Martha’s Vineyard COVID Outbreak Linked to Christians Trusting Jesus Over Masks
Via Hemant Mehta
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There’s been a COVID outbreak in Martha’s Vineyard, the Massachusetts island, that involves 11 people, five of whom were members of a Bible study. The other six were either their family members or people living in their houses.
The outbreak itself isn’t surprising news at this point. They’ve happened across the country. But what’s really messed up is how COVID-ignorant the people in this Bible study group are.
Jim Osborn, a reporter who contributes to the MVTimes and happens to be in that study group, says that their leader, Rev. Dan Davey, hasn’t required masks at all… because he allegedly said Jesus would protect everyone.
Davey “never wore a mask,” Osborn said. “He sort of gave us the impression that because it was a Bible study, we were under God’s protection during the Bible study, and I guess we all made that same false assumption.”
…
He denied telling study group attendees that God would protect them.
“I don’t recall ever saying, ‘God’s going to protect you, don’t worry about it,’” Davey said. “But I live my life, frankly, that God’s going to take care of me regardless. There were a lot of other viruses before COVID-19 came along, and I’m sure there’s more to come.”
Jesus Christ, these people… Does he not realize that many of the 330,000 dead Americans were Christians who believed in his God? They died. Jesus didn’t help them. I guess he thinks none of them were truly devout.
Davey kept digging his own grave, saying that contact tracing was an “inexact science,” that masks are all about personal freedom and that their efficacy is suspect because “The science on mask wearing is very inexact,” and that the COVID death count needed to be “put in perspective” with the flu. He’s either flat-out wrong or missing the point on all of those claims.
If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that the Bible study group has ended its in-person gatherings due to the cold weather and holidays. But the number of positive COVID cases stemming from that Bible study remains large, and there’s no telling how many other people they’ll spread it to. On an island like Martha’s Vineyard, where senior citizens are all over the place, it’s possible strangers will suffer because of the irresponsibility of these Christians.
(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Brian for the link)
Dr. Henry M. Morris III was the CEO of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a multi-million dollar enterprise with dozens of staffers that never produced any credible research. A few years ago, ICR made news by building a planetarium. I repeat: A planetarium… dedicated to showing how the universe was only a few thousand years old.
Morris and his organization are the lesser known counterparts to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, but even then, they always had plenty of money to try and dissuade students from accepting science.
But what’s especially odd about his obituary on ICR’s website is the first paragraph:
It is with heavy hearts that the Institute for Creation Research announces the homegoing of our CEO, Dr. Henry M. Morris III. He went to be with his Lord on December 12, 2020.
Nothing about that wording is unusual for a Christian website… except there’s no mention of the cause of death. Weird omission.
It’s especially weird because they included it earlier in the day, as evidenced by a screen capture, only to delete it later on.
It is with heavy hearts that the Institute for Creation Research announces the homegoing of our CEO, Dr. Henry M. Morris III. He went to be with his Lord on December 12, 2020, after a brief illness with COVID-19.
There’s nothing shameful about that… unless Morris was a COVID-denier, which he didn’t appear to be, at least not publicly. That said, ICR is hosting a number of in-person events early next year before a vaccine will be widely available. They also held a one-year anniversary celebration at the ICR Discovery Center back in September. The place is closed for the time being, but it’s not clear how Morris may have contracted the virus, if that was indeed the issue.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matt 7:15
Illustration of Christ’s teaching in Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets”, a section of wing panel from the Mompelgarter Altarpiece.
In the video below, these Talibangelical grifters and televangelists all prophesized that Donald Trump would win the 2020 presidential election, by no means an exhaustive list:-
Pat Robertson, Paula White-Cain, Kris Vallotton, Mark Taylor, Kat Kerr, Marcus Rogers, Kevin Zadai, Greg Locke, Taribo West, Denise Goulet, Curt Landry, Jeremiah Johnson.
The worst of humanity; grifters, frauds, scammers, liars, charlatans, snake-oil salesman, swindlers, deceivers, thieves, con artists, crooks, corrupt filth; these scumbags are the furthest thing from an ethical belief system, or the idea that a “god” concept could ever serve as a synoymn for notions of truth.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matt 7:15
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Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne has spent the majority of this year trying to spread COVID. He held in-person church services as the pandemic was breaking, continued gathering in-person over the summer without social distancing or any kind of mask requirement, and said back in August that anyone who took a potential vaccine would “be dead within a couple of years.”
Rodney Howard-Browne with fascist conspiracy peddler Alex Jones
Even today, the head of The River church in Tampa, Florida continues putting other people’s lives at risk.
… The vaccine they’re counting on is an RNA vaccine that actually changes your DNA. So they want to remove the God Factor out of people. They won’t feel God. They won’t… because a lot of the stuff was… really in the creation of the Super Soldier, which they wanted to bring about soldiers which had no emotions whatsoever. So a lot of the stuff, it’s all the End Time wicked plan of the Enemy to totally destroy humanity because he hates man…
To state the obvious, the preacher doesn’t understand science.
As news is emerging of vaccine breakthroughs and the very real possibility that effective shots are finally within sight, Howard-Browne urging his followers to avoid it at all costs:
Right-wing pastor and ardent conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard-Browne says the COVID vaccine is a satanic plot to change your DNA and "remove the God factor out of people so they won't feel God." pic.twitter.com/xU20Jm0LzK
The vaccine will not “alter your DNA” because that’s just not how it works. Nor is there a God gene that can be manipulated, nor is a vaccine capable of damaging your faith. (Rodney Howard-Browne is doing that all by himself.)
As expected, this Christian is already blaming a vaccine for destroying humanity after he’s spent months creating an environment for the virus to spread. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your family. He doesn’t care about his own congregation. He only cares about himself. Everyone else can suffer. That’s what he believes Jesus would want.
Televangelist Kenneth Copeland, who just the other week expressed disbelief that Muslims could be elected to Congress, isn’t handling the election Joe Biden very well. (You would think a guy who declared the pandemic to be over back in March would have learned not to trust his own judgment…)
During a service over the weekend, Copeland laughed at the idea Biden was declared president-elect.
The media said what?! Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
The media said Joe Biden’s president. Haaaaaaaaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Haaaaaa. Haaaaaaa. Hahahahahahahaha. WOO! Hahahahahahahaha.
I mean literally laughed. Like… to the point that this video is just creepy.
Televangelist Kenneth Copeland laughs at the media for declaring that Joe Biden has won the election and will become president. pic.twitter.com/ARHqmsEbo7
Totally normal Christians, everyone. No masks. Just mouths wide open, laughing at… um… reality.
They don’t seem to realize that their laughter, like prayer, won’t change the outcome of the race.
Can someone create a mashup of Copeland and Paula White calling for “angelic reinforcement” to protect Donald Trump? It’s just non-stop evangelical insanity with these people.
Poland’s agreement with Vatican helps protect abusers, NSS tells UN
Via National Secular Society
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The National Secular Society has urged a UN committee to push Poland to renegotiate a treaty with the Vatican, in order to better protect child abuse survivors in the Catholic Church.
In a submission to the UN committee on the rights of the child, the NSS said the concordat between Poland and the Holy See appeared to “compromise the effective administration of justice”.
The NSS added that the concordat impeded Poland’s freedom and ability to conform to the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
The NSS’s submission highlighted evidence that the scale of clerical child sexual abuse in Poland is substantial and prosecutors are expected to treat the church with deference.
The submission also said the country should take steps to tackle the discrimination and persecution faced by LGBT+ children, including by introducing inclusive relationships and sex education and reforming religious education.
The committee is taking evidence on Poland’s compliance with the CRC ahead of an examination of Poland’s five-yearly report on the subject.
Concordat undermines secular justice
The concordat, which Poland and the Vatican signed in 1993, requires conformity with the Catholic Church’s canon ‘law’ in some instances and remains valid today.
The NSS’s submission said the concordat sought to give ecclesiastical ‘law’ precedence over secular law. It said the ‘justice’ delivered as a result would not be “an adequate or just substitute for even-handed secular justice” for perpetrators of child sexual abuse.
The maximum sanction under canon law for abuse of minors, including rape, is defrocking.
The NSS also referred to a 2019 letter from the national prosecutor which suggested local prosecutors seeking documentary evidence from the Catholic Church were required to treat it with deference.
The letter suggested in some cases this should include allowing the church to withhold documents.
The prosecutor’s justification for this position was partly based on the obligations outlined in the concordat.
The NSS’s submission included reports suggesting the national prosecutor’s office initially denied the existence of the letter, then sought to misrepresent its contents as benign.
It added that Poland should make greater efforts to secure secular, rather than ecclesiastical, justice for those suspected of clerical child sexual abuse.
Scale of abuse
The NSS’s submission noted that the Catholic Church has admitted that hundreds of priests in Poland have abused children.
It also noted that pressure groups have suggested significant numbers of bishops have failed to report abusive priests and allowed them to stay in ministry, often working with children in the process.
NSS comment
NSS president Keith Porteous Wood said: “Poland’s populist government is seeking to bolster the church from unprecedented criticism over clerical abuse of minors, after three films which attracted record-breaking audiences drew attention to the extent of the abuse and the church’s cover up.
“Poland’s adherence to human rights appears to be deteriorating with every month.
“We hope our submission will assist the UN to bring pressure to bear on Poland to ensure it makes the protection of LGBT children non-negotiable, and hold it to account for its shortcomings in prosecuting clerics suspected of abusing children.”
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Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has been caught red-handed using digitally altered photos in its coverage of a section of the city that has become a centre of protest against police brutality and racial injustice.
CLICK to donate to The Age of BlasphemyRupert Murdoch’s Fox News has admitted it published bogus images of Seattle’s BLM protesters.
