As North Idaho hospitals go into triage mode, schools open without masks

Prominent on the front page of the Wednesday, September 8, Spokesman was the headline “Idaho enacts crisis care standards”.¹ On page one of the same print edition’s Northwest Section a headline read, “Business as usual for Idaho schools.” This second article was adorned with a supra-heading “Masks are rare as schools open in COVID-19-ravaged Kootenai County.”

Children under age twelve are not vaccinated as the vaccine is not yet available for this age group. Only a small percentage of students over age twelve in North Idaho and the NE counties of adjacent Washington State are vaccinated. (The overall county vaccination rates in these counties stand at 35% or less.) By now it is abundantly clear that Covid-19 is primarily spread by aerosols and droplets released by breathing, speaking, and singing, especially in indoor environments. It is also abundantly clear that masks reduce the dose of the virus that is dispersed by those infected and also reduces the dose inhaled by those who are not yet infected. The mask policies of North Idaho schools are little more than a tepid suggestion in favor of wearing them. Without masking, schools are a caldron perfectly suited for infecting the maximum number of children and their families. 

With hospital wards filling up, the lack of a school mask mandate is insanity based in ideological denial. Sufficient numbers of anti-science, far right Republican ideologues have attained positions on boards in North Idaho over the years that there is no will to counteract their anti-scientific drivel. For example, North Idaho College (NIC) President Rick MacLennan issued a campus-wide mask mandate that officially lasted just four days before the Board of Trustees of NIC, in a contentious meeting, rescinded it.² Wilson Criscione, in an Inlander article which I highly recommend reading, put it this way:

Just four days into the semester, however, the board of trustees voted 3-2 to rescind the mask mandate. The board’s new majority, which gained control in the November 2020 election by riding a wave of right-wing distrust of higher education, took advantage of a new Idaho law that appears to give elected trustee members the authority to dictate operational decisions in response to the pandemic — an authority that previously was held by the college president.

MacLennan’s contract as NIC’s president is now held hostage by the board over the mask issue—and the wish of the far right’s new 3-2 majority on the board to demonstrate its dominance. 

And now, MacLennan’s future at the college may be in jeopardy, as the board won’t renew his contract and keeps delaying an ominous discussion of MacLennan’s employment.

This is what happens when voters don’t do their homework and fail to vote accordingly in elections for offices they deem obscure. (This is a cautionary tale for the Spokane Public School’s [District 81] Board elections coming up in November that I plan to cover next week.)

Meanwhile, North Idaho hospitals are having to practice “crisis care standards” due to the overload of patients, nearly all of whom are unvaccinated, people in need of critical care for severe cases of Covid-19. In common English, “crisis care standards” means triage, a term most often used in frontline military hospital units or hospitals in the midst of a natural disaster. In triage mode, patients deemed most likely salvageable are awarded scarce beds and treatment. Patients who would otherwise have been admitted may have to be turned away, and those deemed near death may have their supportive care re-directed to those with a higher chance of survival. 

So under “crisis care standards” hospital committees may be faced with heartrending decisions over which patient receives scarce resources. How is it possible to chose between a thirty-five year old unvaccinated mother of four who has been intubated in the intensive care unit for a month or the forty year old father of three who presents to the emergency room with a myocardial infarction and an unstable heart rhythm? 

These are impossible choices that may be made necessary by rampant misinformation about vaccines and right wing, office-holding ideologues nixing mask-mandates in the name of “Liberty!” What can you do? Advocate for vaccines and masks. Then pay attention to the electoral landscape. Get acquainted with the ideologies of the candidates. Talk with your friends about what you’ve learned and vote accordingly.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry 

There is a general election this year, 2021, with a ballot turn-in date of Tuesday, November 2. These are off-off year elections (that is, neither presidential nor congressional), at least in Washington State. Mostly, the positions in contention are local: city councils, school boards, fire districts, and some judgeships. Moreover, they are, in most cases, nominally non-partisan positions, candidates don’t appear on the ballot with “Prefers Republican Party” or “Prefers Democratic Party” behind their names. 

In August, while roughly three quarters of registered voters in Spokane County sat out the primary election, the other quarter chose those who will appear on the General Election ballot this November. You can see the certified results for all the races in Spokane County by clicking here. Do not fall in the trap of predicting the results of the General Election based on the numbers from the August primary. The November results will hinge on some combination of the preferences expressed by the votes in the primary and which other voters are motivated to vote in the November General Election. Typically, a third to a half more voters turn in ballots in November than in August in these off-off year elections, more than enough to change the results from those suggested by the primary. Complacency based on primary results is a mistake.

