The COVID crisis has, to a remarkable extent, exposed pre-existing fault lines within society and the church. While the sort of political theological questions we are discussing in this current conversation may once have appeared largely academic, now they are pressed upon us with great urgency. Many Christians who had never given any serious thought to them less than two years ago, are now lamentably dividing from each other on account of their differing approaches to them.
There are doubtless various important differences of theology and political theory in play. However, often by far the most decisive differences are epistemic, temperamental, and cultural, differences relating to what counts as knowledge and to the justification of belief, to cultural instincts, tribal narratives, and personal tendencies.
Though couched as a theological argument, the chief load-bearing elements of Farrow’s case are highly tendentious—and in some cases demonstrably incorrect—scientific and political claims, rather than theological principles. His claim that the vaccines are ‘experimental gene therapy for the entire population’, for instance, is quite false. Likewise, his claim that vaccines and social restrictions don’t prevent viral spread is also wrong. While neither vaccines nor social restrictions prevent all viral spread, there is no shortage of evidence that such measures—like proper masking—slow down and reduce transmission. We can reasonably question whether such measures have been applied justly or prudently, but the suggestion that they are completely ineffectual is manifestly incorrect.
At other points, Farrow’s arguments likely prove a lot more than he intends. For instance, the claim that the vaccines are immoral because they ‘depend upon fetal material and remain implicated in the ongoing crimes of abortion and fetal experimentation,’ implicates a very great many other medical treatments and products that employ the same disputed cell lines in their production or testing—everything from Tylenol, to ibuprofen and aspirin, to Ivermectin—treatments and products to which remarkably few are making the same strong objections. Such inconsistency casts doubt upon claims that strong moral principles are really what are driving objections to vaccines at this point. Farrow’s claims also seem to be at odds with official statements of his own church.
Farrow is far from alone in advancing the sorts of questionable factual claims that he raises in this article. In the US especially, COVID science and policy have been highly contentious and fiercely politicized, with the discourse surrounding them gravitating to opposing political poles and their respective narratives, each side reacting to the excesses of the other. Over the course of the pandemic, various claims have come and gone, but the governing party narratives have generally held firm. For those in very different political and social environments, or for those who are more immediately attentive to the front line of the scientific and policy debates, the public conversation surrounding COVID in North America has been strange and dismaying.
That COVID should have provoked such polarized and politicized reactions in the North American context should not surprise us. As a crisis, its impact—like the impact of measures employed against it—varies markedly between demographics. Significantly, the character of the threat greatly privileges the expert classes and those conversant with their networks of knowledge. Those outside of such networks can often find themselves expected meekly to ‘trust the science’ and to submit to the fickle pronouncements of the ‘experts’, while their livelihoods and social life rapidly deteriorate. Additionally, when breath itself comes to be seen as a potentially dangerous and costly externality, the stage is set for a dramatic rise of unaccountable technocratic and managerial power, just as the fabric of society itself is at its weakest. The understandable perception that the COVID crisis empowers a hostile state and social class—a perception strengthened by the apparently punitive intent of certain measures and their implementation, certain vaccine mandates among them—creates a distrustful situation ripe for misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Farrow speaks of the danger of tyranny, yet we may perhaps face a seemingly opposed yet not unrelated danger of anarchy, to which arguments like Farrow’s own may contribute. In the US especially, there is increasingly vocal and mainstream rejection of the legitimacy of the very foundations of nationhood, of legal systems and law enforcers, of political and economic systems, election results, presidential authority and dignity, leading cultural institutions, and of political norms. Trust in the nation, in government, in academia, in the media, in the police, in the military, in the church, in the economic system, in the law, have all plummeted.
Such loss of trust and rejection of legitimacy isn’t exclusive to one camp or party, but is variously expressed across the political spectrum and is ‘respectable’ mainstream opinion in many quarters. Whether people are accusing American society of systemic racial injustice, or disregarding COVID measures as incipient technocratic tyranny, challenges to the political and social system are also increasingly fundamental and generalizing.