On Saturday, Fox News included an editor’s note at the top of at least three stories on its website covering Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), saying it replaced a “home page photo collage” because it “did not clearly delineate between these images” and that it “mistakenly” included a Minnesota photo in a slideshow about Seattle.
The largely peaceful zone has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump, who fumed on Twitter that the city had been taken over by “anarchists”.
Seattle Mayor says, about the anarchists takeover of her city, “it is a Summer of Love”. These Liberal Dems don’t have a clue. The terrorists burn and pillage our cities, and they think it is just wonderful, even the death. Must end this Seattle takeover now!
The Seattle Times reported Fox News’ website featured at least two photos that amplified Mr Trump’s accusations – in one case inserting an image of a man standing with a military-style rifle
There were no disclaimers the images had been manipulated when featured on the network’s website prior to Saturday.
The unidentified gunman was lifted from a Getty Images photo taken on June 10 at the CHAZ protest area. But the original photo showed him leaning against a car.
Looks real, doesn’t it? Well it’s fake news because the gunman was digitally inserted to ‘illustrate’ the ongoing Seattle protests. Photo: ABC
Fox’s website used that gunman’s image for the network’s coverage of the protest zone, but the image was also included in a mashup of other photos from May 30 that depicted smashed windows in downtown Seattle — before the protest zone was set up and in a different neighbourhood.
Fox took down the photos after the newspaper inquired, and a Fox News spokeswoman acknowledged the issue in a statement that falsely claimed all photos were from the same week and the same location.
“We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront,” the Fox statement said.
While Fox was presenting images of gun-toting revolutionaries, CHAZ occupiers were building a sustainable garden. Photo: Twitter/Chaz Garden
The ethical standards of journalism require photo illustrations to be clearly marked, and caution used against using photos from different times and locations unless they are clearly marked because it can be misleading to the reader or viewer.
The gunman image was also inserted into a different June 10 Getty Images photo showing a sign from the protest zone that reads: “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE CAP HILL.”
The gunman and sign photos were taken by Seattle freelance photographer David Ryder, who then distributed the photo through Getty Images.
“It is definitely Photoshopped,” Ryder told the newspaper.
“To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”
Here’s how Rupert Murdoch’s minions illustrated the Seattle protests. Big problem: the picture is an old one from the Minneapolis riots. Photo: ABC
The Seattle Times also reported that Fox’s package of stories on Seattle’s protest zone included a May 30 photo taken by an Associated Press photographer depicting a burning building and car that was in Minnesota. Fox has also since removed that image.
The CHAZ occupation, east of downtown Seattle, has evolved this week into a festival-like scene after police on June 8 removed barricades near the East Precinct and largely abandoned the station in an effort to de-escalate tensions between officers and demonstrators.
Meanwhile, a US judge on Friday ordered Seattle police to temporarily stop using tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bang devices to break up largely peaceful protests.
-A
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George Floyd’s public execution was staged to create civil unrest, according to one Texas politician.
Cynthia Brehm — Republican Party Chair of Bexar County, one of the state’s largest — posted a conspiracy theory on Facebook, claiming the killing was premeditated and set up, with the intention of stymieing Donald Trump’s “rising approval rating.”
In her post, entitled “George Floyd — A Staged Event?” she called on her followers to “Tell me what you think”.
“These officers were involved with something, I’m not sure exactly what, but something is just not adding up,” she wrote.
On Wednesday, the third-degree murder charge leveled at Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd, was upgraded to second-degree murder, while the other three officers involved in the arrest — Thomas Lane, J.A. Keung and Tou Thao — were newly charged with aiding and abetting the homicide.
“Also this supposed officer is now missing from his home, no where to be found has the smell of MK Ultra activation,” she continued, referring to the CIA mind-control experiments carried out in the 1950s.
“I think there is at the very least the ‘possibility’, that this was a filmed public execution of a black man by a white cop, with the purpose of creating racial tensions and driving a wedge in the growing group of anti deep state sentiment from common people, that have already been psychologically traumatized by Covid 19 fears.”
She went on to claim racial and gun violence were becoming commonplace in politically contested areas, especially in election years.
“Considering the rising approval rating of President Trump in the black community, an event like this was unfortunately ‘Predictable’.”
The post was deleted from Facebook, but not before San Antonio Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia grabbed a screenshot, which quickly made its way around social media — and her party colleagues.
Many of her GOP peers were not impressed, and called for her resignation.
“These comments are disgusting and have no place in the Republican Party or in public discourse,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s spokesman John Wittman said in a statement Thursday morning. “Cynthia Brehm should immediately resign her position as Chair of the Bexar County Republican Party.”
Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey, Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, Congressman Chip Roy and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick all called for her to step down; Travis County Republican Party Chairman Matt Mackowiak meanwhile said she has been “an embarrassment for 2 years”
She has been an embarrassment for 2 years. With this deleted FB post last night, she is now an embarrassment to @TexasGOP and @gop.
Not all GOP members thought the conspiracy theory was wacky though; according to the Texas Tribune, Nueces County chairman Jim Kaelin posted the same text last week, calling it an “interesting perspective.”
Last month Brehm made headlines when she declared the coronavirus pandemic was a Democrat Party hoax.
“This is America and we shouldn’t have to be forced or mandated to wear a mask,” she told a rally at the time, per Express News.
“Why is this happening today? I’ll tell you why — all of this has been promulgated by the Democrats to undo all of the good that President Trump has done for our country, and they are worried.”
“So, take off your masks, exercise your constitutional rights. Stand up, speak up, and vote Republican.”
There have been almost 70,000 cases of COVID-19 reported in Texas alone so far, and 1,767 deaths.
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During a livestream Thursday, televangelist Kenneth Copeland explained how there are exactly two times in a man’s life when he must pay his tithes: When he has money… and when he doesn’t.
Scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland
… There’s two times in every person’s life when he should tithe and give offerings.
One is when he has the money.
And the other is when he doesn’t. Especially when he doesn’t! Amen.
Why Brother Copeland, would you think a poor person should give a tithe? Absolutely! Absolutely!
Good old Christian humor for you. Always hilarious.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called for an investigation into the “real legitimate evidence” that the crimes committed during Minneapolis’ George Floyd protests have been committed by outsiders who are part of “a very serious operation.”
During this morning’s press conference, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey all said that the criminal actors in this week’s protests seem to be from outside the community. Walz is now consulting with the Department of Homeland Security about the possibility of foreign intervention.
MSNBC host Joy Reid broke away from the presser to discuss the issue with Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison. In addition to the fact that Carter said that every person arrested last night was from outside the state, Ellison said there is video evidence of outside infiltration, too.
ELLISON: My reaction is that just a few days ago, on like the second day of protests, there was a man who was dressed in all black, he was a Caucasian person. He had a gas mask, black gloves, an umbrella. It was not raining, and he was smashing windows and apparently throwing incendiary devices into businesses that had nothing to do with the tragedy around Mr. Floyd. And so people, protesters photographed this.
The video is existing and you can see it. And they confronted him, who are you and he just walked away. That led me to believe that there is real legitimate evidence that this is a very serious operation being done to tarnish the legitimate protest that is going on. We need an investigation on who these people are and their identity and I will just say as I close, that when Jamar Clark protest was going on, a group of white supremacists went on Facebook announcing they were going to attack the protests, did so, but — and then shot people. They were caught and then they were prosecuted. So, we know that this kind of thing happens, it’s planned. We have no good reason to believe that it’s not happening now. It needs to be a separate and independent investigation.
REID: Do you believe this is an organized operation against the protesters and against the city of Minneapolis and against the state?
ELLISON: I have every — and against civil society. I have every reason to believe that the facts exist to launch that investigation and I will say this. The people who would go out on the street to protest for justice for Mr. Floyd are not going to burn down the historic social justice advocacy groups that are for the Native American community. The Bengali vegan restaurant, they’re not gonna do that. That’s not what these kind of folks do. They’re not gonna leave the south side of Minneapolis, come all the way to the north side and attack the only grocery store that low-income African Americans use all the time to get foods and as well as the Walgreens. It doesn’t make sense at all.
This violence is widespread. The people appear very well organized. There are pictures of these folks. We need to identify them and hold them accountable and prosecute them and we need to remember the Jamar Clark case where organized white supremacists were caught, committed assault, attempted murder and criminally prosecuted for attacking the protest. I think that there’s ample reason for us to investigate that and I absolutely urge that we do and I think that that is a critical factor of what’s going on here.
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday turned away a request from a church in California to block enforcement of state restrictions on attendance at religious services.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four-member liberal wing to form a majority.
“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in an opinion concurring in the unsigned ruling.
“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” the chief justice wrote. “And the order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh noted dissents.
“The church and its congregants simply want to be treated equally to comparable secular businesses,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. “California already trusts its residents and any number of businesses to adhere to proper social distancing and hygiene practices.”
“The state cannot,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, quoting from an appeals court decision in a different case, “‘assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.’”
The court’s ruling was its first attempt to balance the public health crisis against the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom. And it expanded the Supreme Court’s engagement with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, after rulings on voting in Wisconsin and prisons in Texas and Ohio.
The case was brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, Calif., which said Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, had lost sight of the special status of religion in the constitutional structure.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is a national tragedy,” lawyers for the church wrote in their Supreme Court brief, “but it would be equally tragic if the federal judiciary allowed the ‘fog of war’ to act as an excuse for violating fundamental constitutional rights.”
The brief, filed May 23, asked the justices to block a ruling the day before from a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, saying that the shutdown orders did not single out houses of worship for unfavorable treatment. The majority said state officials had struck an appropriate balance.
“We’re dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion that went on to quote a famous dissent from a 1947 Supreme Court decision. “In the words of Justice Robert Jackson, if a ‘court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.’”
In dissent, Judge Daniel P. Collins wrote that California had failed “to honor its constitutional duty to accommodate a critical element of the free exercise of religion — public worship.”