In the City of Spokane one City Council seat in each of two districts is up for grabs: In District 1 (NE) it’s Naghmana Sherazi¹ v. Jonathan Bingle. In District 3 (NW) it’s Zack Zappone v. Mike Lish. In District 2 (South Hill plus) Betsy Wilkerson will be on the November ballot unopposed. (Her expected opponent, CMR’s Tyler LeMasters, failed the residency requirement.) 

Residents of District 2 (South Hill plus), since they don’t get to chose between two candidates on the November ballot, might be tempted to relax. That, too, would be a mistake. The election results in Districts 1 (NE) and 2 (NW) could, if we don’t pay attention, tip the City Council in coming years toward scrapping the Comprehensive Plan (a scrapping favored by the realtors and developers, who are spending a lot of money in an attempt to change the Council composition) or shift the Council toward coddling the extremists from the Covenant Church as they push their theocratic agenda on the doorstep of Planned Parenthood. 

So who do you canvass for, contribute money to, and encourage your friends to vote for? Ironically, one of the best measures of extremism is provided by precisely those folks who would like you to believe that far right Republicanism equals belief in the teachings of Christ, WeBelieveWeVote.com. Dig into the details and you are likely to find that claimed equivalence is an insult to Christians and Christ. The WBWV page on the Spokane races neatly lays out the choices for City Council and the Board of Spokane Public Schools. On that page I recommend voting only for those who “Did Not Respond”. To understand why, click on “More>>” to the right of the name of one of the candidates who did respond, scroll down to the bottom and click the “Survey Responses” button. Read through the statements of “Core Beliefs” (1-3) and “Position Statements” (4-14) for which the level of agreement defines WBWV’s “alignment ”. 

Jonathan Bingle, candidate for City Council from District 1 (NE), for example, as part of his Christianity, wholeheartedly agrees (10 out of 10) with this statement (#5): “Elected officials have a duty to resist unelected bureaucrats who try to impose controversial mandates, such as forced mask wearing, quarantining the healthy, and vaccination passports.” I do not recall that as a Christian precept, cited Bible verses notwithstanding. 

Mr. Bingle also indicates his ten out of ten agreement with this statement under “The Poor and Needy” (#12): 

“Government officials should leave the provision of housing, rehabilitation, and other social services to individuals, families, and private organizations that are better equipped to directly help the homeless. Additionally, local officials should support law enforcement with proper funding, good-faith negotiations, and responsible accountability.”

His agreement suggests that Mr. Bingle dismisses the idea that government exists, in part, to help society cope with problems like homelessness and substance abuse—except through law enforcement and incarceration. 

A candidate who refuses to respond to WBWV’s survey seems more likely one who subscribes to values I recognize as Christian than the “aligned” ideologues who put their right wing politics on display clothed in WBWV’s thin veil of Christianity .

My picks for people to support in these races are Zack Zappone and Naghmana Sherazi for City Council and Melissa Bedford and Riley Smith for SPS (District 81) School Board. 

Remember these names. Visit their websites. Support them. Conversely, check out WBWV’s survey for the detailed politico-religious ideologies of the opposing candidates. 

If you have read this far and you’re registered to vote somewhere other than the City of Spokane or in District 81, use the underlined links above to learn the names and investigate the leanings of the candidates on your ballot.²Check out their webpages and their endorsements. Visit the Public Disclosure Commission for information on who supports the candidate financially. Don’t put it off. Talk with your friends and relatives about your conclusions. The night before the election due date (November 2) is not the time to do your homework. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

It is Naghmana Sherazi rather than Luc Jasmin against Jonathan Bingle on account of a difference of just 4 votes! The 4 vote difference in the machine count held up during the hand count, putting the lie to the national Republican unsubstantiated bluster about election fraud. Jim Camden’s article in Spokesman concerning these election results is worth reading, especially if you’re inclined to be suspicious about election administration.2

Caution is recommended in the general rule to vote only for those who “Did Not Respond” on the WBWV listings. For example, Ben Wick in Spokane Valley gets a 79% alignment with WBWV. However, the webpage of Wick’s opponent, Brandon Fenton, who did not respond, reveals his extremism almost immediately. In my book, the endorsements of Rob Chase, Bob McCaslin, and Rod Higgins are poison. 

There is a general election this year, 2021, with a ballot turn-in date of Tuesday, November 2. These are off-off year elections (that is, neither presidential nor congressional), at least in Washington State. Mostly, the positions in contention are local: city councils, school boards, fire districts, and some judgeships. Moreover, they are, in most cases, nominally non-partisan positions, candidates don’t appear on the ballot with “Prefers Republican Party” or “Prefers Democratic Party” behind their names. 

