Covidiot News - White Evangelicals Least Bothered About Others

White Evangelicals’ Coronavirus Concerns Are Fading Faster...... | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

You would expect evangelical (i.e fundamentalist) Christians to be the most compassionate, most caring and most concerned for the welfare of their fellow humans, given their fundamental belief that we are all created by the same god who holds each of us in the same high regard, and give the alleged teaching of Jesus that loving your neighbour is second in importance only to loving God.

The reality is something very different, as their response to the Covid-19 pandemic is showing. There is something in the mindset of evangelicals that make them the least concerned, the most cavalier and the most selfish in their attitude toward collective responsibility for reducing the spread of the virus, as a recent poll showed.

White evangelicals in America are leading the way when it comes to relaxing the social distancing and other measures introduced at the start of the pandemic. Indeed, many of them were vociferously opposed to the measures in the first place, insisting that their faith would protect them so they should be free to ignore prohibitions on collective acts of worship where the virus could be spread more easily.

Many of them, grasping gleefully at the chance to present themselves as victims and martyrs, claiming the lockdowns were an attack on Christianity and the virus was a hoax invented specifically for that purpose.

Now, as these latest figures show, white evangelicals are now the least concerned and so the least likely to adopt measures designed to protect their fellow man from a potentially lethal disease. At the start of the pandemic, they had about the same level of concern as non-evangelicals, but by June, when the general level of concern had fallen from 75.1% somewhat or very worried in April to about 66%, amongst white evangelicals the figure had fallen from 72.2% to 55.4%. Only a little over half of them had any concern at all!

Probably as a consequence of this change in attitude, white evangelicals along with Republican supporters are not the least likely to follow other social distancing and safety measures and advice.

These trends appear to be destined to continue despite the growing evidence of a resurgence in infection rates across the USA and the evidence that reopening of places of worship have led to an increase in infections with churches becoming local Covid-19 hotspots.

As this Christianity Today report says:

Coronavirus responses have been highly politicized from the start. While white evangelicals tend to be strongly Republican—and both groups are less worried about COVID-19 than the rest of the population—there are differences in evangelical and Republican behavior.

White evangelicals are around 7 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say that they have been avoiding personal contact and crowds over the last three months. When it comes to social distancing, white evangelicals are in line with the trend for the population overall.

However, like Republicans, white evangelicals are less likely than the average American to say they have worn a mask in public (78.4% of white evangelicals vs. 82.1% of all adults).

COVID-19 is more deadly among older Americans, which is especially worrisome because half of all weekly churchgoers are over 55. In many cases, white evangelicals are on par with the general population when it comes to complying with public health recommendations.

The one area where white evangelicals fall far behind? Mask wearing. A white evangelical under the age of 35 is 13 percentage points less likely to wear a mask in public than the same age group in the general population (58.7% vs. 71.8%). This may due to a lower level of concern about coronavirus from younger white evangelicals, as they are 9 percentage points less likely to say that they are “somewhat” or “very” worried about casting the virus than young people in general.

Yet wearing a mask is the one measure we can take to protect other people from ourselves in the event that we are carrying the virus but have not developed symptoms yet. While masks might have limited value in protecting the wearer, they are undoubtedly beneficial in protecting others, as a recent study showed, because airborne aerosol spread is by far the most important way in which the virus is passed from one person to another.

As these figures show, far from being caring compassionate people who will do all they can to protect others, white evangelicals are more concerned to make a political statement and show off their cavalier disregard for the health and welfare of others than to take simple precautions to reduce the rate of infection.

The unholy alliance between right-wing politics and Christian extremism in the USA is proving to be a disastrous and dangerous combination of ignorant arrogance, assumption of privilege and persecution mania.

Christian churches, which could once have been counted on to throw their lot in on the side of the people in a collective effort to defeat a major threat such as the Covid-19 virus are now acting to hinder and minimise the collective effort.

Just what Jesus would do, I guess.

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