This collapse of trust and legitimacy is, in large measure, a consequence of the failings of the wider social and political systems themselves. Institutions and governments are increasingly sclerotic, ineffectual, untrustworthy, unjust, and incompetent, cynical vehicles for sectional interests, rather than servants of a common good. For all their supposed tendencies towards tyranny, American authorities have seldom seemed weaker or less capable of effectively wielding the power they possess. America’s inept handling of COVID has been a powerful illustration of the rot that pervades its society and government. It is in no small measure a result of the collapse of the trust and mutual recognition between people and government that the dangers of government overreach are growing. Where people cease to honour and submit to their rulers, authority will tend to take more coercive forms.
It is important to appreciate the contingency of the North American situation. While COVID and the measures taken to tackle it have exacerbated social tensions elsewhere, in less polarized cultures, with higher levels of social and institutional trust and different kinds of political imaginaries, debates and policies surrounding COVID have played out in quite contrasting ways to the US. Although there have been strong differences of opinion, the sorts of opposed extremes of belief and policy that have thrived in the North American context have been much less in evidence and there has been much less oxygen granted to conspiracy theorists (dissenting scientists who respectfully engage with their peers and don’t encourage generalized distrust of them are the best alternative to conspiracy theorists). Far more effective government policies can be implemented where there is high social cooperation and trust and unreasonable extremes are more easily checked when support for measures is not so politically or ideologically freighted.
As the climate of discourse has been determined by political and cultural antagonisms and the mutual distrust of rulers and ruled, instead of careful, even-handed, informed, realistic, and charitable policy discussions, a cadre of ‘experts’ has sought to impose its brittle orthodoxy upon the masses, who are increasingly attracted to whatever non-conformist opinions most aggravate and delegitimize them. Even when people seem to be speaking about the merits of specific policies or measures, it too often becomes apparent that they are resistant to policies in general, on account of their tribal alignments and ideological commitments.
This is one of several frustrations that I have with articles like Farrow’s. Rather than having a conversation about proportionate responses, grounded in the concrete reality of the situation and recognizing real dangers on all sides, we are talking at a considerable level of abstraction about ‘vaccines’, ‘measures’, and ‘mandates’, with little room for differentiation between contrasting approaches (e.g. not all COVID vaccines are mRNA vaccines and not all vaccines use disputed fetal cell lines in their production) or discussion of potential alternative measures. Furthermore, the supposed ‘fear’ that characterizes the ‘alien religion’ Farrow opposes seems quite in evidence in his own dystopian anxieties.
This is not to say that Farrow’s concerns are simply unreasonable—the potential for government tyranny is something about which we should all be concerned. However, both Farrow and those he characterizes as driven by a ‘religion of fear’ seem to be so fixated upon specific dangers that they seem to have lost perspective, or the ability to adopt proportionate and prudent responses, responses that take many legitimate concerns into consideration. Government tyranny is a danger, but it is far from the only one. COVID itself has nearly taken one million US lives. Likewise, the breakdown of government and order as people refuse to submit to or honour the authorities placed over them is also a great danger. Where avoidance of exaggerated dangers is what drives us, proportionate responses will be hard to come by.
The danger of anarchy, of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes, is one to which Christian thinkers have long been especially attentive. Indeed, as Eric Hutchinson observes, Protestant political reflection has historically maintained that even tyranny is preferable to anarchy. As Christian citizens or subjects, called to honour and submit to those in authority over us, it is our duty to bear with the failures of our rulers in love, to be tractable to their persuasion, and to seek to render them a willing obedience. This concern to render honour and obedience and to avoid anarchy holds even in situations when rulers and their laws are unwise or otherwise not good. A situation where every individual is free to act as the adjudicator of the laws to which he is subject is ripe for dysfunction.
It is entirely possible to take COVID seriously without being driven by irrational fear or elevating it to the level of a god (and, on the other hand, quite possible to treat opposition to COVID measures as a shibboleth that divides Christ’s church). Even as we challenge measures that we deem excessive, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to put a charitable construction upon many of our governments’ policies. Nor should it be difficult to have measured responses, even as we oppose excessive or unlawful measures, to honour authorities and to submit to their laws as far as conscience allows. Indeed, on those extraordinary occasions when we are conscience-bound to resist otherwise lawful authorities, it is imperative that we seek to honour and uphold their authority in our manner of resistance. Where we fail to pay close regard to the threat of anarchy or of delegitimating authority in our manner of resistance to its excesses, we are falling dangerously short of a truly Christian political ethic.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is adjunct Senior Fellow at Theopolis and is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast. He is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged.