In August, while roughly three quarters of registered voters in Spokane County sat out the primary election, the other quarter chose those who will appear on the General Election ballot this November. You can see the certified results for all the races in Spokane County by clicking here. Do not fall in the trap of predicting the results of the General Election based on the numbers from the August primary. The November results will hinge on some combination of the preferences expressed by the votes in the primary and which other voters are motivated to vote in the November General Election. Typically, a third to a half more voters turn in ballots in November than in August in these off-off year elections, more than enough to change the results from those suggested by the primary. Complacency based on primary results is a mistake.

In the City of Spokane one City Council seat in each of two districts is up for grabs: In District 1 (NE) it’s Naghmana Sherazi¹ v. Jonathan Bingle. In District 3 (NW) it’s Zack Zappone v. Mike Lish. In District 2 (South Hill plus) Betsy Wilkerson will be on the November ballot unopposed. (Her expected opponent, CMR’s Tyler LeMasters, failed the residency requirement.) 

Residents of District 2 (South Hill plus), since they don’t get to chose between two candidates on the November ballot, might be tempted to relax. That, too, would be a mistake. The election results in Districts 1 (NE) and 2 (NW) could, if we don’t pay attention, tip the City Council in coming years toward scrapping the Comprehensive Plan (a scrapping favored by the realtors and developers, who are spending a lot of money in an attempt to change the Council composition) or shift the Council toward coddling the extremists from the Covenant Church as they push their theocratic agenda on the doorstep of Planned Parenthood. 

So who do you canvass for, contribute money to, and encourage your friends to vote for? Ironically, one of the best measures of extremism is provided by precisely those folks who would like you to believe that far right Republicanism equals belief in the teachings of Christ, WeBelieveWeVote.com. Dig into the details and you are likely to find that claimed equivalence is an insult to Christians and Christ. The WBWV page on the Spokane races neatly lays out the choices for City Council and the Board of Spokane Public Schools. On that page I recommend voting only for those who “Did Not Respond”. To understand why, click on “More>>” to the right of the name of one of the candidates who did respond, scroll down to the bottom and click the “Survey Responses” button. Read through the statements of “Core Beliefs” (1-3) and “Position Statements” (4-14) for which the level of agreement defines WBWV’s “alignment ”. 

Jonathan Bingle, candidate for City Council from District 1 (NE), for example, as part of his Christianity, wholeheartedly agrees (10 out of 10) with this statement (#5): “Elected officials have a duty to resist unelected bureaucrats who try to impose controversial mandates, such as forced mask wearing, quarantining the healthy, and vaccination passports.” I do not recall that as a Christian precept, cited Bible verses notwithstanding. 

Mr. Bingle also indicates his ten out of ten agreement with this statement under “The Poor and Needy” (#12): 

“Government officials should leave the provision of housing, rehabilitation, and other social services to individuals, families, and private organizations that are better equipped to directly help the homeless. Additionally, local officials should support law enforcement with proper funding, good-faith negotiations, and responsible accountability.”

His agreement suggests that Mr. Bingle dismisses the idea that government exists, in part, to help society cope with problems like homelessness and substance abuse—except through law enforcement and incarceration. 

A candidate who refuses to respond to WBWV’s survey seems more likely one who subscribes to values I recognize as Christian than the “aligned” ideologues who put their right wing politics on display clothed in WBWV’s thin veil of Christianity .

My picks for people to support in these races are Zack Zappone and Naghmana Sherazi for City Council and Melissa Bedford and Riley Smith for SPS (District 81) School Board. 

Remember these names. Visit their websites. Support them. Conversely, check out WBWV’s survey for the detailed politico-religious ideologies of the opposing candidates. 

If you have read this far and you’re registered to vote somewhere other than the City of Spokane or in District 81, use the underlined links above to learn the names and investigate the leanings of the candidates on your ballot.²Check out their webpages and their endorsements. Visit the Public Disclosure Commission for information on who supports the candidate financially. Don’t put it off. Talk with your friends and relatives about your conclusions. The night before the election due date (November 2) is not the time to do your homework. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry1

It is Naghmana Sherazi rather than Luc Jasmin against Jonathan Bingle on account of a difference of just 4 votes! The 4 vote difference in the machine count held up during the hand count, putting the lie to the national Republican unsubstantiated bluster about election fraud. Jim Camden’s article in Spokesman concerning these election results is worth reading, especially if you’re inclined to be suspicious about election administration.2

Caution is recommended in the general rule to vote only for those who “Did Not Respond” on the WBWV listings. For example, Ben Wick in Spokane Valley gets a 79% alignment with WBWV. However, the webpage of Wick’s opponent, Brandon Fenton, who did not respond, reveals his extremism almost immediately. In my book, the endorsements of Rob Chase, Bob McCaslin, and Rod Higgins are poison. 

