1/ @PCAByFaith, the flagship publication of U.S. presbyterianism’s conservative wing, recently ran a piece lauding COVID-19 mitigation, including masks, while urging pastors to fight “misinformation.”
It’s an apologetic for pandemic tyranny.
But there’s even more going on here.
2/ Start with the piece.
Rev. Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine researcher (more on that below), calls on Christians to embrace pandemic measures.
At the outset, Poland decries “the rise of individualism and narcissism” and “the false belief in the democratization of expertise.”
3/ Poland encourages churches to embrace virtual gathering, promotes mask-wearing as a “tangible act of love,” and calls on pastors to hawk “evidence-based resources to counter misinformation” from the pulpit.
He also encourages social distancing, citing Ecclesiastes 3:1.
4/ Poland decries “[s]preading unverified claims and fears about vaccines, masks, and public health [which] undermines trust in both medicine and the church’s leadership.”
He pleads with pastors to “address the harm caused by believing or sharing misinformation.”
5/ Per Poland, Christians should reject “the Western cultural message that personal autonomy should take precedence over collective responsibility and care.”
He calls on pastors to “embrac[e] the fruit of common grace”—vaccines and antivirals—and “reject[] misinformation.”
6/ Where to begin with this?
There’s hardly a hint of regret here from Poland regarding how the measures he supports hurt the “most vulnerable.”
People dying alone in nursing homes.
Kids locked out of schools.
Small businesses wrecked.
Economic devastation.
7/ Nor does Poland muster much sympathy for the tens of millions of working-class Americans forced to choose between their livelihoods and a COVID-19 vaccine.
The liability shield provided by the PREP Act helped enable that. Or maybe that’s just “common grace”?
8/ Perhaps the distrust Poland decries for public health isn’t unearned.
When some protests are favored over others; when pastors can’t serve communion but you can order fast food; when big-box retailers stay open and pop-and-shops are crushed—why should we defer to “experts”?
9/ Poland doesn’t deal with this.
The reaction many Christians have to this springs both from love for neighbor and a loathing of unequal weights and measures. Proverbs 20:23.
Even as secular sources rethink the COVID-19 response, a reformed evangelical outlet platforms this.
10/ Finally, in a piece where he promotes vaccines, the article hints at, but does not disclose Poland’s apparent financial interests.
According to a CMS database, Poland has been paid nearly $470,000 in industry consulting fees, including payments from large vaccine makers.
11/ Post tenebras lux or “after darkness, light” was one of the rallying cries of the Reformation.
Of all people, reformed evangelicals should be at the forefront, not of doubling down on the pandemic response, but ensuring something like it never happens again.
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