catchy end of the commercial: “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”
The surging tide of infection,
sickness, hospitalization, and death because of the Covid-19 pandemic prompts
one to question why people have failed to heed warnings, instructions, and
pleas from physicians and public health experts about how we should behave to
protect ourselves. And it highlights the threatening moral incompetence of
people who oppose vaccine mandates.
According to the Biblical book of Proverbs,
“simple” people are easily misled because they do not recognize the difference
between what is good and true and what is harmful and false. “Scoffers” scorn
knowledge, truth, warnings, and pleas that would prevent them from danger. In
doing so, they expose themselves and those around them to unnecessary risk of
harm. “Fools” are moral idiots who expose themselves and others to harm because
they do not use good judgment.
The message of Proverbs is that humans exist in
a moral universe where the principle of cause and effect is as real as it is in
the physical universe. People who are simple, scoffers, and fools behave as if
that is not true. Meanwhile, they do not want to be reminded of the
consequences of living that way. They do not want to heed appeals to behave in
ways that they dislike. When their conduct results in misfortune, people
dislike hearing the words, “I told you so.”
· We want the freedom to
make mistakes, but do not want to be told when we have ignored counsel that
could have avoided being mistaken.
· We want the freedom to
take risks, but do not want to be reminded that we were warned that the conduct
we intentionally took would be unsuccessful, or worse yet, harmful.
· We want to be
recognized for making decisions that work out well, but we do not want people
to tell us or others about the decisions we made that did not work after we
were told they would not work, or that they would work in unpleasant ways.
We do not like to be reminded when we have been
wrong. Each of us is vulnerable to what behavioral scientists call the
“self-serving bias,” the tendency to take credit for our successes but to
deflect blame for our failures.
Yet, the ability to learn from our mistakes
requires the humility to admit that we make mistakes. We goof. We ignore
warnings. We blow it. The ability to recognize that truth is essential if
people are to avoid self-inflicted harms and other consequences associated with
simple-mindedness, scornful disregard for truth, and moral idiocy.
Regardless of one’s political, religious, or
other beliefs, the consequences of moral incompetence are painful, preventable,
and deserved. Like it or not, there is no exemption or exception to the
principle of cause and effect – in the same way there is no exemption or
exception from the law of gravity – for people who are simple, scornful, and
fools. People reap the effects of their conduct. People who plant peanuts cannot
expect and do not deserve to harvest potatoes.
At some point, people who are simple, scoffers,
and fools are stuck with the consequences of moral incompetence. They are stuck
with the results of ignoring or rejecting appeals to wake up, heed wise
instructions, and live differently. At that point, they must suffer the
consequences of their simple-mindedness, scornfulness, and foolishness.
We are witnessing the bitter fruit of moral
incompetence surrounding Covid-19 every day. Some people have been infected,
sickened, hospitalized, and died who said they did not need to wear masks and
be vaccinated because God would not let them be infected with Covid. Children
are being infected, sickened, and are dying because adults refuse to wear masks
and be vaccinated.
People ridicule medical and public health
leaders who pleaded that we wear masks, practice social distancing, and be
vaccinated. Unmasked people by the tens of thousands are flocking and breathing
on each other for hours in football stadiums weeks after such gatherings were
prohibited for the Olympics, in open defiance of pleas to wear masks, practice
social distancing, and be vaccinated.
People are deliberately purchasing and
ingesting ivermectin – a drug prescribed to de-worm farm animals, but which has
never been tested or approved to treat or prevent Covid-19 – rather than taking
medically tested vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective.
Meanwhile, the global death toll from Covid-19
is surging. Children who cannot be vaccinated are being infected at an alarming
rate. Hospitals are overcrowded. Health care workers are worn out. Funeral
directors are overwhelmed.
Our analysis of vaccine mandates and vaccine
hesitancy requires that we address the pervasive moral incompetence surrounding
Covid-19.
Vaccine mandates are lawful. Vaccine mandates do not infringe on religious
freedom.
As Professor Allan Boesak has said, “the time
for pious words is over.” The suffering
and death experienced throughout the world from the SARS-19 coronavirus and
Covid-19 disease is being worsened not merely because so many people are
behaving like simpletons, scoffers, and fools. Their moral incompetence is
being deliberately weaponized by self-serving politicians.
A recent article in the New York Times reports
that Republican politicians in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Idaho,
Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and other US states know that
vaccine mandates are lawful because their states have long mandated vaccination
to prevent infection and transmission of communicable diseases.[19] Their opposition to vaccine mandates does
not, therefore, require legal, scientific, medical, or public policy analysis
and explanation. Rather, their
opposition demands the prophetic discernment, explanation, denouncement, and
condemnation often found in Scripture, as exemplified by the following passage
from Isaiah 59.