Texas’ new law, Senate Bill No. 8, the so-called “Texas Heartbeat Act” is breathtakingly disingenuous. The law relies on a legal twist to take away a legal right—while claiming to do no such thing. The law specifically enjoins all levels of the executive branch of government from becoming involved in any way in the enforcement of the law. The law thereby avoids any complaint that “the state” is taking away the civil right to abortion affirmed by Roe v. Wade, based on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (one of the post Civil War amendments). Instead, enforcement of S.B. No. 8 is outsourced to individuals bringing suit in the civil judicial system. The law offers private parties legal grounds to threaten anyone even remotely aiding a women in obtaining an abortion with what amounts to legal extortion: “If you even council a woman about getting an abortion, I will take you to civil court. I will entangle you for weeks or months in a suit that could cost you at least $10,000 and reimbursement for my legal bills in bringing the suit. At a minimum it’ll cost you your time and your own legal fees. (Why don’t you just hand over some money and we’ll settle this quietly out of court?)” The tactic is sickeningly clever. You can read about its origins and the lawyer who hatched the idea here. 

This new Republican tactic, at a minimum, provides self-righteous busybodies with the power to intimidate. At its worst it contains whiffs of the vigilantist informers we recall from the McCarthy era in our 1950s, the East German Stasi, and from Orwell’s 1984. 

As Heather Cox Richardson writes in her post copied below, this new Texas law is just part of a decades-long effort by the Republican Party to undermine civil rights. What I though I understood about the purpose of the U.S. Supreme Court—that one of its main functions was to ensure for the people in all the states the civil rights articulated in the U.S. Constitution and all of its Amendments (not just the ones in place before the Civil War)—is now at stake. Republicans are closing the door on the hopeful America in which I thought I grew up, an America in which the federal judiciary protected the rights of all its citizens.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

I encourage you, if you have not already, to sign up for Professor Cox Richardson’s daily email. 

September 3, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

The new anti-abortion law in Texas is not just about abortion; it is about undermining civil rights decisions made by the Supreme Court during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The Supreme Court declined to stop a state law that violates a constitutional right.

Since World War II, the Supreme Court has defended civil rights from state laws that threaten them. During the Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to use the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net—this is when we got Social Security—and promote infrastructure. But racist Democrats from the South balked at racial equality under this new government.

After World War II, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, a Republican appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, and Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican appointed by Richard Nixon, the Supreme Court set out to make all Americans equal before the law. They tried to end segregation through the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision prohibiting racial segregation in public schools. They protected the right of married couples to use contraception in 1965. They legalized interracial marriage in 1967. In 1973, with the Roe v. Wade decision, they tried to give women control over their own reproduction by legalizing abortion.

They based their decisions on the due process and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. Congress developed this amendment after legislatures in former Confederate states passed “Black Codes” that severely limited the rights and protections for formerly enslaved people. Congress intended for the powers in the Fourteenth to enable the federal government to guarantee that African Americans had the same rights as white Americans, even in states whose legislatures intended to keep them in a form of quasi-slavery.

Justices in the Warren and Burger courts argued that the Fourteenth Amendment required that the Bill of Rights apply to state governments as well as to the federal government. This is known as the “incorporation doctrine,” but the name matters less than the concept: states cannot abridge an individual’s rights, any more than the federal government can. This doctrine dramatically expanded civil rights.

From the beginning, there was a backlash against the New Deal government by businessmen who objected to the idea of federal regulation and the bureaucracy it would require. As early as 1937, they were demanding an end to the active government and a return to the world of the 1920s, where businessmen could do as they wished, families and churches managed social welfare, and private interests profited from infrastructure projects. They gained little traction. The vast majority of Americans liked the new system.

But the expansion of civil rights under the Warren Court was a whole new kettle of fish. Opponents of the new decisions insisted that the court was engaging in “judicial activism,” taking away from voters the right to make their own decisions about how society should work. That said that justices were “legislating from the bench.” They insisted that the Constitution is limited by the views of its framers and that the government can do nothing that is not explicitly written in that 1787 document.

This is the foundation for today’s “originalists” on the court. They are trying to erase the era of legislation and legal decisions that constructed our modern nation. If the government is as limited as they say, it cannot regulate business. It cannot provide a social safety net or promote infrastructure, both things that cost tax dollars and, in the case of infrastructure, take lucrative opportunities from private businesses.

It cannot protect the rights of minorities or women.

Their doctrine would send authority for civil rights back to the states to wither or thrive as different legislatures see fit. But it has, in the past, run into the problem that Supreme Court precedent has led the court to overturn unconstitutional state laws that deprive people of their rights (although the recent conservative courts have chipped away at those precedents).

