Jamie Aten, Disaster psychologist, author and evangelical
Death threats for advocating anti-Covid vaccines.
Death threats for advocating anti-Covid vaccines.
An evangelical Christian who urged his fellow evangelicals to get the anti-covid vaccine says he has been getting death threats and other hate messages from his fellow evangelical Christians.
Jamie Aten is executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College and his work has generally been praised, but when he began urging his fellow evangelicals to get vaccinated, things turned ugly.
Among the emails he reported when he filed his complaint to the sheriff’s office in DuPage County, Illinois, was one telling him his work on vaccines was "punishable by death".
How's your Monday going? Mine started with having to file a police report in response to the increasing number of threats I'm getting for encouraging white evangelicals to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
— Jamie Aten (@drjamieaten) April 26, 2021
The importance of persuading white evangelical leaders to get a vaccine was highlighted by a recent Pew Research poll which showed that 37% of white evangelicals would not have the vaccine - one of the highest levels of vaccine scepticism for any American demographic. Given the large number of white evangelicals in the USA, this figure means it will be difficult to reach the required level for herd immunity to be effective in controlling the virus, so America will always have a high level of infections and the pandemic will last much longer and claim many more lives than it need.
Last year, under Trump's leadership, face-masks became a badge of tribal loyalty for Americans, like a MAGA hat. Now it seems a vaccination is also a sign of tribal loyalties.
But perhaps the most instructive thing in this story is not the stupidity of those, mostly Trumpanzee evangelical Christians, who are campaigning against the vaccines, but their quick resort to threats, like good fundamentalist Christians when people disagree with them.
Having just posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek item on Twitter about science flying a helicopter over the surface of Mars and asking what equivalent achievements religions had to matched it, I can understand how Aten feels, as I have also had veiled threats about what their imaginary friend is going to do to me if I don't agree with them and credit the work done by religious scientist to religion, not science. Apparently, they believe that science done by religious scientists is materially different to that done by non-religious scientists, so should be credited to religion, not science.
But Aten has chosen his bed-fellows himself. He might like to consider what it is about their mutual religion that can be used to excuse their selfishness and the threats of violence against anyone who dares to disagree with them. He chose to jump into bed with that particular rat pack so he shouldn't be surprised when they act entirely in character (with apologies to any rats who may have been offended by that metaphor). Laudable though his efforts are, he should be asking himself why they are evoking such a response in his co-religionists.
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