John Pavlovitz, a progressive Christian blogger whose critique of the recent Fascist (he doesn’t use that term, I don’t think) surge in the American political landscape aligns well with my own, has spoken out strongly in the past year about the pandemic and the poor response from his fellow Christians.

His blog is Stuff That Needs to be Said at johnpavlovitz.com, and the post today pretty much summarizes the problem with vaccine hesitancy/resistance as one of plain selfishness. Which thoroughly indicts Christians who buy into the whole fascist republican stance on all this for the hypocrites they are, professing as they do to follow a spiritual leader whose most powerful message was “Love one another as I have loved you.”

As a former mega-church youth minister who was fired for refusing to support racist policies, he is well-acquainted with the fundamentalist approach and has very thoroughly debunked all that. This post today clarifies much about how and why these pseudo-Christians think the vaccine is not something they need to do. He says, starkly:

Selfishness is America’s second deadly virus and it may be one we cannot overcome.

And he makes it clear that it’s pretty un-Christian at heart:

I wish there was a vaccine that could make these people give a damn about other human beings; that we could inoculate them against whatever toxic cocktail of ignorance, fear, arrogance, political tribalism, and bad religion that has rendered them resistant to the suffering of others.

I suppose this shouldn’t have been a surprise. I imagine their denials of the virus and their refusal to mask and their defiance of safeguards should have tipped me off, but still I did not expect this entrenched and strident refusal to help other people, especially the many who claim to follow a “love your neighbor” Jesus.

And the prognosis for the country is also quite stark:

Until love and mercy and kindness take hold in the hearts of these people, until they are burdened with the common good, that lack of empathy will be a sickness that will destroy us.

I hope that he’s not right. I hope that goodness and mercy will prevail. I hope at least that these people will eventually recognize that the cost/benefit ratio for taking the vaccine militates in favor of reasonable action instead of this self-absorbed, ignorant attitude that puts ones own comfort ahead of the life and health of a whole nation.