“I do not doubt the importance of the public health objectives that the state puts forth,” Judge Collins wrote, “but the state can accomplish those objectives without resorting to its current inflexible and overbroad ban on religious services.”
The appeals court ruled on May 22. That same day, President Trump made remarks on the subject at a news briefing.
“Today, I’m identifying houses of worship — churches, synagogues and mosques — as essential places that provide essential services,” he said, adding: “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now, for this weekend. If they don’t do it, I will override the governors.”
Three days later, Mr. Newsom issued additional guidance for houses of worship, requiring them to “limit attendance to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower.”
“Plaintiffs’ sanctuary seats 600 persons, and each service normally brings in between 200 and 300 congregants,” the brief said. “Some of the larger houses of worship in California can seat 1,000 congregants or more. But under California’s guidelines, plaintiffs will only be permitted to welcome 100 congregants, with no explanation as to the justification for this arbitrary cap. In contrast, there is no percentage limitation for manufacturing and warehousing facilities — simply a social distancing requirement.”
“A review of California’s sector-specific guidelines shows that the only two industries with percentage caps are retail and houses of worship,” the brief said, “and retail is set at a 50 percent cap. Offices, manufacturing, food packaging, museums, and every other sector has no percentage cap.”
The court also acted on a second case on Friday, that one brought by two Chicago-area churches, Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church and Logos Baptist Ministries. They said an order from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, discriminated against houses of worship.
The order, lawyers for the churches told the Supreme Court, imposes “a unique 10-person limit on religious worship services that is not imposed on customers or employees of ‘big box’ retail stores, liquor stores, restaurants, office buildings, warehouses, factories or other businesses and activities which, like worship services, have been deemed ‘essential’” by Mr. Pritzker.
Lower courts had refused to block the order, saying the distinctions it drew were sensible.
“Gatherings at places of worship pose higher risks of infection than gatherings at businesses,” wroteJudge Robert W. Gettleman of the Federal District Court in Chicago. “The congregants do not just stop by Elim Church. They congregate to sing, pray and worship together. That takes more time than shopping for liquor or groceries.”
A unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, refused to stay Judge Gettleman’s ruling while the churches pursued an appeal.
In a preliminary and unsigned assessment of the case, the panel wrote that “the executive order does not discriminate against religious activities, nor does it show hostility toward religion.”
“It appears instead to impose neutral and generally applicable rules,” the panel wrote. “The executive order’s temporary numerical restrictions on public gatherings apply not only to worship services but also to the most comparable types of secular gatherings, such as concerts, lectures, theatrical performances or choir practices, in which groups of people gather together for extended periods, especially where speech and singing feature prominently and raise risks of transmitting the Covid-19 virus.”
“Worship services,” the panel wrote, “do not seem comparable to secular activities permitted under the executive order, such as shopping, in which people do not congregate or remain for extended periods.”
On Thursday, Mr. Pritzker announced that he was lifting the 10-person limit on religious gatherings. That made the case moot, the state’s lawyers wrote in a Supreme Court brief.
In response, the churches urged the court to rule, saying the governor remained free to change his mind. “Churches are one whim away from being once again subjected to the restrictions they challenge in this case and which the governor obviously still favors,” lawyers for the churches wrote.
In its order turning down the churches’ request on Friday, the Supreme Court noted the new guidance, adding that it would allow the churches to file “a new motion for appropriate relief if circumstances warrant.”
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Members of the Skagit Valley Chorale in Washington State. | Facebook/Skagit Valley Chorale
A new report from the Skagit County Public Health Department in Washington state published by the CDC Friday, shows how quickly the coronavirus spread after a choir practice became a “superspreader event” for the disease that infected 86% of attending members and killed two of them.
Now state health officials say the findings in the report, based on the experience of Skagit Valley Chorale that normally rehearses at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church on Tuesday evenings and once a month on a Saturday morning, could have significant implications for future church gatherings.
“It’s really important that people realize that by meeting, by gathering, 86% of them could become ill and the results and aftermath of that is hard to fathom,” Skagit County Health Officer Dr. Howard Leibrand said in a King 5 report.
The report from the health department showed how the 122-member chorale was likely exposed to a “superemitter” of the virus who attended choir practice on March 3 and March 10.
“One person at the March 10 practice had cold-like symptoms beginning March 7. This person, who had also attended the March 3 practice, had a positive laboratory result for SARS-CoV-2 by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing,” the report said.
Of the 78 members who attended the March 3 practice, 51 or 65.4% of them got infected with the virus. All but one of the infected individuals from the March 3 practice were among the 60 members who also attended the March 10 practice, 86.7% of them tested positive for the disease. Among the 21 members who only attended the March 3 practice only one of them became ill.
“The 2.5-hour singing practice provided several opportunities for droplet and fomite transmission, including members sitting close to one another, sharing snacks, and stacking chairs at the end of the practice. The act of singing, itself, might have contributed to transmission through emission of aerosols, which is affected by loudness of vocalization,” the report said.
“Certain persons, known as superemitters, who release more aerosol particles during speech than do their peers, might have contributed to this and previously reported COVID-19 superspreading events,” the researchers added.
They explained that the findings from this event shows “the high transmissibility” of the coronavirus as well as “the possibility of superemitters contributing to broad transmission in certain unique activities and circumstances.”
“They were sitting closely together and spending time there and then they would switch chairs, share snacks, and they might have touched surfaces other people infected touched,” Lea Hamner, co-author of the report and communicable disease and epidemiology lead at Skagit County Health told King 5.
All of this activity occurred at a time when Skagit Valley had no reported cases yet even though the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Washington state on Jan. 21.
In a March 23 statement, the Skagit Valley Chorale said that during the dates they were holding rehearsals, schools, restaurants, churches, bowling alleys, banks, libraries, theaters, and other businesses also remained open.
“The advice from the state of Washington was to limit gatherings to 250 people. There were no recommendations from Skagit County Health Department regarding meeting sizes, but they did state that people over 60 should avoid ‘large public gatherings,’” the group said.
Still, the chorale’s board of directors tried to be careful. They urged all members to stay away from rehearsals on March 3 and March 10 if they showed any symptoms of illness, no matter the cause.
They also advised anyone who felt their health or safety was in jeopardy to not attend.
“Each member was left to determine for him/herself whether to attend. At no time was anyone pressured to attend if they were uncomfortable doing so,” the group said.
Despite the precautions taken, however, very few of the chorale members were spared from contracting the virus.
As a result of the high transmissibility of the virus the researchers recommend that people avoid face-to-face contact with others, not gather in groups, avoid crowded places, maintain physical distancing of at least 6 feet to reduce transmission, and wear cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.
Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist pastor in California and the author ofWhen Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus, argued in a New York Times op-ed Thursday that while some churches are pushing to reopen despite the lack of a vaccine for the coronavirus — and there’s no guarantee that there ever will be a vaccine for COVID-19 — most churches are taking the virus seriously.
“While pastors defying closure orders have grabbed headlines, the reality is that over 90 percent of pastors and church leaders complied with shutdown orders in March and many are still waiting until later in May and into June before resuming public worship — even in states where restrictions are weakening,” he wrote. “Most pastors that I have engaged with take seriously the responsibility to navigate this national tragedy with wisdom, compassion and patience.”
In Alabama for example, even though Gov. Kay Ivey is now allowing churches to resume meeting, many churches in Alabama continue to use online services and plan to wait a bit longer before reopening for in-person services.
The largest church in the state, the Church of the Highlands, will continue to emphasize watching online services and Pastor Chris Hodges, said there were no plans to return to in-person group worship before May 31.
Ivey’s pastor, the Rev. Jay Wolf, pastor of Montgomery First Baptist who advised her on church safety issues, told AL.com that he believes it will be no sooner than May 31 before in-person services begin. Even then, he said, it might not even be safe for a large church to meet in person.
Bishop Stephen A. Davis, pastor of the 5,000-member Refresh Family Church, formerly known as New Birth Birmingham, told AL.com that right now, “We still think it’s too risky.”
“We’re waiting another couple of weeks just to be safe,” Davis said. “Just because the state reopens businesses doesn’t mean it’s safe to bring that many people together.”
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QAnon adherents, insofar as I’ve seen photosofthem at President Trump’s campaign rallies or attached to reports on the conspiracy theory they profess, are remarkable mainly for how normal they appear. They look like Midwestern moms or the guy in your neighborhood who lets everyone borrow his pickup.
Still, QAnon isn’t mainstream, at least not yet. A CNN poll published last month found 76 percent of Americans have never heard of it. But QAnon’s affection for Trump and visibility at his events are raising the theory’s profile — and the QAnon movement is evolving in a curious way: It’s spawning a new religion, maybe even the first of new breed of religious organization in America.
The QAnon movement started on 4chan, an anonymous message board influential in online culture but generally considered outside the bounds of the respectable internet, not least because it has repeatedly made the news in connection to child pornography. That makes the site an odd first home for QAnon, whose narrative centers on a cabal of powerful figures in government, business, academia, and media who make time for child sex trafficking and satanic sacrifice in their busy schedule of world domination. Q is the movement’s anonymous digital prophet whose forum posts (“Q drops,” now migrated from 4chan to a similar site called 8kun) reveal both the nature of the cabal and Trump’s heroic plan to defeat it. QAnon’s most fervent followers reach a point of obsession, clinging to it even at cost of total estrangement from their bewildered families.
An in-depth report on QAnon in The Atlantic‘s June issue closes with the suggestion that QAnon could become the latest in a series of “thriving religious movements indigenous to America.” But research from a Concordia University doctoral student, Marc-André Argentino, shows the church of QAnon already exists and seems poised to spread. Argentino attended an online QAnon church where, he reports, two-hour Sunday services with several hundred attendees consist of prayer, communion, and interpretation of the Bible in light of Q drops and vice versa. The leaders’ goal, Argentino says, “is to train congregants to form their own home congregations in the future and grow the movement.”
