Medical propaganda from church leaders
The role of prominent clergy and other influential Christians in pushing the so-called covid vaccines
In this post on medical misinformation…
I wrote about the extent of the role that propaganda has played — and continues to play — in medicine.
In this post I will show how, during the hysteria of 2021, prominent clergy and influential Christians played a significant role in pushing the so-called covid vaccines.
The Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was one of the first senior public figures to promote the injections. In January 2021, the BBC reported that Welby, 65, “got the jab because he is a volunteer member of the chaplaincy team at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital”. And that “he told the BBC: ‘the vaccine is safe, and everybody should have it.’”
The BBC article reported that Welby had “shared a picture of himself getting the vaccine on Twitter, with the caption: ‘The rapid development of the vaccine is an answer to prayer — and it is central to the recovery from this terrible pandemic.’” At the time of writing (May 2024) I could not find that tweet, but it is consistent with this Instagram post:
We shall return later to the theme of Welby’s comment that:
Jesus Christ calls us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Getting the vaccine is part of that commandment… please, please accept the invitation to get the jab when it comes — and encourage everyone around you to do the same.
In February 2021, Welby said to Radio 2’s Victoria Derbyshire:
I would say to everyone, get the jab… There is a risk… covid’s going to be with us like flu is… But we have the solution to it, and that solution is in our own hands. You get it when we’re offered it. You do the boosters as the years go by. And this will just be a minor thing of no great concern to us.
It’s curious that as early as February 2021, with all the talk of how “safe and effective” the injections were, that Welby was already speaking of the need for boosters over a period of years.
(And even at the time, I wondered why the authorities were pushing for people to get vaccinated against a respiratory virus in late February, i.e. at the end of the respiratory virus season.)
Welby returned to our screens in December 2021 in an interview for ITV News (that link is to the part of the video transcribed below, starting around five minutes in):
[Question: Is being vaccinated a moral issue?]
I’m going to step out on thin ice here and say yes, I think it is. A lot of people won’t like that, but I think it is, because it’s not about me and my rights.
Now obviously there are some people who for health reasons can’t be vaccinated — a different question — but it’s not about me and my rights to choose. It’s about how I love my neighbour.
Vaccination reduces my chances — it doesn’t eliminate — but it reduces my chances of getting ill. And reducing my chances of getting ill reduces my chances of infecting others. It’s very simple. So I would say yes. To love one another as Jesus said, get vaccinated, get boosted.
Q. Is it a sin not to get it if you are in good health and there is no clear health reason not to have it?
I practise sin well, but I’m not very good at judging it. Sin or not, I would say let’s be positive. Go and do it.
Q. But immoral, then, not to have it when you…
I understand why people don’t. I’m not going to get lured into this because I can see this… coming back at me for years to come. But I would say: Go and get boosted. Get vaccinated. It’s how we love our neighbour. Loving our neighbour is what Jesus told us to do. It’s Christmas. Do what he said.
Q. So you’re not loving them if you don’t do it…
You can love them in lots of different ways, but one really practical way is getting vaccinated.
Hmm. “Very simple.”
I wonder how familiar Welby is with the Helsinki Declaration (first made in 1964, most recently updated in 2013). Or the 2005 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Article 6). Or indeed the Nuremberg Code.
Predictably enough, Welby’s words were widely reported:
And echoed only days later by Boris Johnson in his 2021 Christmas message:
As it happens, both Welby and Johnson1 are featured on the World Economic Forum website:
Maybe just a coincidence.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Welby’s vax promo drew criticism from multiple quarters. At the time I particularly appreciated this from the pseudonymous “Triple-vaxxed Trevor from Trimley St Mary” (there is more at the link):
For my own part, in early 2021 I wrote to the leaders of the large city-centre church where I am a long-standing member — both to express my concerns about what Welby had said, and to suggest publicly distancing our local church from his comments. But I do not recall getting any response.
Church of England bishops
At least a dozen Church of England bishops were also involved in pushing the covid injections. (I wonder if this was at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s request?) Here is a Church of England press release from February 2021:
Ten days later, another press release appeared, speaking of “low uptake among some communities [posing] a risk”…
…and including a three-minute YouTube video entitled Vaccine Encouragement featuring thirteen bishops:
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many different bishops speaking in such a short space of time, let alone with all of them apparently in agreement.
At the time, four of the five Lords Spiritual ex officio, i.e. those bishops automatically entitled to sit in the House of Lords, were involved. Philip Mounstephen, Bishop of Truro in 2021 — and featured in the video — has since become Bishop of Winchester, i.e. the fifth Lord Spiritual ex officio.
Around the same time, a one-minute video on the Church of England’s Twitter/X feed featured short clips from a hospital chaplain and eight bishops — a selection from the dozen or so above — again pushing the injections:
In the context of the recent medical misinformation article mentioned earlier, I can’t help wondering what was actually going on behind the scenes.
Prominent figures from various Christian denominations and other faiths
Prominent figures from various Christian denominations were also involved, as were leaders of other faith groups. Here is a two-minute video of representatives from several groups — the Evangelical Alliance, the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, the Salvation Army, New Wine and Hillsong among others, as well as some of the Church of England bishops again — pushing the injections in February 2021:
And here is a letter from to December 2021 pushing boosters…
…and signed by leaders of various Christian denominations and other faiths:
Christians in Science
The Christians in Science website had (and still has) an article pushing the covid injections. It was written by Paul Ewart and Mirjam Schilling, respectively a physicist and a virologist, both at Oxford University — coincidentally also the home of the “Oxford vaccine”, developed in collaboration with AstraZeneca and withdrawn due to “rare events”.
It began:
And concluded:
Meanwhile, since the rollout of the covid injections, the number of people in the UK unable to work due to long-term sickness is now around 800,000 more than the average between 2010 and 2020:
The International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA)
Lastly here, the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA) put out this hour-long YouTube video featuring Annelies Wilder-Smith, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:
According to this article on the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine website…
…on the first day of the World Economic Forum’s virtual Davos Agenda summit, Wilder-Smith joined an expert panel to discuss possible scenarios for covid. The panel included:
Anthony Fauci, Director of the [US] National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, and Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI)
Hmm.
The article also notes that:
Wilder-Smith serves as Consultant to the Initiative of Vaccine Research at the World Health Organization (WHO), as Focal Point for the SAGE Working Group on COVID-19 vaccines, helping to formulate policy recommendations for the use of these vaccines.
The World Economic Forum again. Another coincidence.
And the WHO.
And if only the ICMDA video had included people asking genuinely challenging questions about the covid injections…
There is much more that can be said about the covid injections. See for example this recent post:
But aside from the subject of the covid injections, there is a much more fundamental question to be asked here:
Is it not highly questionable — to say the least — for any church leader ever to promote any medical product? However “safe” and/or “effective” it is claimed to be?
And in the context of covid injections, we might reasonably add:
Let alone a medical product that uses novel technology… and which plainly cannot have undergone long-term safety studies… and for a disease with an infection fatality rate comparable to a bad flu…
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