A very interesting and important article appeared in the Church Times a few days ago, based on an interview with the eminent American geneticist Francis Collins. You might have decided to give it a miss as it was entitled “Election of Trump ‘is not the apocalypse’”, but the interviewee, who helped to discover the origins of cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anaemia, and other diseases, before leading an international race to map the entire human genome, focussed more on why it was that American Christians were so easily seduced by disinformation, particularly about the COVID vaccine. “People of faith were particularly hit hard by misinformation”, he wrote in a recent book, “even being told by some of their leaders they should avoid vaccination since this might be the biblical ‘mark of the beast’”.
Christians, who should have been driven by their faith to “stand up for truth” and stop politics getting into a public-health debate, were caught up in the culture war more so than their secular neighbours, he suggested. “I am deeply disappointed that many faith leaders have allowed lies to spread, and failed to call believers back to truth, grace, and love”.
But why? Why were believers among the most vaccine-resistant. Dr Collins points to conservative churches’ long tradition of suspecting science, since the big debate about evolution versus creation. “I think, for Christians, particularly conservative Christians, there was this echo of ‘Maybe scientists are all really atheists that are trying to tear down my faith,’ and so when they say that vaccine is safe, I’m not so sure about that,” he suggests.
Stimulating article: well worth a read. See the full article here.