A prominent voice in the Seventh-day Adventist community recently expressed an alarming opinion on vaccine freedom in a private Facebook forum. (Due to the private nature of that group, this article will analyze the statement, but without reference to the identity of the individual. We will call him John Doe, or just, JD.)
JD is a leading and vocal figure on religious liberty and public affairs. He was challenged in this private Facebook group by a pastor who suggested that we are facing a religious liberty crisis over coercive vaccination policies—utilizing a template for control that could also be used in the final crisis described in Revelation 13.
This was JD’s response to the pastor’s concern that vaccine freedom is a religious liberty crisis:
“I disagree with you. First of all, vaccines are not compelled, the government knows that it cannot do this.
Second, vaccines don’t have to do with worship, and no organized religious groups that I know of have teachings against them.
Third, public health concerns are very different than questions of worship. The government has a legitimate interest in the former. Even in ancient Israel quarantines were required of those infected with transmissible diseases, and Christ himself endorsed that system by sending the healed lepers to be examined by the priests. It is a false equivalency to claim that the vaccines have anything to do with the mark of the beast.”
JD’s three points will be addressed sequentially.
1. "The government knows it can't compel vaccines."
That is probably true. But the reality is that they are compelling them anyway.
Already, dozens of state academic institutions and municipal governments are absolutely using coercive techniques to compel people to take the COVID vaccines.
Similarly, when governments say that in public accommodations the behavior of the unvaccinated is restricted (you must social-distance, cover your face, or even be segregated from the vaccinated) this is quickly becoming a form of medical Jim Crow. No doubt, if we still had drinking fountains, we would see segregation in many locales between the two classes. ‘Separate but equal’ drinking fountains. And a clear signal to who is the despised ‘other.’
A question that came to mind is, why did JD limit the religious liberty implications to government compulsion only? Shouldn’t a religious liberty discussion include also the power wielded by other powerful institutions?
After all, White House officials have already voiced their preference to outsource the tyranny of government (in the form of vaccine passports) to the private sector.
JD’s mention only of ‘government’ compulsion leaves out the bulk of the problem. No vaccine? No in-person academic instruction. No vaccine? You’re fired. What is next?
Seventh-day Adventists have historically included persecution by employers in our religious liberty discussions. When Sabbath labor is mandated as a condition of employment, we go to the defense of the conscientious employee.
Even now there are employers doing the exact same thing regarding vaccines – mandating that the employee violate his/her conscience as a condition of employment.
Either non-governmental persecution is a thing (and we oppose it across the board) or it is not a thing (and we stop defending conscientious Sabbath observers from being fired for their beliefs). As public functions become more and more privatized, perhaps we should collectively re-double our commitment to protect the same liberties from the powerful, regardless of where the threat may come from.
2. It is shocking to see JD’s statement that since forced vaccination "doesn't have to do with worship" that it is not a religious liberty issue.
Imagine if we applied that standard across the board. It would lead to: Jews were segregated, persecuted, then rounded up and killed in Germany… but since they weren't forced to worship on Sunday instead of Sabbath, it's not a worship issue, and therefore, not a liberty issue worthy of our opposition.
And even if that was our standard, (that the only liberty issues that matter are those directly relating to worship), doesn't Romans 12:1 say to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, which is our "true and proper worship" (NIV, emphasis supplied)? You can’t get much clearer than that. In the Bible there is a direct link to the body and worship. To the Christian, health choices are intimately connected with worship. Christians believe that their body is the temple of the living God (1 Cor. 6:19). The very temple and dwelling place of God! What a profoundly worshipful thought!
The first time I heard a Seventh-day Adventist say that “we should not make vaccination choice a religious liberty issue,” I was shocked to hear that. Imagine telling, of all people, Seventh-day Adventists (those known for their health message!) that health choices are not spiritual choices!
Nobody is ‘making’ medical freedom a liberty issue. It just is. Ask those who are being coerced against conscience to take the vaccine. Feel free to disagree with them, but at least grant that they may hold sincere, conscientious objections to taking these shots.
“But taking the vaccine isn’t a sin, so it’s not a matter of conscience!”
Is utilizing the internal combustion engine a sin? No, not at all. Yet many Amish people conscientiously object to it. And we defend their right to do as conscience leads them to do.
Is saying the Pledge of Allegiance a sin? No, not at all. Yet, some religious families conscientiously object to their kids saying the Pledge, and our religious liberty attorneys defend their inalienable right to opt out.
Most of us would say that it is rather strange to avoid engines or refrain from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. But the moment that I try to dictate to another what is, and what is not, a matter of conscience, and rob them of that Creator-endowed liberty to choose for themselves, I’ve just negated conscience in an effort to invade the sacred precinct of the individual’s own convictions. God forbid.
Conscience stands on its own; it doesn’t have to prove itself and earn your agreement in order to be valid; and justice demands that it simply be left alone. That’s what makes liberty of conscience liberty of conscience – that it doesn’t have to answer to the majority or the would-be oppressor.