It’s not inconceivable that they’ll succeed, especially after pandemic restrictions ease and in-person gatherings resume. (The pandemic, of course, fits neatly into the QAnon narrative as a plot to oust Trump before the mass arrests and executions of cabal members can begin.) Many QAnon members express a desire for community, describing how they try to convert loved ones to their cause and browse QAnon hashtags to make like-minded friends. QAnon church would fill that need, as religious gatherings long have done.
That’s what makes me think the church of QAnon may be a portent of things to come: Traditional religiosity is declining in America, but humanity will not cease to be religious. It will merely diversify its sources of increasingly customized religiosity. From lapsed evangelicals, as many QAnon adherents seem to be, to religiously unaffiliated “nones,” people crave the community, meaning, and purpose church provides, even if they abandon or reject its teachings.
Satisfying that craving with politics and conspiracy theories isn’t new, but the QAnon church’s self-description as a church stands out. It’s one thing for outside observers to characterize a political movement as religious in its enthusiasm or expectations of loyalty; it’s another for participants to explicitly brand their own community as religious and start holding services.
Whether other groups, especially of dramatically different political persuasions, will make the same leap is difficult to say. Could we see something comparable on the left?
On the one hand, there is some unique resonance with this style of religiosity and the political right. QAnon builds on apocalyptic thinking common in parts of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity in America. Q drops frequently include Bible passages, and the style of study of scripture and Q texts employed — the careful search for hidden prophetic meaning and correspondence to history and current events — is very much a creature of the religious right, an heir aberrant of Left Behind and The Late, Great Planet Earth.
On the other hand, one of the strangest things about QAnon is it’s a conspiracy theory born of victory, not defeat. Trump is president, after all. But typically, “conspiracy theories are for losers,” University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski toldThe Daily Beast. “Normally you don’t expect the winning party to use them.” And perhaps this is why QAnon is taking a religious form: Having Trump in power allows for hope where most conspiracy theories offer only an account of evil. QAnon adherents believe their work decoding Q drops contributes to an achievable final triumph. Forming communities, then, has a purpose beyond commiseration.
If the victory-born nature of QAnon is thus significant, we might look for similar “churches” to pop up elsewhere as the national balance of power shifts. A Democratic president in the Trumpian mold — a populist demagogue prone to attributing every failure to sabotage — could inspire something similar. I wouldn’t expect the same Christian syncretism, but neopaganism (remember the story of the Brooklyn witches hexing Brett Kavanaugh?) or broadly new-age spiritualism might do the trick, producing a service with, say, meditation and a spell instead of prayer and communion.
Q, for one, would no doubt take this development in stride, adding it to the QAnon mythology for his followers — er, parishioners? — to parse next Sunday.
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Along with the deluded “Jesus is my vaccine” whackjobs, the conspiracy charlatans are peddling their own anti-science snake oil and superstition faster than any coronavirusvirus.
“Hundreds of you have requested that I watch and respond to the Plandemic movie ft. Dr. Judy Mikovits, recently published on social media. I decided to check it out and respond point by point to the biggest claims the conspiracy theory movie makes.”
Florida-based security firm Silvercorp USA has come under scrutiny following a failed attempt to topple Venezuela’s president.
“The former US soldier, who was pictured organising a Trump rally in North Carolina in October 2018, told a Miami TV station on Sunday he had decided to reveal the identity of his client as he was never paid, and instead had to raise money via “crowd-funding” donations, including from Venezuelan Uber drivers in Colombia. To back up his story, Mr Goudreau showed a copy of the alleged contract, and an audio recording in which he appears to be speak by telephone with Mr Guaido.”
On the China coronavirus lab conspiracy, ‘let’s be clear: Murdoch is campaigning full-bore for Trump,’ the former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd writes. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
In liberal democracies, the integrity, impartiality and professionalism of intelligence agencies matters. That’s why it is essential that intelligence agencies remain aloof, not only from the political debates of the day, but also from the policy decisions that individual governments may take. The intelligence community’s core task is to provide brutally realistic analysis on the threat environments we face so that governments can then make the best-informed policy decisions possible to preserve our common security.
The failures of the intelligence community before the Iraq war, the gullibility of much of the western media, as well as the cynical manipulation of both by the political class of the day, provide us with a stark reminder of what can go radically wrong. On 8 September 2002 the New York Times published one of this century’s most consequential news articles. The front-page story, supplied by the Bush administration, claimed that Saddam Hussein had stepped up his quest for weapons of mass destruction by acquiring key components for a nuclear weapon. In the UK, the Blair government’s “dodgy dossier” compounded the error. John Howard did the same in Australia. The problem was that it just wasn’t true. These were over-egged stories designed to soften the public up for what would become a disastrous war.
The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 casts a long shadow. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, first in the invasion, then the ensuing chaos, then in the rise and fall of Islamic State. It strengthened Iran’s hand in both Iraq and Syria. It contributed to a massive outflow of refugees across the world, a factor in the resurgence of the far right across Europe. And Washington has spent nearly two decades trapped in a Middle Eastern mess of its own making, diverting much of its attention from China’s regional and global rise.
Lies were reported as facts. Credible sceptics were downplayed, ignored or attacked as unpatriotic “appeasers”. The thrill of landing a big “story” overtook the media’s fundamental duty to prevent the public from being deceived. Journalists who believed they were muscling up to a looming security threat turned out to be working instead against their own countries’ long-term interests. And in all this the Murdoch media were leading the pack across the anglosphere as the unrelenting cheerleaders for war – and vilifying those, like me, who opposed it.
This brings us to the Covid-19 pandemic and the public health and economic mayhem it has unleashed across the globe. The sheer magnitude of the damage means that the people of the world have every right to know how this came about. Whether China’s new class of “wolf warrior” diplomats care to recognise it or not, there are fundamental questions we can all legitimately demand answers to. These include the origin of the virus in Wuhan; whether the earliest genetic evidence of the outbreak has been properly preserved for independent research; the danger of wildlife “wet markets” in the transmission of such viruses; what delays occurred in notifying central authorities; why some local medical staff were either silenced or punished; what delay occurred in notifying the World Health Organization of human-to-human transmission, given China’s obligations under the relevant international health regulations. There are also fundamental questions on whether the WHO properly discharged its mandate to provide clear and early warnings to the international community. And whether national governments took all necessary actions to prepare for the virus reaching their own shores, or whether these warnings were effectively ignored – as appears to have been the case in the US.
But amid all these questions, and the parallel debate about the mechanism now needed to conduct an effective international inquiry, we suddenly have a unilateral declaration by the US president and his secretary of state that the body of evidence overwhelmingly points to the virus having leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research projects have been under way into various categories of coronavirus borne by bats. They claim a “high degree of confidence” in this theory, citing compelling but as-yet undisclosed evidence – despite the US director of national intelligence issuing a rare public statement disparaging this theory.
The bitter lessons of Iraq appear to have been lost on Trump and the Murdoch empire that supports him
Enter the “global exclusive” story of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian Daily Telegraph last weekend, headlined “China’s batty science – bombshell dossier lays out the case against the People’s Republic”. The paper claims to have been leaked a 15-page research dossier prepared by unnamed “western governments” on the Chinese government’s culpability for the outbreak. The clear inference from the Telegraph report is that the document was prepared by the “Five Eyes” intelligence community linking the US, UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand intelligence services. Other Murdoch journalists, re-reporting the story, have expressly stated it was a Five Eyes document. While the article itself shies away from stating explicitly the document’s authorship, the newspaper goes on to detail a number of investigatory actions being undertaken by the Five Eyes to nail the Chinese state’s responsibility.
The most critical part of the Telegraph newspaper report deals with apparent divisions among the wider intelligence community on the authenticity of the “Wuhan laboratory leak” thesis. And it’s here that Murdoch’s paper becomes explicit in its assertion that the Five Eyes research dossier helps validate the as-yet-unproven claim by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo that the virus was “invented” at the Wuhan laboratory. The article and associated stories are laced with colourful reporting about Chinese “bat virus” researchers – “bat men”, “bat women” and other tales from the Wuhan bat cave. Nonetheless, having delivered its political ordinance in support of Trump and Pompeo, the Murdoch story carefully and cleverly seeks to cover its traces by stating repeatedly that nothing is yet proven about the laboratory leak.
The Murdoch journalist in question, Sharri Markson, a few days later pops up as the prime interview on the Murdoch-owned US cable TV network Fox News. The interviewer is none other than Trump’s personal favourite, Tucker Carlson, who together with Sean Hannity are his cheerleaders-in-chief in the American media. Right on cue, Tucker chimes in that the dossier “is the most substantial confirmation of what we’ve suspected that we’ve had so far” and that “because it’s a multinational effort I think it would be hard to dismiss it as a political document”.
The truth is, at this stage, none of us know definitively whether the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory. The best we can do is accept the Australian government’s assertion that this is at best a 5% possibility. Politically, the bottom line is that the leak of this alleged Five Eyes intelligence dossier to the Murdoch media in Australia, before being resold back into the US political audience by the very same Murdoch media, appears designed to back Trump’s and Pompeo’s claim. But this time with the added “authenticity” factor of the dossier being “multinational” and not just a normal drop from the White House to Fox, which have become a dime a dozen.
This is all about US presidential politics. There are three issues in this campaign: Trump’s handling of the virus; how to dig the US out of its virus-induced economic hole; and who can be most hardline on China – the Donald or “Beijing Biden”, as the Republicans now seek to tag his Democratic opponent. There’s little else on the table. Therefore, using an intelligence leak pushing Chinese culpability, laundered through a foreign country, turbocharged with the credibility factor of being an alleged Five Eyes product, helps the partisan political cause. And let’s be clear: Murdoch is campaigning full-bore for Trump.