The new Texas law gets around this problem with a trick. It does not put state officers in charge of enforcing it. Instead, it turns enforcement over to individual citizens. So, when opponents sued to stop the measure from going into effect, state officials argued that they could not be stopped from enforcing the law because they don’t enforce it in the first place. With this workaround, Texas lawmakers have, as Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his dissent, “delegate[d] to private individuals the power to prevent a woman from…[exercising]…a federal constitutional right.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was more forceful, calling the measure “a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny.” And yet, the Supreme Court permitted that state law to stand simply by refusing to do anything to stop it. As Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: “Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents.”

A state has undermined the power of the federal government to protect civil rights. It has given individuals who disagree with one particular right the power to take it away from their neighbors. But make no mistake: there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much of the civil rights legislation of the post–World War II years.

On September 4, 1957, three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a crowd of angry white people barred nine Black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The white protesters chanted: “Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t gonna integrate.”

In 1957, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower used the federal government to protect the constitutional rights of the Little Rock Nine from the white vigilantes who wanted to keep them second-class citizens. In 2021, the Supreme Court has handed power back to the vigilantes.

Why are some so staunchly critical?

Jerry LeClaireSep 3

I was brought up as a mainline Protestant in the United Methodist Church in Wisconsin. Even as a teenager I was aware of a church hierarchy, a governing structure above the individual church congregation level that exerted at least some control over the conduct and preaching of pastors of Methodist Churches. This governing structure is what makes the United Methodist Church one of the mainline Protestant “denominations.” In contrast, “non-denominational” Christian churches characteristically have no such oversight. A preacher in many a non-denomination setting is free to lead based on his or her own emphasis and interpretation of scripture. Such a preacher is limited only by his or her charisma, his or her ability to convince followers of the biblical truth of what they have to say. Most mainline Protestants would be startled to listen to some of the preaching in these churches, preaching that bears little resemblance to anything recognizable as a Christian message, preaching with an emphasis, for example, on the importance of the Second Amendment. (I don’t recall Jesus recommending the bearing of arms.) Two such churches that stand out for me are the Covenant Church on the the near north side of Spokane and the Candlelight Christian Fellowship in Coeur d’Alene, both of which have been active and vocal in the anti-vaccination/anti-mask movement during the Covid pandemic. 

The article copied below was written by John Fea, an Associate Professor of History at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. I found Professor Fea’s article enlightening about the linkage of Fundamentalist, non-denominational Christianity and the anti-vaccination movement. 

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

Jesus is My Vaccine

by John Fea

September 2, 2021

Recently someone close to me, a devout evangelical Christian, texted to explain why he was not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “Jesus went around healing lepers and touched them without fear of getting leprosy,” he said. And if this reference to Luke 17:11-19 was not enough to convince me that followers of Jesus were immune to COVID-19, he added St. Paul’s words in Romans 8:2 to his biblical argument against vaccination: “The law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”

These are not the only Bible verses I have seen and heard evangelical Christians use to justify their anti-vaccine convictions. Other popular passages include Psalm 30:2 (“Lord, I called to you for help, and you healed me.”); 1 Corinthians 6:19 (“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?”); and Leviticus 17:11 (“For the life of a creature is in the blood.”).

What is going on here?

Earlier this week I was talking to a reporter who covers the public health beat. He was working on an article about American Catholics seeking religious exemptions to vaccine mandates issued by their school districts and places of employment. Many of these exemption-seekers are asking local Catholic priests to write letters on their behalf, not unlike students who show up to class following an absence with notes from their doctors. (Most Catholic archdioceses are refusing to provide such letters.)

The reporter asked me if evangelicals were also seeking exemption letters from their pastors. The question gave me an opportunity to explain some basic differences between Catholic and evangelical approaches to biblical interpretation.

Unlike Roman Catholicism, with its ecclesiastical hierarchy and official doctrinal pronouncements emanating from the Vatican, evangelicalism has no such organizational structure. As Calvin University historian Ronald Wells once quipped, “I wanted to resign from evangelicalism. But I didn’t know where to send the letter.”  

Indeed, American evangelicals resist most forms of organizational control. How does one coral the Holy Spirit when it moves in the hearts of God’s people? The New Birth cannot be contained—it is a spiritual experience that transcends man-made religious institutions. Why listen to a bishop over the direct voice of God?

When it comes to the use of the Bible in public life, evangelical Christians take the Protestant Reformation to its logical conclusion. In the sixteenth century, Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther translated the Vulgate, a Latin version of the Old and New Testaments that only educated men (mostly priests) could read, into the language of the common people. As ordinary Europeans read the Bible—many for the first time—they inevitably began to interpret it as well. 

