One of the strange phenomena coming out of the United States is what is known as vaccine refusal among conservative Christians. In a recent survey, a full 26% declared that they will not in any circumstances receive vaccination against Covid.  Another 28% are hesitant. These figures exist in spite of the fact that many conservative Christian leaders, including hard-core evangelical Trump loyalists like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham, have received the jab and encourage their followers to follow suit.  Other evangelical leaders are more reluctant to encourage their congregations to take the jab as they fear that such an expressed preference would suggest to their congregations that they are going liberal in some way. The figures indicate a further problem, namely divisions within congregations and families. There are many cases of younger Christians refusing to let their children visit their unvaccinated grandparents. This has not only caused tension and upset in families, but planned weddings and other family gatherings have been thrown into uncertainty by these inter-family disputes.

It would be wrong to suggest that anti-vaxxers are all conservative Christians, but some certainly are. It is hard for us in the UK to understand why this issue should have become politicised or to understand why there should be any link between the act of refusing vaccination and conservative Christian beliefs. Some Christians may perhaps feel that to receive vaccination is to stop depending on the protection of God against Covid infection.  Clearly there is more to it than this.  Evidently, among many conservative Christians, there is a widespread problem of suspicion directed against all authority figures, especially the national government. Conspiracy theories will also always be popular among groups which feel they are in some way persecuted and the object of attack from those who disagree with them.

There is, however, one fascinating additional theory about the mentality of conservative Christian groups opposing vaccination.  This appears in an online article in a magazine called Religion Dispatches. The article starts with the observation that Christians from the ultra-right-wing world of conservative Christianity hold a number of beliefs, Christian and political, with no sense of ever being in the wrong.  When an individual has such a strong sense of the truth of all their beliefs, it is but a small step to always seeing the world as if from a heavily defended bunker.  The attitude that says ‘whoever is not with us is against us’, is very common among conservative Christians.  It is a small step from aggressively defending an ‘infallible’ and non-negotiable point of view to becoming routinely paranoid in every dealing with the outside world beyond the group. There are a number of passages in the New Testament which seem to glorify the experience of a Christian when meeting persecution of any kind. ‘Blessed are you when men reproach you and persecute you’.   It is, of course, debatable whether these words of Jesus should be held to apply to Christians who are making what appears to be a political stand over vaccination, but one thing is clearly true.  Conservative Christians seem to need to have enemies, and indeed they become energised in the process of identifying and defending themselves against them.  In the ongoing Oxford saga of a group of clergy and dons trying to rid themselves of their Dean, the attempt is made to identify opponents, at the same time shutting out what they are saying. In practice, any attempt to close down dissident voices makes those voices still louder. Also the credibility of anyone demonstrating paranoid behaviour is inevitably lessened in the eyes of those who look on.

In the political realm, the ability to identify and name enemies, whether they be immigrants, Jews or people of a different colour, has always served authoritarian leaders well.  Many dictators have gone further. Declaring war on named enemies is a way of hanging on to political power.   Everyone has to rally round to fight off this ‘enemy’ in the name of the quasi-religion, known as patriotism. 

Conservative Christianity, in its links with ultra-right-wing political ideologies, has often been successful at identifying and obtaining benefit and prestige by being good at ‘enemy-naming’.   In the political sphere, we have, arguably, been caught in a similar dynamic by having Brexit presented to us as some kind of liberation movement. Many people seem to have voted to leave the EU based on what they were against. This same dynamic of teaching congregations which groups and individuals that ‘we are against’ still goes on.  In a recent blog post, I drew attention to the way that the churchwardens at St Helen’s Bishopsgate have named individuals as being opponents for daring to suggest that their Rector might have done more to protect the church from the predations of Smyth and Fletcher.  Quite often a church is drawing considerable amounts of energy from the intensity of its hatred for those who disagree with its leaders and its overall theological position.

