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.

 

https://www.fulcrum7.com/blog/2022/1/17/an-appeal-to-adventist-nobility-religious-liberty-sermon-by-conrad-vine?fbclid=IwAR2O5Etx0JSd9Q6jXXvR918NLw8R-NjIRuXNQ8qbrdE9aGp4h1SShJmBCZM

 

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.