Politicians and religious leaders opposed to President Biden’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandates are concerned not with protecting the personal freedoms of Americans but with expanding control through political and social discord, Arkansas judge and Baptist pastor Wendell Griffen said in a Sept. 20 webinar.
“They oppose vaccination mandates and foment defiance because it is in their power, and the conduct of those politicians and religious leaders is beyond hypocritical,” said Griffen, pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock and a regular BNG columnist. “It is self-righteous, self-serving and self-worship. Simply put, it is diabolical.”
Griffen was the keynote speaker during “Vaccination or Not: Religious and Legal Perspectives,” which was hosted by the theology and law faculties of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and featured responses from religion and legal scholars and a brief question-and-answer session.
“It is self-righteous, self-serving and self-worship. Simply put, it is diabolical.”
The pandemic, he said, has been so brutal globally that it was unimaginable even a year ago that there would be hard-core opposition to vaccines. On the contrary, it seemed that everyone “would welcome a vaccine for the most lethal virus in 100 years.”
Deaths worldwide have surpassed 4.6 million, according to the World Health Organization, while the 675,400 felled by the coronavirus in the U.S. makes COVID-19 deadlier than the 1918 flu outbreak, Johns Hopkins University estimated.
Yet, vaccine hesitancy has flourished around the planet, fueled either by complacency, lack of confidence in the science or lack of ready availability, Griffen said.
Some avoid vaccination because they do not trust the health care industry, Griffen said. “Humanity is confronted by hesitancy to accept what is proven safe to prevent suffering and death.”
That hesitancy has since transformed into an organized resistance by conservative religious groups and state and Congressional leaders rallying against Biden’s Sept. 9 vaccination mandates.
The presidential order requires vaccination for all federal employees and contractors who work with the U.S. government and directs businesses of 100 or more employees to see that workers are vaccinated or tested weekly. Estimates project that as many as 100 million Americans would be inoculated under the plan.
Wendell Griffen
Griffen noted that the religious exemptions and testing requirements included in the president’s approach should allay fears of infringements of Constitutional rights, but that is far from the case.
“Republicans across the U.S. are outraged and have declared the intention to fight this in court” while some conservative Christian leaders and churches claim their religious freedoms are being attacked, he lamented.
But the vaccine mandates are no different than government regulations requiring seatbelt use and other public safety requirements, he countered. Mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are merely an exercise of authority “as old as laws against robbing and killing and cheating and raping.”
People and communities of faith long have accepted vaccines for the prevention of diseases such as polio and smallpox, revealing that religious objections to COVID-19 vaccines are in truth about something other than religious objections, Griffen said. Mandates “recognize that our idolatry to personal liberty and personal privilege threatens communal health and safety.”
In fact, there is a religious argument to be made for the mandates and for vaccinations, he said. “They hold each of us to our duty not to harm others” and to avoid behaviors “that threaten others.”
Vaccinations, mask wearing and social distancing recognize living Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of “a network of mutuality” that ties all people together, Griffen said.
Opponents, meanwhile, act with disregard for the safety of others with the results being all too clear by the rapid spread of the Delta variant, the pastor asserted. “We are seeing what happens when people disobey ‘love they neighbor.’”
Those who clamor to protect the unborn but oppose vaccine mandates, he added, “are hypocrites.”
And this is an especially appalling reality given that children under age 12 cannot be vaccinated yet and are forced into crowded schools, he added. Adults who deliberately expose children to COVID-19 by refusing to be vaccinated and wear masks “are not honoring life. They are not protecting children. They are not loving God. They are not loving their neighbor.”
Those who clamor to protect the unborn but oppose vaccine mandates, he added, “are hypocrites.”
Prophetic discernment is needed to oppose the anti-vaccination movement, said Griffen, who cited the prophets Isaiah and Micah, who condemned injustices committed against the vulnerable and the “raw abuse of power” as evidenced by conservatives fighting vaccine mandates.
Jerry Pillay
Jerry Pillay, dean of the faculty of theology and religion at the University of Pretoria, responded by lamenting the politicization of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., South Africa and in other nations. “Human lives are not a political football,” he said.
Arguments in some churches that God will protect people from the coronavirus miss the mark, he added. “God will do God’s share, and we must do ours. It’s like asking God to pass an exam and then refusing to study.”
The world must remember “we are a global community and what affects one, affects us all,” Pillay said.
Elsabe Schoeman
Elsabe Schoeman, dean of the university’s faculty of law, said mandates may be appropriate when applied fairly and she agrees with the principle of caring for neighbors. But it is better to try to convince people to be voluntarily vaccinated. “Employers should work against vaccine hesitancy before mandating policies.”
An audience member asked Griffen to elaborate on his views of religious exemptions from vaccination. The judge answered that faith perspectives must be taken seriously and honored — but in ways that do not threaten others. “I have a right to have a faith, but I do not have a right to sicken my neighbor.”
It’s also understandable when some people claim they want to trust God to keep them healthy, he said. But it is also a matter of faith to say, “God has made the provision for a vaccine that would keep me safe, and I can take the vaccine as a measure of my faith in God.”
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