JD makes a second argument under point #2 that is equally concerning.
He appears to move the goal posts on the legal standard for conscientiously refusing something being forced into your body, where he says that, since “no organized religious groups” oppose the COVID vaccine the individual’s conscience is not relevant.
Let that sink in. In 2021, in America, after over two centuries of progress, an establishment of religion is now needed to validate an individual's conscience.
That is the same thinking that led to the banishment of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams from the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay in the 1600s.
You as an individual cannot have your own sincerely held religious belief. Freedom isn't for the individual; it's only for the group you're in to govern your conscience for you.
Praise God that the First Amendment cleared that one up once and for all, banishing that old-world idea. Our founders codified the protection of the “free exercise” of your moral and religious beliefs, period – not free exercise only under the auspices or authority of a recognized organization.
It would be terribly dangerous to only allow freedoms that are espoused by a collection of mainline religious hierarchies who report to the state. Our founding fathers understood this and, in no uncertain terms, established individual liberty as the cornerstone principle of our republic. Every person is created equal and possesses inherent, unalienable rights. It is a self-evident truth.
Pre-COVID, this would’ve gone without saying; but individual liberty is an endangered species at the moment.
Now, for those who enjoy the legal jargon, the following is the official religious liberty standard from the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission It explicitly states that you do not need to belong to an organized religion to have your individual religious convictions protected:
Religious discrimination involves treating a person (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.
So, the current standard for vaccine exemptions (in places that still protect peoples’ civil liberties) is simply the individual's "sincerely held religious belief." If you sincerely feel it a moral duty, for whatever sincere reason, to steer clear of these vaccines, you have that freedom in America. Period.
And, likewise, if you sincerely feel it a moral duty to take the vaccine, you can’t be stopped from doing that either.
Seventh-day Adventists, with our understanding of the nature of the Great Controversy, should be the strongest proponents of these ideas that you can find. It is puzzling why JD would divert from the legal and principled position of individual liberty to the collectivist notion of needing to appeal to a religious organization to authorize your individual conscience. That idea is totally foreign to (and repugnant to) the spirit of Protestantism.
3. JD’s last sentence is, “It is a false equivalency to claim that the vaccines have anything to do with the mark of the beast.”
Truth be told, the pastor never said that vaccines have something to do with the mark of the beast.
The pastor pointed out that the same justification for coercive mass vaccination (a compelling public health interest) will also be used as justification for the future enforcement of the Mark of the Beast. Here is the pastor’s statement that preceded and prompted JD’s three-fold argument:
“I’m convinced that the greatest religious liberty crisis is going on right now, undetected by most: forced/compelled/coerced vaccination upon those who have compelling religious convictions to not get it. We need to have a forthright and honest conversation about it. History will look at this time and judge those who did not speak up. “For the good of all” will be the cry of both beasts in the last days. The beast’s laws will be enforced based upon “compelling government interests.”
Well said, pastor!
The casual observer has noticed that the authorities, over the past year and a half, have completely over-written our way of life under the explanation, ‘public health.’ And the question the pastor raises here is a crucial question for us to consider: If we advocate flagrant violations of liberty on the ‘public health’ pretext now, will we have any credibility left when the ‘public health’ card is used again as the basis for urging the Mark of the Beast?
While the pastor didn’t “equate” the vaccine to the Mark of the Beast, JD most definitely engaged in a false equivalency under point #3 when discussing quarantine as a precedent for, and a defense for, forced vaccination policies.
But hold on a minute. Is quarantining the sick really the same as forcing vaccines into every healthy person? That’s quite a leap. I doubt that anybody is prepared to prove that children whose parents say ‘no’ to the COVID vaccine for their healthy kids are anywhere close to as dangerous as somebody carrying leprosy into a crowd of people.
All reasonable people support the technique of quarantine when a patient or population is afflicted with a deadly and contagious disease. But it is most definitely a false equivalency and an irrational leap to suggest that this practice justifies mass forced vaccination.
Conclusion
If anything in the above article had a tone other than a simple, ‘come now let us reason together,’ and a joyful celebration of the principles articulated in that grand old document, the Declaration of Independence, please forgive the writer and please read into the above the most courteous tone of voice.
Perhaps we can find unity on liberty of conscience. I believe that (guessing here) better than 9 in 10 Adventists would NOT be in favor of mass forced vaccination. We might be evenly divided over the question of the relative safety of these vaccines; and that’s ok. But this message of freedom and conscience is a core doctrine of the Bible that ought to unify us, regardless of where we stand on the vaccines.
Again, there will be people in heaven who took the vaccine; and there will be people in heaven who did not take the vaccine. But there will be nobody in heaven who bowed down to the idol of coercion. Coercion is a satanic impulse, diametrically and diabolically opposed to the governing principles of the kingdom of heaven.
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Scott Ritsema is the founder and director of Belt of Truth Ministries and Media on the Brain. He lives in Lakeview Michigan with his wife Cami and three amazing children!
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