Here are questions now for the Australian government and potentially its Five Eyes partners. First, was this an “intelligence” product, or was it simply open source material derived from information in the public domain? Second, was it an authorised Five Eyes product, or was just prepared in the US? Third, who leaked it, given that leaking such material is a criminal offence – as the US has made plain in its handling of Chelsea Manning’s and Julian Assange’s cases that included the large-scale unauthorised release of classified Five Eyes material. Were any ministers of the Australian government complicit in this? Or was the US embassy in Canberra involved? If the Australian government is serious about the protection of classified documents, then why hasn’t a full police investigation been commissioned? Or is the government fearful of what it might discover if, as is likely, the leak has been driven by political and electoral interests within the US.
The extent to which the Australian intelligence community has sought to distance itself from the “dossier” suggests it does not wish to be in any way drawn into domestic politics – either Australian or American. The British intelligence community is reportedly doing the same. This is good. These institutions appear to have learnt from the Iraq war fiasco and the political abuse of intelligence agencies that occurred at that time. But on this question, the bitter lessons of Iraq appear to have been lost on Trump and the Murdoch empire that supports him.
China has much to answer for, including the ultimate origins of the virus. But if Trump’s claim in the Wuhan laboratory saga ultimately ends up being disproven, either by the Five Eyes or by US intelligence itself, then the irony is that the net political winner will be China. Remember the humiliation when no WMD were found in Iraq? Beijing would seek to exonerate itself as a result of egregious presidential overreach – once again aided and abetted by the Murdoch media. This is why the watchword of any sophisticated intelligence agency is caution in endorsing premature conclusions until all the facts are on the table.
Cardinal George Pell speaking to the media at the in Rome in 2016 after giving evidence via video-link to Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty ImagesCLICK ABOVE to DONATE
Cardinal George Pell was aware of children being sexually abused within the Archdiocese of Ballarat, Australia’s child abuse royal commission found, and it was “implausible” that other senior church figures did not tell Pell abuse was occurring.
While the commission delivered its final report to parliament in December 2017 following a comprehensive five year inquiry into abuse in institutions throughout Australia, survivors and advocates have been forced to wait for the findings relating to Pell because of legal action against him. There was concern the findings would prejudice a jury, so they were withheld. Pell was acquitted in April of child sexual abuse charges and released from jail, clearing the way for the report to be made public.
The commission heard allegations in 2015 that when Pell was a priest in Ballarat, he tried to bribe a child sexual abuse victim, David Ridsdale, to keep quiet about his molestation at the hands of his uncle and then priest, Gerald Francis Ridsdale.
“George then began to talk about my growing family and my need to take care of their needs,” David Ridsdale told the royal commission. “He mentioned how I would soon have to buy a car or house for my family.” Pell repeatedly said he was not aware that Gerald Ridsdale was abusing children at the time.
But the royal commission found: “We are satisfied that in 1973 Father Pell turned his mind to the prudence of Ridsdale taking boys on overnight camps”.
“The most likely reason for this, as Cardinal Pell acknowledged, was the possibility that if priests were one-on-one with a child then they could sexually abuse a child or at least provoke gossip about such a prospect. By this time, child sexual abuse was on his radar, in relation to not only Monsignor Day but also Ridsdale. We are also satisfied that by 1973 Cardinal Pell was not only conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy but that he also had considered measures of avoiding situations which might provoke gossip about it.”
We do not accept that Bishop Pell was deceived, intentionally or otherwise Royal commission finding
The commission said, however, it was not satisfied that Pell sought to obtain David Ridsdale’s silence. “It is more likely that Mr Ridsdale misinterpreted an offer by Bishop Pell to assist as something more sinister,” the commission found. “There is no compelling reason for the then bishop to make such a statement. Knowledge about Ridsdale’s offending was widespread in the community, as we have set out earlier in this report. Finally, Mr Ridsdale’s interpretation of the discussion is not consistent with him seeking a private process.”
Gerald Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against children as young as four between the 1960s and 1980s, including while working as a school chaplain at St Alipius boys’ school in Ballarat. He is now in prison.
Pell, who supported Ridsdale during his first court appearance for child sex offences in 1993, has always denied knowing of any child abuse occurring in Ballarat while he worked there as a priest and with a clerical group called the College of Consultors during the 1970s and 1980s. Pell also spent time living with Gerald Ridsdale in 1973, but has said he had no idea he was a paedophile.
The commission has previously heard Pell was involved in a College of Consultors decision to move Ridsdale from the Mortlake parish in Ballarat to Sydney in 1982. Evidence from the hearings has revealed priests and clergy staff accused of abusing children within the archdiocese of Melbourne were sometimes “dealt with” by the church by transferring them to other parishes. Pell said senior figures around him deceived him about the extent of abuse within the Catholic church.
But the commission found: “We are satisfied that Cardinal Pell’s evidence as to the reasons that the CEO deceived him was implausible. We do not accept that Bishop Pell was deceived, intentionally or otherwise”.
Pell had told the commission that investigating paedophile priest Peter Searson was not his responsibility because he believed the Catholic Education Office and the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, were handling allegations that Searson was abusing children. Pell gave evidence that he was handed a list of incidents and grievances about Searson in 1989, which included reports Searson had abused animals in front of children and was using children’s toilets. But Pell said this was not enough information for him to act.
The commission found “these matters, in combination with the prior allegation of sexual misconduct, ought to have indicated to Bishop Pell that Father Searson needed to be stood down”.
“It was incumbent on Bishop Pell, as an auxiliary bishop with responsibilities for the welfare of the children in the Catholic community of his region, to take such action as he could to advocate that Father Searson be removed or suspended or, at least, that a thorough investigation be undertaken of the allegations,” the previously redacted findings said.
“It was the same responsibility that attached to other auxiliary bishops and the vicar general when they received complaints. On the basis of what was known to Bishop Pell in 1989, we found that it ought to have been obvious to him at the time. We found that he should have advised the archbishop to remove Father Searson and he did not do so.”
Many of the findings around Pell and Searson were already public. The commission previously found Pell had the capacity and opportunity to urge the Archbishop to take action against Searson in order to protect the children of the parish and the Catholic community of his region.
Pell’s evidence was that he could not recall recommending a particular course of action to the then Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. During the comission’s hearings Pell conceded that, in retrospect, he might have been ‘a bit more pushy’ with all of the parties involved.
“We do not accept any qualification that this conclusion is only appreciable in retrospect,” the commission found.
Pell told the commission during a separate appearance in 2014 that he originally took comments about the extent of abuse within the church from victims’ rights groups “with a grain of salt”. Facing questions via videolink in Rome about the Melbourne Response, a scheme he introduced to the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne in 1996 when he was Archbishop of Melbourne to investigate sexual abuse claims. He introduced the scheme in 1996 because dozens of sexual abuse complaints had come to the attention of the church, putting it under great pressure, he said.
Pedophile protector; George Pell – Roman Catholic church cardinal.
To date, not one person has been convicted in Australia for the crime of concealment of child sexual abuse. NSW and Victoria have a concealment offence specifically related to child abuse, and in 2019 Tasmania and ACT embedded a general duty in criminal law to report child sexual abuse offences.
The pro-Trump preacher explained in a sermon Monday that it’s “scientifically impossible to be an atheist.”
… the word literally means “no God.” No God. That’s what it means. So you can’t go changing the definition now, or you could create a new word. If you want to come up with a new word to say “I don’t believe there’s a God,” then come up with a new word. But if you want to use the word “atheist,” scientifically, there’s no atheists because you can’t definitively say there is no God, and I’ll prove it to you.
Jesus Christ, it’s this old argument again… It’s the idea that atheists claim to have all the knowledge EVER, which they can’t, therefore a virgin gave birth to someone who later rose from the dead. Notice that Morris never quotes any prominent atheist who agrees with that definition. He’s not playing video clips. That’s because he’s a liar.
Religious con man Robert Morris
Atheists, more than religious people, I would argue, are perfectly willing to admit there’s plenty we don’t know. As opposed to Christians like Morris who opened up one book and claim to have all the answers. If someone wants to pretend God exists, then the burden of proof is on him.
There are other standard rebuttals here, but let’s go with the simplest one: He’s lying about the definition of atheist. He’s lying because he’s a pastor and he knows his followers will never call him out on it. He’s creating a straw man in order to knock it down.
No one has ever “changed” the definition. No one needs to change the definition. Morris just needs to learn how to read. Christian apologists love to pretend “atheist” means someone who declares with absolute certainty that God doesn’t exist. The reality is that it means someone who believes God doesn’t exist. There’s a difference. (Agnosticism is something else entirely.)
You can be an a-unicornist, too. It doesn’t mean you’ve scientifically proven unicorns are fictional; it means there’s no convincing evidence to the contrary, so you don’t buy into the myth.
It’s ironic that a guy who stretches the definition of Christianity has the audacity to tell atheists they don’t understand their own label.
