Today, I’m participating on a panel at the Affinity “Covid-19 and the Church” symposium. The aim of the symposium is to seek to learn lessons from the pandemic and the UK church response. Dave Brennan of Brephos wrote this article ahead of the symposium. As he isn’t able to attend on the day, I thought it might be helpful to respond to some of the things he raises.
First, like Dave, I’m grateful to Affinity for being willing to call the Symposium. I agree that pausing to look back and learn is important. I had been publicly calling for such a response for some time. What I would also add, is that like with the Public Inquiry, we need to be very careful about how such events are scoped. Dave in his article goes on to lambast the church. According to a friend of his,
- The pandemic was about God “highlighting our sinful attitudes” and the church failed to repent.
- The church was not ready and responded wrongly
- The church has not learned since.
According to Dave, our responses to the pandemic demonstrated that we submitted to idolatry and falsehood. Our idolatry included worship of the state and of the vaccine. Our falsehood included willingness to believe “the mainstream narrative.”
Now, here is the challenge. Inquiries and lessons’ learnt reviews are not criminal courts. They are not designed to hear, test and conclude on accusations. They are not good places to attempt to apportion blame. And if people go into them with that kind of mindset, then I don’t think anyone really benefits from it. Reading Dave’s article, it does seem somewhat as though he has already determined the verdict and the sentence!
Now, there is a place for charges and accusations to be brought. There’s a place for criminal courts. There is also, I believe a place for people to challenge the state and actions of the church and church leaders too. However, if people are to bring those challenges, I hope that there is also a place to respond, both to respond to the challenges and to bring our own.
Now, it is worth noting that there were churches and church leaders throughout the pandemic who took different positions, so it is difficult to make a blanket statement on what the church did. There were church leaders who were sceptical about the pandemic and about lockdowns, who saw physical in person gatherings as taking priority and so in some cases, this meant that they chose not to comply with Government guidance. Others disagreed but sought to challenge through the courts. Meanwhile, there were those who not only complied but felt that guidance did not go far enough.
However, it is fair to say, I think, that the majority of churches and church leaders fell into a kind of middle ground. There was some diversity among them but uniting them were the following themes.
- That we were in an unprecedented situation and so we had to respond carefully because we wanted to honour God and care for people, both within our congregations and our communities.
- That we had all kinds of questions about the guidance and regulations. However, our responsibility at the time was to comply to the best of our abilities.
- That we recognised that the steps we took through online and phone based gatherings were less than ideal but better than nothing for a season.
- That we longed and prayed for the day when we would be able to return to full in person gathering.
I would also gently suggest that throughout the pandemic, a number of us took time to carefully look at Scripture and to give the Biblical reasoning behind the decisions we made. For some of us, this meant that we argued in favour of things like sharing communion whilst gathered on Zoom. Others disagreed and made a case against this. You can go back and read the debates and discussions and decide which you find more convincing.
So, to argue that we simply went with the flow and got sucked into idolatry and falsehood is a big claim to make. I don’t think it gives enough recognition to the challenges that pastors and elders faced through the pandemic and the amount of Scripture and soul searching, the prayer etc.
I don’t think it gives enough attention to the time we did take to think through what it means to “love your neighbour”, a Biblical command. We may have got that wrong at times but to assume that we let others define this or that we were over concerned with what people might think about us is a rather uncharitable take on the motives of others.
Does this mean that we can refute all claims that we were idolatrous and listened to falsehood? Well no -and that was part of the Scripture and soul searching before and afterwards. I think pastors generally recognised the deceitfulness of the human heart. We are always at risk of idolatry. However, it is important to recognise exactly where that is for each of us and avoid blanket statements without evidence.
The basis of Dave’s claims seem to be a set of assumptions which are themselves I think worth challenge. I’m not going to say too much here about them as I don’t think these are new claims/assumptions and each of them was responded to in depth, including by me throughout the pandemic.
First, Dave claims that we were and are “overawed by the experts.” He even sees this in the decision of Affinity to make use of expertise from the Christian Medical Fellowship. It is worth noting two things here, first that CMF’s own track record historically has been to encourage medics to pay attention to God’s Word first. They are hardly the kind of organisation who would seek to overrule God’s Word with their “expertise.” Secondly, it seems wise to me that we pay attention to experts in their field when dealing with complex issues. I don’t expert the medics to be the experts on the ethics of each decision. I do expect them to be able to answer questions like “how serious was the virus?” “How necessary were the Non-Pharmaceutical-Interventions?” And “How effective were the vaccines?”
To be sure, we shouldn’t be overawed by “experts”. This is particularly important because at times, those identifying as experts on all sides of the debate were not necessarily specialists in the relevant fields. It is one thing to be a medic, it is another to be an epidemiologist. Even being an epidemiologist could include those concerned with virology and those concerned with mathematical modelling. I would argue that you need to listen to the right experts on the right matters. This of course presumes an acceptance of common grace and general revelation.
Second, Dave particularly insists that there was idolatry over vaccines. Now, it is worth noting two things here. First that idolatry is about both trust and fear. It is so often, the things we fear that become our idols. So, if people put too much trust in a vaccine, that is idolatry but equally we might argue that inflated levels of vaccine-phobia form a kind of idolatry too. In that sense, perhaps all of us were at risk of idolatry in that in different ways we feared the pandemic, we feared lockdowns, we feared vaccines, we feared variants.
He combines this with claims about listening to falsehoods about the vaccine. Apparently we were sold a lie about the effectiveness of the vaccines in reducing transmission. It is worth remembering a couple of things here.
First, that from the start we were given data about the probable effectiveness of the vaccines against three factors
- Reduction of transmission
- Reduction of serious infection leading to likely hospitalisation
- Reduction of morbidity.
In terms of each of these, right from the start it was clear that the vaccines were not and never claimed to be 100% effective, though they did demonstrate high rates of effectiveness. It was also clear that immunity would wane over time, hence the need for boosters and finally, we were aweare that new variants might be able to evade the vaccines to some extent reducing effectiveness.
Secondly, transmission, hospitalisation and morbidity were tracked throughout the pandemic. I took a personal interest in this and the reality is that on all of these measures, the vaccines proved effective. As expected, effectiveness against transmission waned with time and variants but this did give breathing space at key points. Furthermore, we saw a substantial reduction in hospitalisations and deaths proportionate to the number of cases subsequent to the role out of the vaccines.
So, it is simply not true that we believed a falsehood about the vaccines.
Thirdly, was debate silenced and did we participate in insanity? Dave seems to think that debate was silenced because of examples of robust language such as John Steven’s expression of frustration about the way that some people acted during the pandemic. Well, if the use of robust language amounts to silencing debate, then what should we make of Dave’s robust language in his own article?
The reality is that there was robust debate both within congregations and among the wider church at the time. I have no doubt that such robust debate will happen during today’s symposium and I hope that all voices will be listened to.
If you want to attend the symposium online, there’s still time to sign up at https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YJlQX74GSBK4vkF0NhiF-A#/registration
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