On a personal note, I’ve never been an anti-vaccine proponent. However, I am very much opposed to the “big government” forceful vaccination approach that is being promoted in our culture. This is more than a conservative v. moderate debate within the church of Jesus Christ. Pay attention to how the church is being played.
In case you’ve been living under a rock in some far and distant jungle, you’ve come to see that the COVID-19 vaccine is divisive. COVID-19 made headlines in early 2020 with the threat of death rates that would transcend the Spanish flu of 1918 or potentially the Black Death of the 1300s. Emergency orders were instituted around the world bringing international travel to a standstill and implementing mask mandates and social distancing in all populated locations. Instantaneously the whole world was on high alert while the medical community was seeking to discover the origin, threats, and potential medical solution to this mysterious disease.
The COVID-19 vaccine (C-VAX) is being used to divide people into segregated groups and emphasizing one of those groups as the righteous while villainizing the other as the unrighteous, irresponsible, and ignorant subpar group among us. And just like that, Jim Crow was reborn in America.
Although celebrated as the saving potion that would rescue us from death and financial ruin, the politics surrounding the vaccination for COVID-19 has actually divided us and threatens a specific population with financial ruin if they abstain from receiving it. The COVID-19 vaccine (C-VAX) is being used to divide people into segregated groups and emphasizing one of those groups as the righteous while villainizing the other as the unrighteous, irresponsible, and ignorant subpar group among us. And just like that, Jim Crow was reborn in America.
The Contradictions Among Us
The very people with the loudest voices among us who believe that Jim Crow was wrong and unjustly villainized people based upon the melanin in their skin are essentially the same people who are preaching the gospel of the C-VAX and dividing the population into the VAX vs. UNVAXED camps.
Additionally, the very same people who are working overtime to preach that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to another tiny human being inside her body, (even if that choice means murdering the very baby she carries in her womb), are the loudest voices in our culture promoting the idea of stripping the unvaccinated population’s freedom of choice related to a personal health decision.
A pregnant woman can be fatally dangerous to her unborn child, but unvaccinated individuals are not given the right to abstain from a C-VAX because their choice could potentially harm other people in our society. That’s a classic sleight of hand political move.
As they passionately defend themselves, they press the point that the unvaccinated are a health threat to society. Did you get that? A pregnant woman can be fatally dangerous to her unborn child, but unvaccinated individuals are not given the right to abstain from a C-VAX because their choice could potentially harm other people in our society. That’s a classic sleight of hand political move.
Misusing and Abusing Jesus
It was Martin Luther King Jr. who famously lamented that “11 a.m. on Sunday was the most segregated hour in America.” That statement has been weaponized to combat the evils of Jim Crow through the years and has been repeated tirelessly in the spheres of politics, the academy, and with heightened intensity within the sphere of evangelicalism.
In their book, Divided by Faith, Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson address what they refer to as “racialization” and “systemic injustice” within evangelicalism. They make the following statement in their book:
Our understandings of race relations, however, remain stuck in the Jim Crow era, leading us to mistaken conclusions—racism is on the wane, and racial division and the racial hierarchy are but historical artifacts. Rather than incorrectly examine race in the United States using an old standard, we must adapt our understanding and analysis to the new, post-Civil Rights era. The framework we here use—racialization—reflects that adaptation. It understands that racial practices that reproduce racial division in the contemporary United States ‘(1) are increasingly covert, (2) are embedded in normal operations of institutions, (3) avoid direct racial terminology, and (4) are invisible to most Whites.’ It understands that racism is not mere individual, overt prejudice or the free-floating irrational driver of race problems, but the collective misuse of power that results in diminished life opportunities for some racial groups. [1]
Did you catch that last sentence? They’re calling out a “collective misuse of power that results in diminished life opportunities for some racial groups.” This is precisely what the C-VAX mandate is doing through political force—mandating a top-down hierarchy that leaves a ripple effect throughout our corporate world. How do they make it successful within groups that are hesitant to receive the C-VAX? They use (misuse) Jesus.
While many people are happy to point out that the New Testament presents the gospel of Jesus that’s for both Jew and Gentile and is radically opposed to the ideology of Jim Crow, those same voices often invent a new Jesus with a new Jim Crow to support the C-VAX.
While many people are happy to point out that the New Testament presents the gospel of Jesus that’s for both Jew and Gentile and is radically opposed to the ideology of Jim Crow, those same voices often invent a new Jesus with a new Jim Crow to support the C-VAX.
Not only is this dirty politics, it’s really bad religion. It’s a clear violation of the 3rd Commandment. Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York, recently made the following statement:
I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say, we owe this to each other. We love each other. Jesus taught us to love one another and how do you show that love but to care about each other enough to say, please get the vaccine because I love you and I want you to live, I want our kids to be safe when they’re in schools, I want to be safe when you go to a doctor’s office or to a hospital and are treated by somebody, you don’t want to get the virus from them. You’re already sick or you wouldn’t be there. We have to solve this, my friends. I need every one of you. I need you to let them know that this is how we can fight this pandemic.