An image from Godless magazine in 1934 depicting the Pope as a spider
Marx said religion was the opium of the people – and in the Soviet Union, atheism became government policy, enforced by the state and encouraged by anti-religious posters and magazines. These have been collected in Roland Elliott Brown’s new book from Fuel called Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda
Godless at the Machine magazine, 1923 Godless at the Machine was one of two anti-religious propaganda magazines distributed by the Soviet state, which included satirical images and articles taking aim at the faithful. This image, called Red Flood, depicts the holy family assailed by the might of the state
Godless at the Machine magazine, 1924
Titled The Imperishable Ones, this image shows God saying: ‘You’ve let me down, my minions. I’m ashamed to be seen on Earth now!’ to a group of skeletons dressed in religious garb
Undated poster
The words on this anti-religious propaganda poster, which would have been posted on walls around the USSR, read: ‘A prison for heart and mind’
Poster, 1975
The most prominent cosmonaut atheist was Gherman Titov, whose flight in August 1961 followed Yuri Gagarin’s that April. In 1962, he told an audience at the Seattle world’s fair that he had seen no gods or angels in space, and that he believed in mankind’s strength and reason. This poster – titled There Is No God! –commemorates him
Cover of the poster collection In True Light, 1962
The cover of this collection of anti-religious posters shown in a Leningrad exhibition includes a fighting pencil and the light beam of truth exposing a babushka holding a bottle of holy water, a praying man with the Jehovah’s Witness magazine The Watchtower, a vodka-sipping priest, a man on his knees with a bottle of ‘holy tincture’ and a bottle of cognac
Godless magazine, 1934
Titled The True Face of the Catholic Church, this depicts a skeletal spider-pope overseeing the burning of books by Marx, Lenin and Darwin
Poster, 1930
This image depicts a priest climbing on a slumbering drunk in order to saw an electricity pylon with a crucifix. The slogan says: ‘Everybody understands that where work is being done – the priest and the drunk are both doing harm’
Poster, 1977
In this poster, the radio is broadcasting Ave, Maria, Slander of the USSR, Anti-Sovietism and Our Father – conflating religion with political attack. The caption reads: ‘Another gullible sectarian is glad to hear prayers from “over there”. They are, as a rule, stained with outright anti-Sovietism!’
Poster, 1981
The cover of a 1981 poster collection called Light Against Darkness shows a boy trying to wrest himself away from a babushka pulling him to a shadowy church
Kingdom of Jehovah Poster from the collection In True Light, 1962
The Soviets regarded Jehovah’s Witnesses as subversive agents. Newspaper Izvestia described them as an ‘international political organisation … deployed against communism … the sect of the Jehovists … carries out espionage activities on the directives of the USA.’ This poster depicts a witness with spying equipment in his eyes and ears, and whose caption reads: ‘Don’t believe in his meekness, he doesn’t care about the soul. Such a witness of Jehovah is a traitor to the motherland, a spy!’
Poster from the collection In True Light, 1962
Titled In ‘Holy’ Blinkers, this poster depicts two crafty figures leading an innocent third, using their Bible to prevent him looking right or left. As Izvestia put it: ‘The Soviet people are, with all determination, exposing the anti-people nature of the sectarians, no matter what god they may hide behind. For reasons of their own, sectarian preachers and their acolytes, cowering in remote and fetid holes, morally and physically deform people, tear them away from working and social life, and corrupt the youth’
Godless magazine, 1940
This image contrasts ‘God’s slaves’ on their knees and in the dark with the Soviet ‘masters of life’
Cultural Goods Poster, 1984
This poster depicts Jesus as a capitalist hawking his wares. The caption reads, ‘Under the shop window this weasel has set himself up nicely. There’s a foolish fashion that means they’ll snap his junk right up’
Women’s Emancipation Poster, 1977
It wasn’t only Christianity the Soviets attacked. This poster takes aim at Islam, depicting a Muslim man and his donkey riding on the back of a downtrodden woman. The caption reads: ‘The essence of his character is clear: it operates on two levels. Up above, he’s showing off his paper, down below, he’s true to Muhammad’
Planetarium Poster, undated
Here, the creepy man’s shadow becomes a cross with ‘religion’ written across it. In his pocket is a Bible. The caption reads: ‘Step across the ominous shadow and join the crowd in the joyful bustle of the day!’
Donald Trump’s political ally Alex Jones described his cannibal fetish in an online video with gruesome detail.
Stalking, killing, skinning, gutting, chopping up and eating his neighbors, to feed himself and his children.
Alex Jones; a serial conspiracy nut, makes loud emphasis on his “drinking blood” and “eating ass” as apparently his personal choice beverage and flesh portions.
Evoking his blood-craving Christian god; cannibal Jone’s pledged, “I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I do I’m going to get my hands around your throat.”
Jones is a like-minded political ally of Televangelist sycophant Donald Trump.
Trump praised Jones, massaging Jones’s ego by saying “Your reputation is amazing”
VIDEO BELOW:-
Donald Trump in 2015: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
JONES: I’ll admit it. I will eat my neighbors, I’m not letting my kids die. I’m just bein’ honest. My superpower is bein’ honest.
‘Kay.
JONES: I’m literally looking at my neighbors now and going: I’m ready to hang them up and gut them and skin them and chop them up, you know what? I’m ready. My daughters aren’t starving to death, I’ll eat my neighbors.
He will eat his neighbors to keep his daughters from starving to death. How … how exactly does he feed his daughters?
JONES: See? My superpower is bein’ honest. I’ll eat your ass. I will!
Alex Jones is being superpower honest about eating your ass.
JONES: I’m — combat model, optimal self-sufficiency, probably the leader. The point is have you thought about that yet …
Have we thought about Alex Jones eating our ass? Hard no.
JONES: … because I’m somebody that thought I could fix this and I’m starting to think about having to eat my neighbors. You think I like sizing up my neighbor, hell I’m gonna haul him up by a chain and chop his ass up?
It’s going to hurt Alex Jones to eat your ass more than it hurts you.
JONES: I’ll do it! My children aren’t going hungry! I will eat your ass!
These! Seem! Like! Unrelated! Thoughts!
JONES: And that’s why I want the globalists to know, I will eat your ass first.
Legs up, (((globalists)))! (When far-Right conspiracy theorists with pretty obvious mental issues mention “globalists,” they mean Jews.)
JONES: You’re not – we’re gonna dig you out of those bunkers, we’re gonna dig you out of those holes, you make us eat up – let me tell you something right now: I swear to god if it’s the last thing I do I’m gonna get my hands around your throat and you know that’s why you’re beggin’ for peace right now. You should’ve thought about that when you turned out Christ a long time ago. You wanna meet with me you satanist!? Meet with me!?
Oh boy. Wow. This has to do with Christ, somehow? Is that because of the (((globalists)))? Yes. Alex Jones is going to … strangle (((globalists))). For Jesus. Huh.
JONES: How about you get on your knees to Christ, you’d meet with my boss right now! But you can’t do it. You think you can meet with some low-level nobody? I’m nobody! You think Christ would eat somebody? He would never eat do that? He would never do that. I will.
Christ would not eat your ass. But Alex Jones would. Christ is the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of EAT YOUR ASS. Alex Jones is the ass-eat prince.
JONES: I’m not gonna watch my daughters starve to death!
And if asses must get eated to prevent that from happening, get Alex Jones a bib!
Washington D.C.—Today, the religious equality watchdog organization American Atheists condemned Congress’s failure to include necessary constitutional protections in the $484 billion aid bill passed by the House of Representatives. As a result, the additional $310 billion injected into the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program can unconstitutionally fund religious worship.
“Congress must include these First Amendment protections in any future stimulus bills, particularly after the Small Business Administration weakened its own regulations, allowing the original $350 billion in stimulus money to fund religious worship,” said Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists.
Longstanding SBA regulations had prevented “businesses principally engaged in teaching, instructing, counselling or indoctrinating religion or religious beliefs, whether in a religious or secular setting” from receiving business or economic disaster loans. However, with its guidance on the Paycheck Protection Program from the CARES Act, SBA suddenly indicated in early April that it would “decline to enforce these subsections.”
“If the SBA won’t do its job and protect the Constitution, Congress must finally step in,” said Nick Fish, President of American Atheists. “Congress is rushing to replenish Paycheck Protection Program funds after countless businesses were unable to access these loans to preserve jobs. What we don’t know is how many well-heeled mega churches were able to secure government money to pay their pastors’ salary, while small businesses were left out in the cold.”
“Thousands and thousands of our supporters have warned Congress that these stimulus bills fail to adequately protect the constitutional separation of religion and government,” said Gill. “Accountability, transparency, and adherence to the Constitution are critical, especially in the face of a crisis.”
CLICK ABOVE to DONATESoheil Arabi. Photo: Nano GoleSorkh
If lockdown has deepened our empathy with the predicament of inmates in our jails, it has also released innovative means of protest on behalf of political prisoners locked up in brutal conditions. On 14th April, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain organised a self-declared first: a three-hour online protest, live-streamed on Facebook, mixing music, poetry and an array of international speakers, in support of Soheil Arabi.
Arabi is an atheist, activist and blogger. He’s in an Iranian prison, in bad shape both emotionally and physically. His crime? Blasphemy: writing insulting Facebook posts about the prophet Muhammad, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and other Iranian officials. Arabi was arrested in December 2013 and sentenced to death for blasphemy. In July 2015, upon appeal, his death sentence was reduced to seven and a half years in prison and two years of religious studies to cure him of his atheism. In addition to physical problems caused by various hunger strikes, Arabi has been tortured, resulting in blunt trauma to his testicles and a broken nose, amongst other injuries.
Refusing to be silenced, he was later sentenced to an additional three years in prison, exile and a fine on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “insulting the sacred and the supreme leader” because of his open letters highlighting inhumane prison conditions of political prisoners in Iran. As if to rub the mullahs’ noses in it, he signs letters as Soheil Arabi, Atheist.
Iran, Pakistan and Yemen are the three worst countries in regard to the implementation of blasphemy law, often used to harass religious and ethnic minorities. (See my interview with Saif ul-Malook, the lawyer who represented Asia Bibi. A Christian woman, Bibi spent nine years in prison on confected charges of blasphemy, many of those on death row, before the sentence was commuted to life.) According to The Freedom of Thought report 2019, blasphemy laws exist in 69 countries and is punishable by death in six.
We don’t know the number of prisoners sentenced to death for blasphemy in Iran. Figures are hard to come by. A 2018 Amnesty report put the number of individuals executed at over 253, while 18 were convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God) and 14 of “spreading corruption on earth”, vague terms for blasphemy much in vogue in Iran. Any criticism of the state can be deemed a religious offence and has proven a handy mechanism for controlling dissent.