Although Protestant communities in the immediate wake of the Reformation proved successful in shaping the way their members understood the scriptures, in the early United States biblical interpretation became more free-wheeling, individualistic, and unhinged from such communities. Small differences over how to interpret the Bible often resulted in the creation of new sects. 

As the United States grew more democratic, Protestant men and women brought their ever-expanding freedoms to bear on their reading of the Bible. The Pope, they argued, required his followers to abide by authoritative readings of the sacred text, but Protestants had the liberty to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, using little more than their own common sense. Protestantism, and especially the evangelical brand of Protestantism sweeping the country through the religious revival that historians have called the Second Great Awakening, was a religion of freedom.

I told this reporter that while Catholics turn to priests to explain their faith to health officials, school administrators, and employers, evangelicals need no such mediators. All they have to do is pick a few Bible verses, manipulate those verses so that they speak directly to the subject of COVID-19 vaccination, and then reference the novel interpretations on a religious exemption form. 

But even evangelicals do not develop their religious arguments against the vaccine, or anything else for that matter, in isolation. Throughout United States history they have turned, almost in cult-like fashion, to charismatic celebrities who build their followings by baptizing the political or cultural propaganda they promote in a sea of random Bible verses. Like the early Corinthian church, some evangelicals follow Paul, others follow Apollos, others follow Cephas, and still others claim to follow Christ (I Corinthians 3:12). Without an ecclesiastical hierarchy to reign them in, these evangelical pied pipers have little accountability. 

Megachurch pastors, televangelists, conservative media commentators, and social media influencers have far more power over ordinary evangelical Christians than their local pastors, many of whom feel powerless when they try to encourage their congregations to consider that God works through science. 

When I ask evangelical anti-vaxxers how they come to their conclusions, they all seem to cite the same sources: Fox News (especially prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham), Grace Community Church pastor John MacArthur, Salem Radio host and author Eric Metaxas, Tennessee megachurch leader Greg Locke, or a host of fringe media personalities whom they watch on cable television or Facebook.

Of course, modern American evangelicals have always used the Bible to defend views that are out of the mainstream. Today they oppose vaccines. Ten years ago they insisted that Barack Obama was the Antichrist and claimed that Jesus was going to return on May 21, 2011. Back then we dismissed them as cranks or at most objects of curiosity worthy of a news story or two before reason banished them to the fringes of American life. But this is no longer true.

Social media allows evangelical conspiracy theorists to become influential through their scripture-laden, anti-vaxxer rants. By catering to these evangelical celebrities in an attempt to garner their votes, the Trump presidency empowered them and their irresponsible uses of the Bible.  

We are now seeing the dark side of Martin Luther’s Sola Scriptura. When the Bible is placed in the hands of the people, void of any kind of authoritative community to guide them in their proper understanding of the text, the people can make it say anything they want it to say. 

Jesus is my vaccine!

John Fea is Executive Editor at Current.

Why are some so staunchly critical?

Jerry LeClaireSep 3

I was brought up as a mainline Protestant in the United Methodist Church in Wisconsin. Even as a teenager I was aware of a church hierarchy, a governing structure above the individual church congregation level that exerted at least some control over the conduct and preaching of pastors of Methodist Churches. This governing structure is what makes the United Methodist Church one of the mainline Protestant “denominations.” In contrast, “non-denominational” Christian churches characteristically have no such oversight. A preacher in many a non-denomination setting is free to lead based on his or her own emphasis and interpretation of scripture. Such a preacher is limited only by his or her charisma, his or her ability to convince followers of the biblical truth of what they have to say. Most mainline Protestants would be startled to listen to some of the preaching in these churches, preaching that bears little resemblance to anything recognizable as a Christian message, preaching with an emphasis, for example, on the importance of the Second Amendment. (I don’t recall Jesus recommending the bearing of arms.) Two such churches that stand out for me are the Covenant Church on the the near north side of Spokane and the Candlelight Christian Fellowship in Coeur d’Alene, both of which have been active and vocal in the anti-vaccination/anti-mask movement during the Covid pandemic. 

The article copied below was written by John Fea, an Associate Professor of History at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. I found Professor Fea’s article enlightening about the linkage of Fundamentalist, non-denominational Christianity and the anti-vaccination movement. 

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

Jesus is My Vaccine

by John Fea

September 2, 2021

Recently someone close to me, a devout evangelical Christian, texted to explain why he was not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “Jesus went around healing lepers and touched them without fear of getting leprosy,” he said. And if this reference to Luke 17:11-19 was not enough to convince me that followers of Jesus were immune to COVID-19, he added St. Paul’s words in Romans 8:2 to his biblical argument against vaccination: “The law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”

These are not the only Bible verses I have seen and heard evangelical Christians use to justify their anti-vaccine convictions. Other popular passages include Psalm 30:2 (“Lord, I called to you for help, and you healed me.”); 1 Corinthians 6:19 (“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?”); and Leviticus 17:11 (“For the life of a creature is in the blood.”).

