Cancel culture and an anti-life agenda lead to firing of religious broadcaster
Cancel culture and an anti-life agenda lead to firing of religious broadcaster
There is no Biblical directive against vaccines, but Jesus did say to love your neighbor.
The big bombshell on Twitter Saturday morning was the firing of Daniel Darling, who, until Friday, was the senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters. Mr. Darling’s sin, as reported by the Religion News Service, was refusing to recant his endorsements of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Now, wait a tick, you might say. What’s wrong with that? Millions of religious people have been vaccinated and, more importantly, vaccinations are not mentioned in the Bible, nor are they forbidden by Christian theological doctrines. Plus, Christians pioneered the concept of vaccines as a way to alleviate human suffering.
Well, yeah. But that was before the Coronavirus pandemic and the mass hysteria that seems to have infected a large part of the church. Nowadays, it is no longer hip among the Christian right to be pro-vaccine and it may even be hazardous to your job security if the reports of Darling’s dismissal are accurate.
While the National Religious Broadcasters Association has not commented publicly, a source authorized to speak on Darling’s behalf said that the religious writer and broadcaster was fired because he promoted Coronavirus vaccinations on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether the bigger sin was promoting the vaccines or appearing on MSNBC.
On the segment, which appeared on August 2, Darling told Joe Scarborough, “I believe in this vaccine because I don’t want to see anyone else die of COVID. Our family has lost too many close friends and relatives to COVID, including an uncle, a beloved church member, and our piano teacher.”
Darling also said that he was proud to be vaccinated. He made similar comments in a USA Today opinion piece on August 1.
Per the report, leaders at the NRB met with Darling this week and told him that his statements violated the NRB’s stance of neutrality on Coronavirus vaccines. He was reportedly given the option of signing a statement that admitted insubordination or being fired.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, I’m going to acknowledge that the NRB is a private religious organization and has the right to set its own standards. They have the right to hire and fire who they please.
But there are moral, ethical, and religious problems with the NRB’s actions even if Darling’s firing passes the legal test. The most obvious one is that Christians should not be neutral about COVID-19 vaccines. They should wholeheartedly endorse them as a gift from God.
The vaccines, which have been proven to be very safe over more than 5 billion doses, are effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19 and of minimizing the severity of those who become sick through breakthrough infections. In other words, they alleviate human suffering and help to heal the sick, which is a fulfillment of Jesus’s commandments to his followers.
Second, Darling’s firing is a violation of its own commitment to fighting censorship of religious broadcasters. On August 13, the NRB Twitter account said, “We are committed to fighting for the right of Christian communicators to speak freely and truthfully without fear of censorship.”
Unless, of course, free speech angers the many evangelical Christians who believe that vaccines are the Mark of the Beast or some such nonsense. A religious broadcasting organization might do better to educate its followers about why getting vaccinated doesn’t mean that you are condemned to hell, as a Twitter friend’s mom was recently told by her pastor.
Christians also need to be educated on vaccines because they have driven a lot of the spread of COVID-19 in the US. As I’ve described several times in the past, a great many COVID clusters have been centered on churches that refused to suspend in-person services and/or use mitigation strategies. My own church was the center of a recent outbreak in which one woman died and another lost her baby. The majority of the infected were not vaccinated.
I could understand firing Darling if he violated Christian teaching. For instance, if he was ensnared in a sex scandal like Jerry Falwell, Jr. or was alleged to have covered up sexual abuse like several leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. But there is no Biblical directive or Christian doctrine against vaccines.
Rather than working to heal the sick, too many Christians have been working to spread the virus around their communities. In my opinion, the NRB should help to convince Christians that the way to fulfill Christ’s commandment to love your neighbor (not like that Rev. Falwell!) is to stop infecting their communities with a life-threatening disease.
Since some Christians reject vaccines because they believe that they contain elements of aborted babies, the NRB should also point out that pro-life ethicists have “blessed” the use of all three Coronavirus vaccines that are in common use in the United States.
The firing of Daniel Darling is a troubling indication of the too-cozy relationship between the evangelical church and the Republican Party. Darling’s case reminds me of the furor from December 2019 when Mark Galli wrote an article for Christianity Today arguing that Donald Trump should be removed from office. Galli was eventually forced out after then-President Trump blasted the magazine and a furor erupted among readers.