Arabi resumed his hunger strike on April 4 in protest at the Iranian regime’s denial of medical care, inhuman prison conditions and the denial of leave for prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. In a bid to stop the spread of the virus, more than 85,000 prisoners were released on temporary leave, including the more well-known political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian citizen imprisoned for allegedly “plotting to topple the Iranian government”. In his letter to the Greater Tehran Penitentiary announcing his hunger strike, Arabi asks, “And I have been imprisoned for telling the truth. Those who had embezzled money were granted prison leave and are now at large. Armed robbers are now at large. What is the danger of a journalist?”
Atheism is a red rag to religion in a way that religion rarely is to atheism – unless we are talking about authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union. It’s a point that is often eclipsed in liberal democracies where freedom of belief often trumps the freedom not to believe. Of course, in countries like Iran, neither freedom exists.
Wealthy conservative groups create smoke-and-mirrors scheme to foster anti-lockdown protests
CLICK ABOVE to DONATEAnti-distancing protesters at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, last week.
Last week, national news outlets carried coverage of a small but disruptive protest at the Michigan state Capitol of stay-at-home orders instituted by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The protesters called it “Operation Gridlock,” shutting down traffic for miles in the heart of Lansing by clogging the city’s main arteries with a string of parked cars. The crowd, including armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia, eschewed social distancing orders, brandished a smattering of Confederate flags, and temporarily blocked the entrance to the Capitol.
But despite all the hype and attention, those protesters represented a minuscule minority of the population. New polling this week showed that more than 81% of Michigan residents support continuing social distancing measures for at least one to two months, with fully 58% saying they support practicing social distancing “as long as is required.”
The polling reinforces two investigative pieces in TheNew York Times and TheWashington Postthat found there was nothing even remotely organic about the anti-distancing protests popping up in states mostly run by Democratic governors like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, California, and Virginia, though some efforts have also targeted Republican-led states like Ohio, Missouri, and Texas. The Times calls the demonstrations the product of an “informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House,” that are driving turnout at the protests, filing suits against the orders, and funding polling designed to kneecap the rationale for the stay-at-home orders.
One state that’s seen a nexus of that effort is Wisconsin, where a small cadre of fewer than 100 protesters converged on the state Capitol and the Republican-led legislature sued state health officials over “Safer at Home” that were recently extended through most of May.
The well-funded conservative groups helping to fan the flames of discontent include some Obama-era creations like Freedom Works and the Tea Party Patriots. But, as the Times writes, “also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy.”
The protest in Michigan, in fact, had strong ties to the Trump administration. It was mainly organized by the Michigan Conservative coalition, which also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, according to The Guardian. Additionally, it was promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group with strong ties to Trump-appointed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
It’s little wonder that Trump shot of a series of tweets last week stoking insurrections by encouraging the protesters to “LIBERATE” themselves. Sowing division in the country is an age-old Trump strategy at this point, and the protests give his efforts to reopen the economy the appearance of aligning with popular sentiment.
But similar to the Michigan poll, national polling has reflected that by and large, risk-averse Americans are far more worried about opening too fast than too slow. In fact, a fringe element of just 14% of the public supports the protesters over the efforts of their governors.
New polling:@MorningConsult: 76% say social distancing should continue; 14% say it should stop@Reuters: 72% say people should stay home until health officials say it's safe@NavigatorSurvey: 62% worried social distancing will end too soon; 26% worried it will go on too long
Not to mention the fact that these protests could end up in dangerous standoffs between the activists and local law enforcement officials. If violence does break out, that is 100% the product of Trump and his conservative allies fomenting discontent.
“Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February,” the researchers wrote in the working paper.
The two hosts diverged greatly on the issue in February. While Hannity expressed optimism that “zero people in the United States have died from the coronavirus,” Carlson warned viewers that the virus could kill 1 million people across the country.
The researchers commissioned a poll of more than 1,000 Fox News viewers, which found that Carlson’s viewers were more likely to change their behavior earlier than Hannity’s viewers.
“We find that Hannity’s viewers on average changed their behavior in response to the coronavirus five days later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior three days earlier than other Fox News viewers,” the paper said.
The researchers then compared the death rate in counties that favored either host, finding “approximately 30% more COVID-19 cases” in areas that preferred Hannity than those that watched Carlson.
“Already by mid-March, we see a statistically significant difference — that there are greater case loads in places that favor Hannity over Tucker,” researcher David Yanagizawa-Drott told The Chicago Tribune. “Then weeks later, we see a similar trajectory increase for deaths.”
After Hannity’s “shift in tone,” however, “the diverging trajectories . . . began to revert,” the study said.
The researchers argued that their findings were consistent with “misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data.”
The attempts by certain Fox News opinion hosts to downplay the virus early in the outbreak came in stark contrast to steps the network’s executives and owners took to protect themselves against the virus.
“The selective cherry-picked clips of Sean Hannity’s coverage used in this study are not only reckless and irresponsible, but down right factually wrong,” a spokesperson for Fox News said in a statement. “As this timeline proves, Hannity has covered Covid-19 since the early days of the story. The ‘study’ almost completely ignores his coverage and repeated, specific warnings and concerns from January 27-February 26 including an early interview with Dr. Fauci in January. This is a reckless disregard for the truth.”
Hannity likewise defended his coverage of the virus in an interview with Newsweek earlier this month, arguing that his January interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, showed that his viewers were getting accurate information.
“Go to my web site, and you’ll see irrefutable evidence that I have taken this seriously way before most in the media did. I warned in January that it was dangerous because it was highly contagious, but some people were asymptomatic, so it would spread quickly,” he said, though he also argued months later that the flu was “much more dangerous” than the new coronavirus and compared the associated death rate to the murder rate in Chicago.
Hannity’s comments came in response to a letter from 74 journalism professors to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch and CEO Lachlan Murdoch calling on the network to stop spreading “misinformation” about the virus.
“The misinformation that reaches the Fox News audience is a danger to public health. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that your misreporting endangers your own viewers — and not only them, for in a pandemic, individual behavior affects significant numbers of other people as well,” the letter said. “. . . Inexcusably, Fox News has violated elementary canons of journalism. In so doing, it has contributed to the spread of a grave pandemic. Urgently, therefore, in the name of both good journalism and public health, we call upon you to help protect the lives of all Americans — including your elderly viewers — by ensuring that the information you deliver is based on scientific facts.”
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Democratic leaders don’t typically borrow from the playbook of GOP politics, but in light of last weekend’s “engineered protests,” I think they should make an exception.
The Postreported Sunday far-right militias, led by three brothers, have used Facebook to organize “anti-quarantine protests” at state capitols around the country. Tens of thousands have joined their Facebook group, giving the impression that a “populist libertarianism” sentiment is emerging more than opinion surveys would suggest.
This activity is being amplified by the president, who appeared last week on Twitter to encourage armed resistance to state-based initiatives aimed at containing the novel coronavirus pandemic with orders to stay home. The “protests” were in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and others swing states Donald Trump needs to win reelection.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
Meanwhile, the Pew Center, which is the gold standard for measuring public opinion, released a new survey in which 66 percent of Americans fear their state governments will lift restrictions “too quickly.” Sixty-five percent said “Trump’s initial response” to the COVID-19 pandemic was “too slow.” Moreover, 73 percent said the worst is yet to come. (Implicit is the widespread doubt of Washington’s ability to face the challenge.)
Someone here represents America’s majority view, and it’s not the people ginning up outrage on social media and make-believing revolution for the benefit of television cameras on the steps of state capitol buildings. Indeed, the majority view isn’t getting the attention it deserves, because the majority is doing what it believes must be done in times of severe crisis: working together, as a nation, to combat a collective peril.
The majority view, in other words, is silent. That’s why I think Democratic leaders should invoke Richard Nixon. In 1969, he coined the term “silent majority” to claim a mandate from “middle Americans” who did not demonstrate in huge numbers against his prosecution of the Vietnam War but instead supported his wartime policies.
To be sure, “silent majority” is what fascists have said for decades when they need to contravene a rapidly changing view on, say, an overseas war going south. “Silent majority” is what a literal minority invokes to smash a literal majority in the face. Even so, Nixon’s words should resonate right now when 41,000 Americans are dead from COVID-19. “If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this nation has no future as a free society,” Nixon said. Individuals can’t be truly free. In the collective, however, can be found the meaning of freedom.
In this sense, the protesters have it backwards. They believe (or pretend to believe; more on that in a moment) that government coercion is the opposite of individual freedom. Stay-at-home orders infringe their liberty. If they want to risk getting sick—or dying—that’s their right. No government has the authority to tell them otherwise.
This thinking ignores the fact that one person’s right to liberty ends with another person’s right to security, and that all governments are charged with balancing all of those rights for everyone’s sake. (Whether a government is striking the right balance is usually reflected by the majority view.) For this reason, coercion is not the opposite of freedom during a pandemic. Coercion, at least for now, is in the service of freedom. Only when everyone is acting in everyone else’s interest can this crisis be overcome.
They say they stand for individual liberty. What they really stand for is disloyalty, disunion and death.
But let’s not give these people too much credit, shall we? As the Post reported, “protest” organizers were not acting in good faith. They were pretending to believe what they say they believe. Organizers knew unwitting participants (some of whom no doubt were acting in good faith) would get sick, or die, before spreading the disease. Death, even their own, is an acceptable consequence of meeting their political goals.
These “protest” organizers call themselves “patriots.” Fair enough. Equally fair, however, is calling them insurgents, or even domestic terrorists, willing to commit suicide by way of infecting themselves and others to destabilize public trust as well as the political union of these United States. They say they stand for liberty. They really stand for disloyalty, disunion and death. Americans invoking patriotism but disobeying stay-at-home orders do so with the moral justification of a suicide bomber.