For those who are uncertain of my claims that the social justice movement is actually a false religion—this statement is further validation. These passionate social justicians are committed to their religion. As Hochul points out, through this C-VAX we will fight the pandemic and save our kids.
The C-VAX movement is very much related to the fastest growing religion among us today—the religion of social justice. The false religion of social justice has invented a new Jesus who is a divine sociologist who has a gospel that demands equity for all people—except the unvaccinated. The C-VAX movement is passionate and aggressive in their evangelism of the unvaccinated population. How many days have you gone without seeing a single commercial or social media advertisement of the C-VAX since it was released? Not a single day for most of the American population, unless you’ve just arrived here from some distant remote jungle. The religion of social justice insists that this personal health decision is about justice and injustice.
Returning to Slavery
Jim Crow was a form of oppression and “civilized slavery” in the public sphere. It was wrong and unjust to say the least. However, the new Jim Crow instituted through the state sponsored C-VAX mandates ushers people right back into slavery—a state sponsored form that looks to the government as God. If you teach people to look to the government for education, safety, food, and health care—those people become enslaved to the government.
Delano Squires references the C-VAX as the new “Jab Crow.” In a recent article, Squires asks the following question, “Will Joe Biden and Ibram Kendi save no-vax blacks from Jab Crow attacks?” He makes the following logical connection between the anti-racism teachings of Ibram Kendi and the oppression of the C-VAX mandates:
Ibram X. Kendi also believes any policy that creates differences in outcomes between ethnic groups is racist. America’s chief advocate for racial equity believes racist policies must be actively opposed in the name of anti-racism, not passively tolerated by people who claim to be “not racist.” I wonder what he would make of New York City’s vaccine mandate, given the fact that only 39% of all black adults in New York City have been fully vaccinated, compared to 54% of white, 55% of Hispanic, and 82% of Asian New Yorkers. Put simply, Bill de Blasio’s new policy will prevent 60% of black residents from accessing essential goods and services based solely on their vaccination status.
In short, C-VAX mandates are bad for the whole of society—especially the black population. Not only is the forceful governmental mandate ineffective in saving us from the risk of disease and death, it operates to oppress a specific unvaccinated group into a new state sponsored Jim Crow which takes Martin Luther King’s statement about “11a.m. on Sunday” being the most segregated hour in America and exponentially widens it to 24-hours per day and 7-days per week.
Back to Abortion
Dear Christian, I would urge you to avoid vain disputes and strive for unity within the church. However, this debate that’s raging before us is far more than some little squabble that must be avoided. Refuse to become a pawn or a dumb sheep that merely follows the line of confused sheep and ignorant goats within our society. God has given you a brain to use. Exercise wisdom and think through how Jesus’ name and the commandment to “love our neighbor” are being abused on the political stump and in the pulpit as it pertains to the mandated C-VAX.
My goal in this article is to do something far greater than stir-up emotional reactions from fellow Christians in the sphere of politics. I want us to think. This is more than freedom, as precious as our freedom may be. This vaccine is centered on a moral and ethical foundation related to the unborn and the use of fetal cell lines.
When it comes to the C-VAX, the main options include the use of fetal cells that were harvested from abortions that took place in the 1970s and 1980s in the Netherlands. The Pfizer and Moderna C-VAX use fetal cell line HEK 293 during the research and development phase. All HEK 293 cells are descended from tissue taken from a 1973 abortion that took place in the Netherlands. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses fetal cell lines in the production and manufacturing stage. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is infected with PER.C6 fetal cell lines to grow the adenovirus vector. All PER.C6 cells used to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are from tissue taken from a 1985 abortion that took place in the Netherlands.
The Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, a committee within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has stated: “neither Pfizer nor Moderna used an abortion-derived cell line in the development or production of the vaccine. However, such a cell line was used to test the efficacy of both vaccines. Thus, while neither vaccine is completely free from any use of abortion-derived cell lines, in these two cases the use is very remote from the initial evil of the abortion…one may receive any of the clinically recommended vaccines in good conscience with the assurance that reception of such vaccines does not involve immoral cooperation in abortion.”
While the church must fight for freedom and oppose any ideology that demands we bow to the false god of government, we must likewise stand uncompromisingly upon the Scriptures and stand against the abuse of the 3rd Commandment, the twisting of the “love your neighbor as yourself” Great Commandment, and the violation of the 6th Commandment as clearly taught in Scripture.
Those who have ears to hear—let them hear.
- Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson, Divided By Faith, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 223 of 4231 (Kindle Version).