Isaiah 59:1-16
59See, the Lord’s hand is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear. 2Rather, your
iniquities have been barriers between you and your God, and your sins have
hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
3For your hands are
defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies,
your tongue mutters wickedness. 4No one brings suit
justly, no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,
conceiving mischief and begetting iniquity. 5They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; whoever eats
their eggs dies, and the crushed egg hatches out a viper. 6Their webs cannot serve as clothing; they cannot cover
themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of
violence are in their hands.
7Their feet run to
evil, and they rush to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of
iniquity, desolation and destruction are in their highways. 8The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in
their paths. Their roads they have made crooked; no one who walks in them knows
peace.
9Therefore justice is
far from us, and righteousness does not reach us; we wait for light, and lo!
there is darkness; and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 10We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who
have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as
though we were dead. 11We all growl like bears; like doves we moan
mournfully. We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is
far from us.
12For our transgressions
before you are many, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions indeed
are with us, and we know our iniquities: 13transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning away from following our God, talking
oppression and revolt, conceiving lying words and uttering them from the
heart.
14Justice is turned
back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public
square, and uprightness cannot enter. 15Truth is lacking, and
whoever turns from evil is despoiled. The Lord saw
it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.
16He saw that there was
no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm
brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him. [New Revised Standard
Version]
Another Hebrew prophet analyzed the
problem in words that, although different, are similarly indicting.
Micah 2:1-11
2Alas for
those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning
dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. 2They
covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress
householder and house, people and their inheritance.
3Therefore thus says the Lord: Now, I am
devising against this family an evil from which you cannot remove your necks;
and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time. 4On that
day they shall take up a taunt song against you, and wail with bitter
lamentation, and say, “We are utterly ruined; the Lord alters the inheritance
of my people; how he removes it from me! Among our captors he parcels out our
fields.”
5Therefore you will have no one to
cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord.
6“Do not preach” —thus they
preach— “one should not preach of such things; disgrace will not overtake
us.” 7Should this be said, O house of Jacob? Is the Lord’s patience
exhausted? Are these his doings? Do not my words do good to one who walks
uprightly?
8But you rise up against my people
as an enemy; you strip the robe from the peaceful, from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war. 9The women
of my people you drive out from their pleasant houses; from their young
children you take away my glory forever. 10Arise and
go; for this is no place to rest, because of uncleanness that destroys with a
grievous destruction. 11If
someone were to go about uttering empty falsehoods, saying, “I will preach to
you of wine and strong drink,” such a one would be the preacher for this people!
[New Revised Standard Version]
Professor Allan Boesak has provided an
incisive and succinct analysis of the abusive power machinations at work
exposed by those passages in the following excerpt from his 2015 book, Kairos,
Crisis, and
Global
Apartheid: The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance:[20]
Micah teaches us that prophetic
judgment is not emotional ranting and raving. He is meticulous as he lists the
evil that those who oppress the poor “love.” They “devise wickedness and evil
deeds in their beds,” that is they think of nothing else all night long, and
when morning dawns, “they perform it.” This should give us pause. First,
Micah offers sober insight into the human psyche: unlike animals reacting
on instincts for self-preservation and survival, humans contemplate
the evil they wreak upon others. They plan exploitation
and oppression; they calculate
the profits and benefits of war and destruction. They design
the language of justification, obfuscation, and
trivialization: “collateral damage,” “enhanced interrogation techniques,” “We
tortured some folks.” There is nothing spontaneous about it. Then Micah
adds, with amazing insight into the workings of power, ancient and modern, “because
it is in their power” (2:1). This is what lies at the core
of their evildoing: raw, abusive power. There is no fuzziness, naivete,
no ambiguity about this: it is pure, naked, abusive power. [Kairos, p.
125]
Politicians in Alabama, Arkansas,
Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere oppose
vaccine mandates knowing that such mandates are lawful. They know hospitals
in their states have intensive care units filled with unvaccinated and
intubated Covid-19 patients. Those politicians are now planning lawsuits
and other maneuvers to challenge vaccine mandates. They are designing and
fabricating public appearances where they falsely blame vaccine mandates
for vaccine hesitancy. And they are doing it, as Micah observed and as Boesak
emphasized, because it is in their power.
Likewise, so-called Christian
conservative religious leaders oppose vaccine mandates knowing that
religious exemptions are provided, knowing that the option of weekly
testing for Covid is an alternative to being vaccinated, and knowing that
employers are obligated to make reasonable accommodations for persons who
object to being vaccinated on religious grounds. As with the politicians, those
religious leaders oppose the vaccine mandates and foment opposition to efforts
to encourage compliance with the mandates because it is in their power.
The conduct of those politicians and religious
leaders goes beyond being simple, scornful, and foolish. It is more than
hypocritical, more than hubristic, and more than arrogant. It is self-righteous,
self-serving, and self-worshiping. Simply put, it is diabolical.
It is the special work of prophetic persons to
say so. Courts and judges can declare Covid-19 vaccine mandates lawful.