What is going on here?

Earlier this week I was talking to a reporter who covers the public health beat. He was working on an article about American Catholics seeking religious exemptions to vaccine mandates issued by their school districts and places of employment. Many of these exemption-seekers are asking local Catholic priests to write letters on their behalf, not unlike students who show up to class following an absence with notes from their doctors. (Most Catholic archdioceses are refusing to provide such letters.)

The reporter asked me if evangelicals were also seeking exemption letters from their pastors. The question gave me an opportunity to explain some basic differences between Catholic and evangelical approaches to biblical interpretation.

Unlike Roman Catholicism, with its ecclesiastical hierarchy and official doctrinal pronouncements emanating from the Vatican, evangelicalism has no such organizational structure. As Calvin University historian Ronald Wells once quipped, “I wanted to resign from evangelicalism. But I didn’t know where to send the letter.”  

Indeed, American evangelicals resist most forms of organizational control. How does one coral the Holy Spirit when it moves in the hearts of God’s people? The New Birth cannot be contained—it is a spiritual experience that transcends man-made religious institutions. Why listen to a bishop over the direct voice of God?

When it comes to the use of the Bible in public life, evangelical Christians take the Protestant Reformation to its logical conclusion. In the sixteenth century, Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther translated the Vulgate, a Latin version of the Old and New Testaments that only educated men (mostly priests) could read, into the language of the common people. As ordinary Europeans read the Bible—many for the first time—they inevitably began to interpret it as well. 

Although Protestant communities in the immediate wake of the Reformation proved successful in shaping the way their members understood the scriptures, in the early United States biblical interpretation became more free-wheeling, individualistic, and unhinged from such communities. Small differences over how to interpret the Bible often resulted in the creation of new sects. 

As the United States grew more democratic, Protestant men and women brought their ever-expanding freedoms to bear on their reading of the Bible. The Pope, they argued, required his followers to abide by authoritative readings of the sacred text, but Protestants had the liberty to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, using little more than their own common sense. Protestantism, and especially the evangelical brand of Protestantism sweeping the country through the religious revival that historians have called the Second Great Awakening, was a religion of freedom.

I told this reporter that while Catholics turn to priests to explain their faith to health officials, school administrators, and employers, evangelicals need no such mediators. All they have to do is pick a few Bible verses, manipulate those verses so that they speak directly to the subject of COVID-19 vaccination, and then reference the novel interpretations on a religious exemption form. 

But even evangelicals do not develop their religious arguments against the vaccine, or anything else for that matter, in isolation. Throughout United States history they have turned, almost in cult-like fashion, to charismatic celebrities who build their followings by baptizing the political or cultural propaganda they promote in a sea of random Bible verses. Like the early Corinthian church, some evangelicals follow Paul, others follow Apollos, others follow Cephas, and still others claim to follow Christ (I Corinthians 3:12). Without an ecclesiastical hierarchy to reign them in, these evangelical pied pipers have little accountability. 

Megachurch pastors, televangelists, conservative media commentators, and social media influencers have far more power over ordinary evangelical Christians than their local pastors, many of whom feel powerless when they try to encourage their congregations to consider that God works through science. 

When I ask evangelical anti-vaxxers how they come to their conclusions, they all seem to cite the same sources: Fox News (especially prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham), Grace Community Church pastor John MacArthur, Salem Radio host and author Eric Metaxas, Tennessee megachurch leader Greg Locke, or a host of fringe media personalities whom they watch on cable television or Facebook.

Of course, modern American evangelicals have always used the Bible to defend views that are out of the mainstream. Today they oppose vaccines. Ten years ago they insisted that Barack Obama was the Antichrist and claimed that Jesus was going to return on May 21, 2011. Back then we dismissed them as cranks or at most objects of curiosity worthy of a news story or two before reason banished them to the fringes of American life. But this is no longer true.

Social media allows evangelical conspiracy theorists to become influential through their scripture-laden, anti-vaxxer rants. By catering to these evangelical celebrities in an attempt to garner their votes, the Trump presidency empowered them and their irresponsible uses of the Bible.  

We are now seeing the dark side of Martin Luther’s Sola Scriptura. When the Bible is placed in the hands of the people, void of any kind of authoritative community to guide them in their proper understanding of the text, the people can make it say anything they want it to say. 

Jesus is my vaccine!

John Fea is Executive Editor at Current.