The COVID crisis has, to a remarkable extent, exposed pre-existing fault lines within society and the church. While the sort of political theological questions we are discussing in this current conversation may once have appeared largely academic, now they are pressed upon us with great urgency. Many Christians who had never given any serious thought to them less than two years ago, are now lamentably dividing from each other on account of their differing approaches to them.
There are doubtless various important differences of theology and political theory in play. However, often by far the most decisive differences are epistemic, temperamental, and cultural, differences relating to what counts as knowledge and to the justification of belief, to cultural instincts, tribal narratives, and personal tendencies.
Though couched as a theological argument, the chief load-bearing elements of Farrow’s case are highly tendentious—and in some cases demonstrably incorrect—scientific and political claims, rather than theological principles. His claim that the vaccines are ‘experimental gene therapy for the entire population’, for instance, is quite false. Likewise, his claim that vaccines and social restrictions don’t prevent viral spread is also wrong. While neither vaccines nor social restrictions prevent all viral spread, there is no shortage of evidence that such measures—like proper masking—slow down and reduce transmission. We can reasonably question whether such measures have been applied justly or prudently, but the suggestion that they are completely ineffectual is manifestly incorrect.
At other points, Farrow’s arguments likely prove a lot more than he intends. For instance, the claim that the vaccines are immoral because they ‘depend upon fetal material and remain implicated in the ongoing crimes of abortion and fetal experimentation,’ implicates a very great many other medical treatments and products that employ the same disputed cell lines in their production or testing—everything from Tylenol, to ibuprofen and aspirin, to Ivermectin—treatments and products to which remarkably few are making the same strong objections. Such inconsistency casts doubt upon claims that strong moral principles are really what are driving objections to vaccines at this point. Farrow’s claims also seem to be at odds with official statements of his own church.
Farrow is far from alone in advancing the sorts of questionable factual claims that he raises in this article. In the US especially, COVID science and policy have been highly contentious and fiercely politicized, with the discourse surrounding them gravitating to opposing political poles and their respective narratives, each side reacting to the excesses of the other. Over the course of the pandemic, various claims have come and gone, but the governing party narratives have generally held firm. For those in very different political and social environments, or for those who are more immediately attentive to the front line of the scientific and policy debates, the public conversation surrounding COVID in North America has been strange and dismaying.
That COVID should have provoked such polarized and politicized reactions in the North American context should not surprise us. As a crisis, its impact—like the impact of measures employed against it—varies markedly between demographics. Significantly, the character of the threat greatly privileges the expert classes and those conversant with their networks of knowledge. Those outside of such networks can often find themselves expected meekly to ‘trust the science’ and to submit to the fickle pronouncements of the ‘experts’, while their livelihoods and social life rapidly deteriorate. Additionally, when breath itself comes to be seen as a potentially dangerous and costly externality, the stage is set for a dramatic rise of unaccountable technocratic and managerial power, just as the fabric of society itself is at its weakest. The understandable perception that the COVID crisis empowers a hostile state and social class—a perception strengthened by the apparently punitive intent of certain measures and their implementation, certain vaccine mandates among them—creates a distrustful situation ripe for misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Farrow speaks of the danger of tyranny, yet we may perhaps face a seemingly opposed yet not unrelated danger of anarchy, to which arguments like Farrow’s own may contribute. In the US especially, there is increasingly vocal and mainstream rejection of the legitimacy of the very foundations of nationhood, of legal systems and law enforcers, of political and economic systems, election results, presidential authority and dignity, leading cultural institutions, and of political norms. Trust in the nation, in government, in academia, in the media, in the police, in the military, in the church, in the economic system, in the law, have all plummeted.
Such loss of trust and rejection of legitimacy isn’t exclusive to one camp or party, but is variously expressed across the political spectrum and is ‘respectable’ mainstream opinion in many quarters. Whether people are accusing American society of systemic racial injustice, or disregarding COVID measures as incipient technocratic tyranny, challenges to the political and social system are also increasingly fundamental and generalizing.
This collapse of trust and legitimacy is, in large measure, a consequence of the failings of the wider social and political systems themselves. Institutions and governments are increasingly sclerotic, ineffectual, untrustworthy, unjust, and incompetent, cynical vehicles for sectional interests, rather than servants of a common good. For all their supposed tendencies towards tyranny, American authorities have seldom seemed weaker or less capable of effectively wielding the power they possess. America’s inept handling of COVID has been a powerful illustration of the rot that pervades its society and government. It is in no small measure a result of the collapse of the trust and mutual recognition between people and government that the dangers of government overreach are growing. Where people cease to honour and submit to their rulers, authority will tend to take more coercive forms.