Physicians and medical researchers can attest that vaccines for Covid-19 are
safe and effective. Physicians and nurses can administer the vaccines. But the
work of exposing, denouncing, and condemning the diabolical conduct of
politicians and religious leaders who are falsely opposing vaccine mandates
belongs to prophetic people.
Hence, Allan Boesak draws our attention to the repeated
denunciation of hypocrites by Jesus at Matthew 23 where one reads these words:
Matthew 23:23-33
23“Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected
the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you
ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 24You blind
guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25“Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate,
but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26You blind
Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may
become clean.
27“Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside
look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all
kinds of filth. 28So you also on the outside look
righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness.
29“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of
the righteous, 30and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we
would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the
prophets.’ 31Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of
those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up,
then, the measure of your ancestors. 33You
snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell? [New
Revised Standard Version]
Boesak, a prophetic scholar, preacher, and
activist, observes that, therefore, such hypocrisy is never “harmless,” and
reminds us:
“That is one reason why Jesus, in Matt
23, so repeatedly called the Jerusalem elites who held the power of life or
death over the heads of the vulnerable, "hypocrites." Hypocrisy is
not simply "a face we put on." What we are hiding, Jesus says,
looking at this through the eyes of hypocrisy's victims, is a calculated,
lethal intent; a choice to turn away from the God of life to the gods of death.
Hypocrisy=idolatry=service to Moloch=human sacrifice, especially and
specifically children.”[21]
Time will tell whether politicians, judges,
religious leaders, and other influential persons in the United States will
exercise the moral competence, including the courage, to confront the
hypocrisy, misinformation, and disinformation surrounding vaccine mandates. Time
will tell whether people will stop using political and religious excuses to
avoid receiving the protection from free Covid vaccination.
Time will tell whether the society that boasts
that it is powerful, just, and reverent will heed prophetic calls to love our
neighbors as ourselves. Time will tell how many woes the world will suffer because
efforts to overcome Covid-19 are being frustrated by people in the United
States who are “simple,” “scoffers,” and “fools,” and who are followers of the
idolatry of “American exceptionalism.”
Beyond that, time will tell whether prophetic
people will, like prophetic people such as Jesus, Micah, and Isaiah in ancient
time and like present-day prophets such as Allan Boesak, recognize, denounce,
and condemn the diabolical hypocrisy surrounding opposition to vaccine mandates
for Covid-19. Just as Jesus denounced
hellish hypocrisy in Matthew 23, the work of exposing the hellish hypocrisy of opportunistic
politicians and self-serving religious people who oppose vaccine mandates in
the name of personal freedom, including religious liberty, belongs to prophetic
people.
The fate of the world turns on whether
prophetic people come forth and speak that truth.
[1] See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/boris-johnson-and-coronavirus-inside-story-illness.
[2] See https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/03/919898777/timeline-what-we-know-of-president-trumps-covid-19-diagnosis.
[3] See https://abcnews.go.com/Health/fda-authorizes-1st-covid-19-vaccine-united-states/story?id=74665712.
[4] See, Sallam M. COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Worldwide: A Concise Systematic Review of Vaccine Acceptance Rates. Vaccines
(Basel). 2021;9(2):160. Published 2021 Feb 16. doi:10.3390/vaccines9020160, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920465/ (accessed September 7,
2021, citations omitted).
[6] See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/08/its-time-biden-reset-battle-against-covid-19/.
[7] See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/10/biden-covid-vaccine-mandate-unconstitutional-unnecessary/.
[8] See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/world/biden-covid-vaccine-requirements-reaction.html. See also, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/us/republicans-biden-covid.html.
[11] See Howard
Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, p. 104, (Beacon Press, 1976).
[12]
See A
Christmas Sermon on Peace found in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King,
Jr., James Melvin Washington, ed., (Harper and Row, 1986), p. 254.
[13] See https://www.nationalreview.com/news/republican-governors-slam-bidens-sweeping-vaccinate-mandates-as-unconstitutional/.
[14] See https://covidusa.net/,
United States Covid-19 Statistics (accessed September 12, 2021).
[15]
See, Alabama Association of Realtors, et al. v.
Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/21a23_ap6c.pdf.
[16] See https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/which-states-ban-mask-mandates-in-schools-and-which-require-masks/2021/08.
[17] See https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/.
[18] See Tasnim S, Hossain MM, Mazumder H. Impact
of Rumors and Misinformation on COVID-19 in Social Media. J Prev Med Public
Health. 2020 May;53(3):171-174. doi: 10.3961/jpmph.20.094. Epub 2020 Apr 2.
PMID: 32498140; PMCID: PMC7280809.
[19] See, GOP Seethe at
Biden Mandate, Even in States Requiring Other Vaccines, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/vaccine-mandates-republicans.html.
[20] Allan Aubrey Boesak, Kairos,
Crisis, and Global Apartheid: The
Challenge to Prophetic Resistance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
[21] Boesak made this
observation in a September 14, 2021, email exchange with the author.
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