Response to Sermon claiming the SDA statements on vaccinations are iillegitimate
A dear SDA friend of mine sent me this link to a recent sermon.
This sermon made me so angry, I decided to respond with a
blog post. Note, I am not angry with my SDA
friend. But if our church leaders are
preaching garbage like this, what hope do we have.
I will try to be brief in my response. I think this guy is completely and totally
wrong and also engages in gross misleading of his audience. I would go so far as to say he should be
subject to church discipline because of lies and misinformation. Here is why.
In deciding whether to give SDAs a religious exemption for refusing to
take the Covid-19 vaccination, they are forced to follow a strict legal
definition. Both the US and Australia have
two faith based exemptions: religious,
and conscientious. These are different
although in some areas the lines are blurred.
For a belief to be worthy of a religious exemption, it
must meet two criteria: it must be a
clearly held and taught belief, and it must be consistently upheld or enforced
by the church. Vaccines do not qualify
because a position on vaccination is not a clearly taught belief of the church
and therefore the second criteria doesn’t enter into the picture. Vaccination is not like the Sabbath which is
a clearly held belief of our church, and is consistently upheld. Both Elizabeth and I have religious
exemptions for Sabbath as both of our fields normally require Sabbath
work. I have had this for decades. The church’[s stance that it cannot and will
not push for a religious liberty exemption is absolutely the right stance
legally. Basically, if the SDA church
tried this the courts would tell them what to do with themselves and rightly
so. This leaves conscientious objection
as the only avenue for SDA members affected and that is treated differently.
His assertion the church employees who made the original vaccines
statement and the affirmation do not have the authority to do so is blatantly
wrong. He bases this on the erroneous
belief that the public position papers make theological statements and
positions. He is right in that only the
GC in session can define official church beliefs. However, as we are a church, any document or
statement released by the church will have biblical and usually EGW
statements. To classify all of these as
theological and claim the church therefore has no authority is patently
ridiculous because it would mean that the church outside of a GC session, has
no authority to say anything on any subject.
That is just false logic. What
the church said in both statements is essentially, we will leave it up to
individuals but we feel vaccinations are good based on the science. We also do not believe vaccinations go
against any of our teachings. In other
words, the church issued an interpretation based on the official teachings of
the church. It absolutely has the
authority to do this. It does not have
the authority to define a church belief, but it absolutely does have the
authority to issue interpretations and guidelines based on the official beliefs
of the church. It has been doing so for
nearly 200 years and it is only because this clown doesn’t like what the church
put out that he is speaking out against this practice. It is impractical for the governing body of
the church to consult its membership every time it makes a statement. And I would bet you that if it did on this
issue, the majority of members would be pro vaccination.
His use of the US Supreme Court’s rejection of Biden’s
effort to mandate vaccination for big business is highly misleading. Yes SCOTUS (Supreme court of the US) did
reject this as they should have (and I am a supporter of Biden but this attempt
was wrong legally). What the preacher
fails to mention is SCOTUS did uphold Biden where federal funds are involved. Leaving out that detail is highly misleading
because as he points out. Our church receives federal dollars. Secondly, SCOTUS allowed for private
businesses to mandate vaccines. Thus,
these SDAs who are losing their jobs he kept moaning about are mostly doing so
because their private enterprise bosses mandate vaccines. Or state governments
mandate vaccines which they have every right to do. I would also point out the laws in this
regard are pretty much the same here in Australia as in the USA. Most job losses are a result of a failure to
comply with legal vaccine mandates. An
example of mandating where federal funds are concerned would be Boeing in the
US because they make military aircraft and SCOTUS said Biden absolutely can
mandate vaccines for companies like them.
I’m going to end this with a rant. If I see this guy, here is what I am going to
say to his face. Do not lecture me you
piece of excrement about religious liberty.
Trump supporters are literally cramming Sunday Laws through a number of
American states while you say and do nothing.
Nothing! And neither does our
poor excuse of a church leadership. That’s
because you have your head so far up Trump’s butt, you don’t even have the
balls to fight against laws which we have been warning the world about for 200
years. Where were you when we fought
like hell to walk back some of the Sunday laws the Texas state legislature were
about to pass in 2021? So, until you
start actually doing your job, you have no right to preach to anyone about
religious liberty. People like me and
other non SDAs stay up late at nights fighting this while you do nothing. But instead you want to claim religious
liberty on a stance for which the church does not have any clearly stated
beliefs. What a hypocrite you are!
No one is asking SDAs to break the ten commandments. No one is asking them to worship another
god. And no one is asking SDAs to go
against any teachings of our church when they mandate vaccines. Since this is the case, read your Bible and
Romans 13 in particular! Romans 13 is
the final word on the subject.
posted by Marc Breault @ 3:56 AM
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