If “protesters” risked harm to themselves only, it might be appropriate to characterize them as a kind of “death cult.” (It might be funny, in a grim way, to joke about “culling the herd.”) But these people do not only put themselves as risk. The World Health Organization warned today the pandemic has yet to peak. “Protesters,” therefore, threaten us all. As Nixon said: “If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this nation has no future as a free society.”
You are the real “silent majority.”
Don’t forget it.
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During a sermon at Louisiana’s Life Tabernacle Church this Sunday, Pastor Tony Spell screamed into this microphone calling on his parishioners to “repent,” then climbed up onto the church pulpit and spun around in circles.
“Everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, [indiscernible] the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost!” Spell declared while standing atop the pulpit. A video of the sermon was posted to the Facebook page for Central City News.
Spell has made headlines for refusing to shutter his Baton Rouge-based Life Tabernacle Church in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, saying that he believes truly devoted Christians won’t mind dying from COVID-19.
In a video posted to his YouTube channel last week, Spell launched the #PastorSpellStimulusChallenge, where he called on Christians to donate their coronavirus relief checks to various church initiatives.
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A number of American religious leaders have endangered their flock by holding services – and by claiming the virus can be defeated by faith in God
Rodney Howard-Browne repeatedly refused to call off services despite orders on social distancing. On Monday, he was arrested. Photograph: Rodney Howard-Browne/Facebook
Last Sunday in Tampa, Florida, the Pentecostal pastor and conspiracy theorist Rodney Howard-Browne conducted two services for full houses at his River church.
The closely packed audience spent hours together taking in hymns and Howard-Browne’s extended sermon, even as the state implemented quarantine for New Yorkers, and projections estimated that Florida’s coronavirus death toll would rise into the thousands.
But Howard-Browne is just one of the most prominent religious leaders on the Christian right who are endangering their flocks and the rest of America by claiming the virus is a hoax, or that it can only be defeated by supernatural means, rather than solid healthcare policy.
In the same sermon, he claimed the public health response to the virus was part of a plot involving the Rockefeller Foundation and World Health Organization, whose goals were forced vaccinations and mass murder.
Howard-Browne has repeatedly refused to call off services in the interests of social distancing. In fact, in recent weeks he has insisted that his congregants embrace and shake hands, exhorting them that they were “revivalists, not pansies”.
On Monday, he was finally arrested for violating Florida’s rules on social distancing.
There are other American religious leaders and preachers who are in equally deep denial about the potentially deadly virus which will almost certainly infect a significant proportion of evangelicals, along with all other Americans.
Roy Moore, a pastor, former Alabama supreme court judge and failed Trump-backed Alabama Senate candidate who lost amid allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls, told Facebook followers he would write a letter to his fellow pastors on what he called their “duty to continue church assemblies, even in the midst of these trying times”.
Moore added: “Our faith requires it, our duty demands it, and no law or government can prohibit it.”
Kenneth Copeland, a Texas-based “prosperity gospel” preacher who once defended his ownership of three private jets on the grounds that commercial flights would require him to “get in a long tube with a bunch of demons”, told viewers of his Victory Channel in early March that coronavirus was a “weak” strain of the flu, and that fearing the pandemic was a sin.
“Fear is a spiritual force. Fear is not OK. It is sin. It is a magnet for sickness and disease … You are giving the devil a pathway to your body,” Copeland said.
He also criticized pastors who had suspended in-person services and moved to online streaming.
Self-described prophet Lance Walnau wrote in a blogpost that “this virus will touch just a fraction of the population”, adding that it was less dangerous than seasonal flu.
He turned to conspiracy theory for an explanation of the public health response and associated media coverage. “The left wants the economy distressed because crisis improves their chances of taking office,” Walnau wrote.
He then counseled readers to ignore the information being published by media outlets.
“There is a spirit on media that will exaggerate this virus so badly that you will need to insulate your head in order to keep yourself free from paranoia,” Walnau wrote.
In the rightwing Catholic-aligned religious journal First Things, meanwhile, editor RR Reno castigated the widespread closure of Catholic churches and the suspension of public masses in Rome.
Reno wrote: “It is imperative that Christian leaders not succumb to the contagious panic, which is a weapon of the enemy to enslave us to our fears.”
From Montana, Chuck Baldwin – a pastor, former politician and purveyor of conspiracy theories about “Zionist influence” in the media – left the question of whether the virus was a hoax open in an online sermon.
But he added: “If it’s not a hoax, the virus is being used as a completely exaggerated, super-hyped, super-inflated psychological ops campaign against the American people – a coordinated full-court press of intimidation and fear-mongering by government, the mass media and the CDC.”
That message was dutifully amplified by the Idaho state representative Heather Scott on her Facebook page.
Others on the Christian right acknowledge the reality of the virus, but proffer supernatural causes or remedies.
In a blogpost last week, Ralph Drollinger, who has led Bible study for Trump cabinet members, suggested the virus was an instrument of divine judgment, and appeared to blame LGBTQ people. Drollinger later claimed that this was a misinterpretation.
Many of these preachers believe Christians shouldn’t be controlled by a ‘spirit of fear’ André Gagne
Another would-be prophet, Jeremiah Johnson, claimed last week to have had a prophetic dream in which God had spoken to him.
In a baseball stadium where Trump, at bat, outwitted a demonic pitcher, Johnson said God had told him: “The enemy has intended to strike out Donald Trump at a very critical hour in history. But behold, supernatural help is on the way, for I will slow down the advancement of the enemy and allow him to knock this out of the park.”
André Gagne, an associate professor of theological studies at Concordia University, and a researcher of the Christian right, recently published on the phenomenon of coronavirus denialism among evangelicals. Asked why evangelical leaders are committed to taking such a risk in denying the reality of the infection, or even assisting its spread, Gagne said it was rooted in their theology.
“Many of these preachers believe Christians shouldn’t be controlled by a ‘spirit of fear’,” Gagne said. “They often quote biblical texts which promise God’s healing and protection to those who have faith. They are confident that God is in control; that this is part of his overall plan before a great end-times spiritual revival.”
He said: “There are those who also understand this in terms of ‘spiritual warfare’, and that Jesus gave Christians authority over every demon and sickness. And if a Christian dies, no worries: he or she will ‘be with the Lord’.”
Meanwhile, even where they disagree about the virus, religious leaders have found common ground on one subject: the importance of fundraising.
While Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain has now recommended social distancing to her audience, she and Kenneth Copeland both encouraged their listeners to keep the donations rolling into their churches.
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A retired Harvard psychiatry professor described President Donald Trump as “essentially a predator” and a “successful sociopath.”
Lance M. Dodes, MD, a former assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is yet another mental health expert to call into question the president’s state of mind
“His focus on his personal benefit at any cost is why he’s a successful sociopath,” Dodes told Salon, adding that he can “see Donald for who he really is.”
“It’s very hard to get this across to the public, because every time people talk about him, they start out with the unspoken unconscious assumption that he’s basically like the rest of us,” Dodes told Salon.
“But in order to explain and predict Trump’s behavior, you have to begin with awareness that he is essentially a predator.
“Once you keep in mind that Trump lacks a conscience and lacks empathy, he becomes very easy to follow. Unlike normal people, who are complex, he’s basically running on a very simple and very disordered program.”Related Stories
Last week, John M. Talmadge, MD, a physician and clinical professor of psychiatry at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center, wrote on Twitter that Trump’s “mental impairment means he cannot think strategically or in abstract terms.”
“Trump does not have a vision or a plan, because he can think only in concrete, elementary, childlike, one dimensional terms,” Talmadge, who was commenting in a personal capacity, wrote.
“He does not process an abstract idea like American forces stabilizing a multilateral conflict with geopolitical implications.
“This Trumpian brain failure is hard for normal people to understand because for normal people, abstract thought is natural, baked in, largely unnoticed. Normal people see the consequences, assess risk, make rational decisions most of the time.”
It followed a tweet by Trump in which the president claimed he would “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)” if Turkey did anything that “I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.”
“Am I the only psychologist who finds this claim and this threat truly alarming? Wouldn’t these normally trigger a mental health hold? Right and Left must set aside politics and agree that there is a serious problem here,” Gilbert wrote on Twitter.
Lee wrote in a piece for The Conversation that Trump displayed “psychological symptoms reflective of emotional compulsion, impulsivity, poor concentration, narcissism and recklessness.”
In a recent article for The Atlantic, George Conway, an attorney and former Republican who is married to senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, detailed at length the evidence that Trump is mentally unfit to hold his office.
“Simply put, Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires,” Conway wrote.
“The question is whether he can possibly act as a public fiduciary for the nation’s highest public trust… Given that Trump displays the extreme behavioral characteristics of a pathological narcissist, a sociopath, or a malignant narcissist—take your pick—it’s clear that he can’t.”Related Stories
As the impeachment process against Trump rolled on, a letter to Congress signed by 250 medical professionals led by Bandy Lee warned lawmakers to take into consideration the president’s mental state.
The letter stated that Trump “has the pattern of fragile sense of self and is prone to blame and attack others when threatened” and has “shown himself willing to encourage violence against his perceived enemies.”
“The unfolding of an impeachment inquiry raises the specter of President Trump feeling threatened in ways he never has before,” the letter said.
“This sense of threat is likely to lead to an exacerbation of his attacks on perceived enemies and to increased encouragement of violence against them. This encouragement may lead to violent actions by others, such as we have seen over the last couple of years but highly exacerbated.”
US President Donald Trump pauses while speaking during the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference and Exposition at the McCormick Place Convention Center October 28, 2019, in Chicago, Illinois. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
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Illustrated | Getty Images
The Age of Blasphemy 