So much for being fiscally responsible

Jerry LeClaireSep 1

Local Republican elected officials (Rep. Rob Chase, for example) and local far right Republican agitators (former Rep. Matt Shea and Caleb Collier) have been busy spreading harebrained arguments and declarations against mask and vaccination mandates. These folks and other Republicans preach fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility is still one their leading arguments against both of the infrastructure bills currently before the U.S. Congress. What about fiscal responsibility in dealing with the Covid pandemic?

Overwhelmingly, it is the unvaccinated (and often the unmasked) who are showing up for treatment of Covid pneumonia. Local hospitals and emergency rooms are cancelling elective procedures and scrambling to gather staff, drugs, and equipment to treat these people. A stay in a hospital Intensive Care Unit for Covid pneumonia, whether ending in death, disability, or a cure, typically runs well over $100,000. And that ignores the personal and societal financial costs of disability, long Covid, and death. The two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines that would have prevented or greatly lessened the severity of Covid illness cost the U.S. government about $40. That same $100,000 medical expense invested in vaccination would have protected 2500 people. 

We pay those $100,000 bills collectively. We pay them collectively through insurance—or through medical bankruptcy. Insurance is, after all, a collective enterprise. We pay a monthly fee that frees us (to some small degree) from the fear of a bill that might bankrupt us. It is out of those monthly fees that we all, ultimately, pay the Covid-19 hospital bills. (Yes, that’s even true of Medicare. It’s just that the Medicare insurance premiums are taken out of your paycheck during your working life.) If your insurance falls short and your own funds are inadequate, you face medical bankruptcy. In a bankruptcy all the people and institutions to whom you owe money have to settle for less. Seen a slightly different way, all those people and institutions share in paying a legally prescribed portion of your medical bill. 

Fiscal responsibility would be to strongly encourage people to get vaccinated—including financial and societal incentives. A logical financial incentive might include a discount in monthly health insurance premium for those with proof of vaccination. After all, it will cost more, on average, to pay the medical bills of an unvaccinated person. Shouldn’t I be offered the “freedom” to not have to pay their medical bills with my health care insurance premiums? Doesn’t “freedom” include accepting the fiscal consequences of one’s choices? Insurance companies of all types carve out exceptions in every policy. That’s how insurance companies make money: they balance risk versus premiums collected and reap a percentage of the transaction.

I am not in favor of a governmental mandate requiring everyone to be vaccinated, but I am in favor of fiscal prudence, a virtue that Republicans have abandoned in their drive to garner the votes of those who put the fiscal burden of their vaccination decisions on the rest of us. “Freedom” cuts many ways. 

Republicans ought to be in favor of the “freedom” of restaurant owners, a concert venue, and other businesses to require vaccination of their customers. After all, such a requirement could be a straightforward business decision. I’m certainly more likely to go inside a business where I’m assured that everyone is vaccinated. This is free enterprise, another supposed Republican value. After all, Republicans and their Religious Right celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision that freed a Colorado businessman, a baker, from requiring him to serve a gay couple by baking a wedding cake. Perhaps the baker thought this a wise business decision that would attract a certain type of customer to his shop. The Supremes said he was free to make that choice. Freedom to require vaccination is more compelling. It not only a business choice, but a choice with positive health consequences.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The theme for this post came from an article by Syndicated Columnist Froma Harrop that appeared in the Spokesman in the electron-only Saturday, August 28 edition. Harrop’s column is worth reading for its concentration on the national scene of pandemic fiscal policy. 

P.P.S. For Republican distorted fiscal reasoning there is no better example than the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. Last month by executive order he banned both vaccine mandates and mask mandates for his state. He went unmasked to a Republican fundraiser (where most of the participants were also unmasked) on Monday, August 16. The next day it was reported that Abbott tested positive for Covid on a routine test. That in itself is interesting. The rest of us don’t get daily Covid tests, but the rest of the story is even more interesting. Abbott not only was vaccinated AND got an off label booster shot, but he, being a man of great privilege I suppose, received a dose of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment, the same expensive treatment that may have saved Trump’s life. Note that the price tag of Regeneron’s treatment is $2100 and the treatment is meant for “people at considerable risk of developing severe Covid symptoms, including millions of Americans with compromised immune systems.” Abbott, according to news accounts, had no symptoms at all. I wonder how many parents of Covid infected, unmasked children will come down with a severe case of the disease thanks to Abbott’s mandate, while the governor affords himself lavish protection. How many of those infected parents won’t have been vaccinated on account of ban of mandates and how many of them will have the fiscal wherewithal get an expensive preventative treatment? How much will will we all pay in order to treat these people AND to afford Abbott with the very best medical care?