Evangelicalism Poisons Christians’ Pool
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 12, 2021
The late, renown musician Greg Allman, with his Southern Rock group “The Allman Brothers Band,” recorded and performed a song entitled “Angeline,” which was written by band members Dickey Betts, Mike Lawler, and John Andrew Cobb. Greg had no part in the song’s creation, other than to sing, and record it, where is appears as Track 1, Side 2 (Track 5 on CD) of the band’s first Arista Records, Inc. label release, on their August 1980 album “Reach for the Sky.”
The song’s chorus contains the partial lyric “I never seen a woman who could look so good, and be so doggone mean. Yeah.”
I had forgotten the song’s title was Angeline, rather than Evangeline, but the point is, that the name “Evangeline” is a feminine one, and in a couple places in the New Testament, and in modernity, the “church” is frequently referred to as a feminine subject, a “virgin bride” which will “marry” Jesus Christ. And, I had not forgotten the song’s lyric “I never seen a woman who could look so good, and be so doggone mean.”
That is a sadly perfect picture of the church today: Alleged to be beautiful (“a woman who could look so good,”) but whose attractiveness is marred to the point of repulsion, i.e., “be so doggone mean.”
The song’s final verse is:
Whoa, just a game that she loves to play,
leavin’ broken hearts all along the way.
She’s got friends that she ain’t never used.
She’s winnin’ now but she’s bound to lose.
Oh, Angeline.
Again, a picture perfect illustration of a very sad situation: Selfish use and abuse, then, abandonment, and ultimately, loss.
What many folks don’t realize (and, by “folks,” I specifically mean to refer to those who name Christ, or claim to be Christian), that many of the researchers and historical figures of importance in the history of healthcare and immunology were Christians.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823), considered widely as the “father,” or discoverer of vaccination, was himself a son of a Christian vicar, the 4th son, and 8th of 9 children, whose both parents died in 1754. But what is equally ironic, is that in his era, when he was actively developing a treatment and cure for smallpox, “Jenner was widely ridiculed. Critics, especially the clergy, claimed it was repulsive and ungodly to inoculate someone with material from a diseased animal. A satirical cartoon of 1802 showed people who had been vaccinated sprouting cow’s heads. But the obvious advantages of vaccination and the protection it provided won out, and vaccination soon became widespread. Jenner became famous and now spent much of his time researching and advising on developments in his vaccine.”
Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?
Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1716. Copyright © The Royal Society.
And yet, in the time since Jenner’s era, vaccinology — the science of vaccines — has come a long way, and we now have numerous TYPES of vaccines, that is to say, a TYPE of vaccine is NOT the disease it was developed to treat. It is the way in which it works, or more accurately, the specific way in which it causes immunity to occur. To illustrate, there are:
• Inactivated vaccines
• Live-attenuated vaccines
• Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines
• Subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide, and conjugate vaccines
• Toxoid vaccines
• Viral vector vaccines
Examples of Inactivated vaccines — which use the killed version of the germ that causes a disease — include:
• Hepatitis A
• Flu (shot only)
• Polio (shot only)
• Rabies
Examples of Live-attenuated vaccines — which use a weakened (or attenuated) form of the germ that causes a disease — include:
• Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR combined vaccine)
• Rotavirus
• Smallpox
• Chickenpox
• Yellow fever
Examples of Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines include:
• SARS-CoV-2, aka “COVID-19”
Examples of Subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide, and conjugate vaccines include:
• Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) disease
• Hepatitis B
• HPV (Human papillomavirus)
• Whooping cough (part of the DTaP combined vaccine)
• Pneumococcal disease
• Meningococcal disease
• Shingles
Examples of Toxoid vaccines include:
• Diphtheria
• Tetanus
Examples of Viral vector vaccines include:
• COVID-19
• Ebola
• Zika
• Influenza
An article published on June 19, 2019, 10:40am EDT — SIX MONTHS BEFORE the COVID-19 global pandemic outbreak — which was entitled “Religion and vaccine refusal are linked. We have to talk about it: A major global survey helps explain the problem of vaccine mistrust,” discussed the broader matter of vaccine mistrust on a global scale. Since that time, sadly, vaccine distrust – especially of the COVID-19 vaccine – has only increased.
The article pointed to research conducted by Gallop, commissioned by Wellcome, a UK-based health research non-profit which is “a politically and financially independent global charitable foundation, funded by a £29.1 billion investment portfolio” which issued a report entitled “Wellcome Global Monitor: How does the world feel about science and health?”
The study’s findings were a mixed bag — simultaneously disheartening, though encouraging.
But, perhaps it’s just time to let people have their way, to get infected, suffer, and die… WITHOUT any intervention — without treatment of any kind. After all, that’s how they have obviously wanted it.
Science does NOT require that anyone believe it, in order for it to work. It’s NOT “faith.” It’s science. One can believe all they like that the laws of gravity and physics don’t apply to them, and jump off the Empire State Building, hoping, “faithing,” that their faith, or their god will save them.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Their guts will be splattered on the pavement, to swept up (what little remains of them), and then hosed off, and rinsed down the drain.
Again, vaccinology is science, not faith.
….
Demister Riz Zambrano, who’s 25, is the leader of Suni Caño. It’s a small community of indigenous evangelicals on the southern side of the river. There’s no clear marker for their village, which is home to several dozen families. We have to hike through swampy fields and cross a tributary of the Amazon in a canoe to get to them. Zambrano is welcoming and energetic. And he’s quick to dive into a debate about vaccines.
“Here in this beautiful community of Suni Caño, most of the people are not vaccinated,” he says proudly. Health workers have come to offer them the vaccine and the residents have flatly told them, no thank you, he says.
“Do you know for why?” Zambrano asks. “Because we are religious people. We believe in God, and we put our trust in God.”
Suni Caño is so far out of the way that it doesn’t show up on most maps. You can’t even see the cluster of simple houses from the river. The only electricity is from solar panels. There’s only cell service if you go back by the soccer field.
Zambrano believes that remoteness means villagers are less at risk of getting infected. But his bigger point is that he and many other people in Suni Caño could not care less about vaccines developed in some faraway land. Their view is they don’t need vaccines from the United States or China to protect them.
“God is the one who takes care of us. God is the one who protects us,” he says. “He gives us life, air, health and everything. And so if I got the vaccine, I wouldn’t be believing in God.”
Taking a vaccine, he argues, places your faith in something other than God. He views vaccination as a betrayal of his religious faith. So he has no intention of getting inoculated.
For public health officials Suni Caño poses a problem. Dr. Pachas at the health department says among the deliberately unvaccinated, the hardest to convince are evangelical Christians. And there are many communities like this one spread out through the vast Amazon region. Maybe some of the residents will decide they do want to get vaccinated, but given how long it takes to get there from Indiana, she says, you have to ask if it is worth dedicating a vaccination team for an entire day.
Yet an outbreak could occur here.
But Dr. Pachas is optimistic. “As the weeks go by and the vaccination campaigns continue,” she says, “we are seeing that people participate. They get vaccinated.” It just might take longer here in the Amazon than in some other places in the world.
Warm Southern Breeze 
Leave a Reply