I have on this blog written about the way that the bogeymen for conservatives change over the decades. In times past, the enemies of true Christians were the proponents of contraception. They then became the supporters of abortion reform. More recently conservative Christians have settled on ‘hating’ supporters of the gay/trans-phobic cause. An opposition to vaccination appears, in America at any rate, to be merely the most recent in a series of issues which conservative Christians are expected to oppose.  The very fact of opposing something seems to create energy and strong feelings among those who do it.  Superficially this energy seems to be spiritual in nature, somehow revealing a fervour of commitment.  In reality, when it is examined, it is nothing of the sort.  It is the effervescence of the excited crowd which has the lasting power and solidity of candy floss. 

As I reflected on this opposition mentality among conservative Christians, I began to wonder whether it is the experience of opposing something that appeals to this group, rather than the cause which is being opposed. If their perceived enemies, the amorphous group they sometimes describe as liberals, support a moral or political point of view, then that same position needs to be opposed.  Clear lines of demarcation need to be maintained with those who are ‘not us’.  What we are seeing here is what I would suggest is a kind of persecution addiction, one which enables a strong sense of identity. The bunker mentality seems to energise and strengthen those who hold to it. It is as though the words of Jesus have been changed to the following. ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you oppose all the things that your enemies approve of.’

All those who have read the Stella Gibbons’ novel, Cold Comfort Farm, will remember the vivid description of a religious group called the Quivering Brethren. At all the services held by this group, the preacher would work on the members to bring them to a pitch of quivering fear.  This was done by his vivid descriptions of the burnings and the pains of Hell. The preacher concerned was one of the extraordinary characters who lived at the farm at the centre of the story.  Flora, the heroine of the novel, arranged for him to buy a van and go round the country preaching his message of Hell.  ‘I will tell them about burning in Hell’ the preacher declared, as he had discovered that fear worked as a way of filling the building.  There was a sense in which this experience of fear was, paradoxically, quite enjoyable. This account of the Quivering Brethren is completely fictional. One does, nevertheless, wonder sometimes whether many church leaders like to keep their congregations in a place of uncertainty, with the occasional mention of Hell to spice up what might otherwise be a rather dull observance of Christian faith. The additional belief that your church and its leaders are being ‘persecuted’ because you are against something that everyone else accepts (like vaccination), gives a certain frisson and flavour to your church life. I am reminded of the church door which had the words inscribed over them. ‘Be of good cheer I have overcome the world’.  A church member who read those words would be encouraged to believe that he or she was always stronger, wiser and more competent than those outside.  The very fact of taking a different side from everyone else on vaccination may be one way of maintaining a smug enjoyable feeling of superiority over the opinions of the mass of the population.

Most of my readers will agree with me that it is unacceptable to declare as enemies those who work hard to help humanity. There is no possible reason for opposing vaccination unless evidence appears that seems to indicate a health risk. To be against it because it is the position of people you do not like, is an act of irrationality.   Thankfully this position is not common in this country.  There are, as we have indicated, other widely held beliefs which are opposed because they suggest, for some Christians, a failure of faith, or because liberals support them. In America we are told of a widespread antipathy against scientific thinking because it is thought to be ‘against’ the world view of Scripture.   This kind of thinking is typically found in the textbooks of those who use ‘Christian’ material to home-school their children.  Swathes of young people are being taught to think, or not to think, because of dogmatic beliefs extracted from religious texts.  Most of us accept that while there are differences of opinion in science and other areas of knowledge, little can be achieved by closing a debate down.  It is always worth having a debate as long as both sides will be heard fairly and openly. The only reason for avoiding such a debate is when the circumstances suggest I will not be heard because I come from a different place in my presuppositions. Sadly, there are many debates which are non-debates precisely for this reason. One party uses social or political power to shut down what the other group are saying.  In some cases it is the liberal establishment closing things down; in other cases, it is the conservative authoritarian approach that refuses to allow proper discussion. As a thinking Christian I need to be on the alert for both forms of intellectual tyranny. Sadly, we live in a world where this kind of fascistic thinking is not unusual.