It is important to appreciate the contingency of the North American situation. While COVID and the measures taken to tackle it have exacerbated social tensions elsewhere, in less polarized cultures, with higher levels of social and institutional trust and different kinds of political imaginaries, debates and policies surrounding COVID have played out in quite contrasting ways to the US. Although there have been strong differences of opinion, the sorts of opposed extremes of belief and policy that have thrived in the North American context have been much less in evidence and there has been much less oxygen granted to conspiracy theorists (dissenting scientists who respectfully engage with their peers and don’t encourage generalized distrust of them are the best alternative to conspiracy theorists). Far more effective government policies can be implemented where there is high social cooperation and trust and unreasonable extremes are more easily checked when support for measures is not so politically or ideologically freighted.
As the climate of discourse has been determined by political and cultural antagonisms and the mutual distrust of rulers and ruled, instead of careful, even-handed, informed, realistic, and charitable policy discussions, a cadre of ‘experts’ has sought to impose its brittle orthodoxy upon the masses, who are increasingly attracted to whatever non-conformist opinions most aggravate and delegitimize them. Even when people seem to be speaking about the merits of specific policies or measures, it too often becomes apparent that they are resistant to policies in general, on account of their tribal alignments and ideological commitments.
This is one of several frustrations that I have with articles like Farrow’s. Rather than having a conversation about proportionate responses, grounded in the concrete reality of the situation and recognizing real dangers on all sides, we are talking at a considerable level of abstraction about ‘vaccines’, ‘measures’, and ‘mandates’, with little room for differentiation between contrasting approaches (e.g. not all COVID vaccines are mRNA vaccines and not all vaccines use disputed fetal cell lines in their production) or discussion of potential alternative measures. Furthermore, the supposed ‘fear’ that characterizes the ‘alien religion’ Farrow opposes seems quite in evidence in his own dystopian anxieties.
This is not to say that Farrow’s concerns are simply unreasonable—the potential for government tyranny is something about which we should all be concerned. However, both Farrow and those he characterizes as driven by a ‘religion of fear’ seem to be so fixated upon specific dangers that they seem to have lost perspective, or the ability to adopt proportionate and prudent responses, responses that take many legitimate concerns into consideration. Government tyranny is a danger, but it is far from the only one. COVID itself has nearly taken one million US lives. Likewise, the breakdown of government and order as people refuse to submit to or honour the authorities placed over them is also a great danger. Where avoidance of exaggerated dangers is what drives us, proportionate responses will be hard to come by.
The danger of anarchy, of everyone doing what is right in their own eyes, is one to which Christian thinkers have long been especially attentive. Indeed, as Eric Hutchinson observes, Protestant political reflection has historically maintained that even tyranny is preferable to anarchy. As Christian citizens or subjects, called to honour and submit to those in authority over us, it is our duty to bear with the failures of our rulers in love, to be tractable to their persuasion, and to seek to render them a willing obedience. This concern to render honour and obedience and to avoid anarchy holds even in situations when rulers and their laws are unwise or otherwise not good. A situation where every individual is free to act as the adjudicator of the laws to which he is subject is ripe for dysfunction.
It is entirely possible to take COVID seriously without being driven by irrational fear or elevating it to the level of a god (and, on the other hand, quite possible to treat opposition to COVID measures as a shibboleth that divides Christ’s church). Even as we challenge measures that we deem excessive, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to put a charitable construction upon many of our governments’ policies. Nor should it be difficult to have measured responses, even as we oppose excessive or unlawful measures, to honour authorities and to submit to their laws as far as conscience allows. Indeed, on those extraordinary occasions when we are conscience-bound to resist otherwise lawful authorities, it is imperative that we seek to honour and uphold their authority in our manner of resistance. Where we fail to pay close regard to the threat of anarchy or of delegitimating authority in our manner of resistance to its excesses, we are falling dangerously short of a truly Christian political ethic.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is adjunct Senior Fellow at Theopolis and is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast. He is also the contributing editor of the Politics of Scripture series on the Political Theology Today blog. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged.
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