June 18, 2021

By Bill Berkowitz

Millions of Christian evangelicals and MAGA-ites in the US are refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19. To justify their stance, many have taken to spreading disinformation and misinformation about the vaccine. Some anti-vaxxers believe the vaccine contains “aborted cell tissue.” Some claim that Bill Gates is using the pandemic to force mass vaccination on the population. Others believe the vaccine is unnecessary, that God’s creation (our bodies) will heal itself. And if they do die, it would be “God’s will.” There have been anti-vax demonstrations around the country, and from the how-far-will-they-take-their-protests department comes news that a Nashville, Tennessee hat store decided to sell yellow stars like Jews were forced to wear under the Third Reich, embroidered with the words “Not Vaccinated.” Meanwhile, vaccine conspiracy hucksters are cashing in. 

In early June, the TruNews website announced that evangelical Christian Rick Wiles had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and that he was on oxygen. Wiles had spent months downplaying the coronavirus and recently pledged that he would never be vaccinated. At the same time, he appeared to revel in others getting sick: When a board member of the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York died of the virus in March 2020, Wiles proclaimed that it was God’s judgment. 

With 600,000 people now dead from COVID-19, the June 16 headline in USA Today was precise: “People hospitalized with COVID-19 now have one overwhelming thing in common. They’re not vaccinated”. A video accompanying the story pointed out that “Only 1918’s Spanish flu pandemic (675,000) and the U.S. Civil War (750,000) have taken more American lives.”

According to Religion News Service’s Carol Kuruvilla, there are two groups in the U.S. that are “particularly resistant to rolling up their sleeves for the shots: Republicans and white evangelicals.” Kuruvilla noted that “Given the increasing overlap between the two groups, it is reasonable to assume that evangelicals’ religious beliefs are driving Republicans’ statistical resistance, as well. Certainly,  religious beliefs — about the end times and God’s power to heal — may be fueling some of this skepticism, but there’s much more to the story.” 

Cashing in on Vaccine Denial

The Center for Public Integrity, in partnership with HuffPost, recently published a story titled “Spreading Vaccine Fears. And Cashing In.” which notes that “a network of … influencers, speaking out against vaccines, including the coronavirus shots, is not just a personal crusade. It’s also a profitable business.”

A Tennessee couple Ty and Charlene Bollinger “who got their start by questioning mainstream cancer treatments such as chemotherapy,” have created a documentary series called “The Truth About Vaccines,” which teaches “the tenets of vaccine skepticism.” The series, according to the Bollingers, has been viewed more than 450,000 times after it made its debut, and 25,000 bought copies for up to $200 per series.

“The anti-vax and vaccine-hesitant community has been very loud on social media,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, a science communicator with the COVID Tracking Project who dispels vaccine myths on Instagram. “They’ve had a steady drumbeat of doubt, and we’re just playing catch-up.” 

And, attempting “catch-up” is taking many forms. Whether vaccine endorsements by high-profile evangelical leaders, lotteries, scholarships, free tickets to sporting events, or free beer will lure some anti-vaxxers to vaccination sites remains to be seen.

 In a recent Op-Ed for USA Today, Ed Stetzer, a dean and professor at Wheaton College, wrote: “A recent study by the Ad Council in partnership with the National Association of Evangelicals, a majority of evangelicals (57%) were found to have taken or intend to take the vaccine. While encouraging, this lagged behind over three-quarters (77%) of non-evangelicals. Moreover, white evangelicals were twice as likely than evangelicals of color to rule out the vaccine entirely (30% to 15%).”

Vaccination resistance appears to be the final stand for many evangelicals who spent months denying the science about coronavirus. There were evangelical churches insisting on holding in-person services, even during the most perilous times of the pandemic. Other white Christian evangelicals spread conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus and the government’s intention to use it to control the population.

Interesting enough, research shows that “the way Americans think about the relationship between science and religion has changed drastically over the past few decades,” writes Religion News Service’s Kuruvilla. Researchers found “that in the 1970s, Republicans were more likely to place their confidence in science than religion, while the opposite was true of Democrats.” How times have changed!

Timothy O’Brien, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Shiri Noy, an assistant professor at Denison University’s anthropology and sociology department, studied how attitudes have come to change over time.

Kuruvilla reported that “As science became more politicized, O’Brien and Noy said, it was no longer seen as neutral, but as progressive. The politicization of religion also changed faith’s cultural association with piety to a link to conservatism. Both science and religions were recast as alternative, even opposing, sources of knowledge, values and authority.

Not all conservative Christian evangelicals are rejecting getting vaccinated. As The New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham reported in early April, that “Many high-profile conservative pastors and institutional leaders have endorsed the vaccines. Franklin Graham told his 9.6 million Facebook followers that Jesus would advocate for vaccination. Pastor Robert Jeffress commended it from an anti-abortion perspective on Fox News. (“We talk about life inside the womb being a gift from God. Well, life outside the womb is a gift from God, too.”) The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greear, tweeted a photo of himself receiving a shot.”

However, it’s deep in the weeds evangelical leaders and preachers (like Rick Wiles) that are providing conspiracy fodder. “Gene Bailey, the host of a prophecy-focused talk show on the Victory Channel, warned his audience in March that the government and ‘globalist entities’ will ‘use bayonets and prisons to force a needle into your arm,’” Dias and Graham noted. “In a now-deleted TikTok post from an evangelical influencer’s account that has more than 900,000 followers, she dramatized being killed by authorities for refusing the vaccine.”

According to Dias and Graham, “Among evangelicals, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians may be particularly wary of the vaccine, in part because their tradition historically emphasizes divine health and miraculous healing in ways that can rival traditional medicine, said Erica Ramirez, a scholar of Pentecostalism and director of applied research at Auburn Seminary. Charismatic churches also attract significant shares of Black and Hispanic Christians.”

At the end of the day, evangelicals and MAGA-ites will be faced with one question: Will they give up their conspiracies and misguided beliefs and help themselves avoid getting sick, while at the same time helping the country defeat coronavirus?  

Bill Berkowitz is an Oakland, California-based freelance writer covering right-wing movements. His work has appeared in BuzzFlash, The Nation, Huffington Post, The Progressive, AlterNet, Street Sheet, In These Times, and many other print and online publications, as well as being cited in several books.

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