The ousters of Darling and Galli are examples of political cancel culture run amok in the church. This is particularly galling from a religion and a party that claim to be pro-life, but the anti-vaxxer movement has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and even more severe illnesses in this country alone. As one wag posted on the internet recently in satire of the anti-abortion bumper sticker, “COVID-19 stops a beating heart.”
Christians who are figuratively martyred by the right-wing Christian establishment are in good company, however. Honoring the Bible and God’s teaching doesn’t always guarantee success in this world as Jesus himself warned us. The prophet Hosea preached for more than 60 years without success. The important thing is to remain faithful.
Christians used to acknowledge that both parties were imperfect and fallible. That is less and less the case as the view on the right has become more and more that no Christian can be a Democrat as well as the corollary that “real Christians” must vote Republican. (Interestingly, I know Christians on the left who also think that no Christian can be a Republican. Both of these views are wrong.)
The Bible tells us that this world is not our home. If we are equating Christianity with our particular brand of politics and in the process helping a virus ravage our communities and our country, then we are doing Christianity wrong. It’s time to start over and focus on the basics.
And speaking of censorship and cancel culture, I’d like to give a shout-out to The First. When The First bought out Resurgent last year, I didn’t think I’d last long. However, here I am, still posting away. I really don’t endorse anything else that The First publishes, but I am grateful that they have not silenced me or Steve.
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Good points David. Some of the loudest voices against cancel culture, are actually some of the best practitioners of it, as evidenced by what happened to Daniel Darling. He wasn't anywhere near mean spirited in how he made his points. In fact, he spoke in a very concerned, loving way in expressing pain in how some people close to personally have passed away due to Covid-19. He did the most loving thing a Christian and a person can do, and is to urge his fellow people to get vaccinated. We often forget that it is a miracle that it took only a year or so to come up with very effective vaccines against a virus epidemiologists knew very little about from the beginning. Getting the vaccine is pro-life, and consistent with Christianity. God has blessed us with these remarkably effective vaccines, and I believe to refuse to get vaccinated is displeasing to Him.
Along those lines, if we want to maintain a free and prosperous society, it requires us to be moral and virtuous. John Adams stated in his famous quote that the Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people and was wholly inadequate to the governance of any other. Now let me first say that I believe you don't have to be religious to be moral. Some of the finest people I know aren't particularly religious. Getting vaccinated is a moral decision, rooted in the principles of personal responsibility. Many on the Christian right who have refused vaccination have done so under the guise of religious liberty. The irony is that many of them are trying to ban businesses and employers from mandating vaccinations for their customers and employees. Their view of liberty apparently doesn't extend to the right of businesses to set their own policies promoting a healthy working and shopping environment by mandating vaccines. Because of the lack of personal responsibility, refusing vaccination and forcing others to have to live with their ill-advised choices isn't about religious liberty or libertarianism, but is libertine, or libertinism. Once the tenet of personal responsibility is excised from the equation, fairness, morality, and freedom decline for all in our society. Getting vaccinated is the MOST liberty minded and pro-life thing one can do.
If we think about it, there will be empty chairs at the dinner table for Thanksgiving and Christmas later this year in many households. Among the 650k people who passed away from Covid here in the US, are many moms and dads. Many kids will not have their mom or dad to shower them with love, because some people have refused to mask and get vaccinated all along. There are also many moms and dads who are mourning the passing of their child or children. No parent should ever have to bury their child, especially because a self-professed Christian refused to wear masks and get vaccinated. It's so easy to say, "it's their life and if they want to screw themselves and then die of Covid-19, that's their problem". Let's not forget that there are family members and friends who loved them, and are brokenhearted. It affects them too.
On a positive note, vaccinations are on the rise. I think many people have seen the ravages of hospitalizations that include their loved ones. Many of the vax-hesitant are getting vaccinated, so that is heartening news. I think in due time the only holdouts will be hardened anti-vaxxers who were anti-vax before Covid. And also, the notorious anti-vaxxer Alex Berenson has been permanently banned from Twitter. That will certainly help improve vaccination efforts.
Any organization that has rejected truth will have no bottom. Their beliefs and morals will be untethered to anything other than what their flesh wants. It's utterly ironic that the religion of "I am the way, the truth, and the life" has completely abandoned that premise but its unsurprising to everyone who can see past their own misconceptions.