If Murphy’s Law promises that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” what we’ll call the law of religion — which could rightly be attributed to Jesus himself — assures that “if Christians can be blamed for something, they will be.” It has become abundantly clear the coronavirus is no exception.
Heroic nurses, doctors, and first responders are risking their safety to save others. Many private businesses are doing everything they can to preserve their payrolls, with some even stepping up in innovative ways to provide desperately needed materials.
Meanwhile, politicians, pundits, and other Twitter blue-checks are having a field day from behind their screens and press podiums, praising the likes of communist China while ridiculing not only the Trump administration, but also conservative Christians in one broad swipe.
Christians Can’t Do Anything Right
Take your pick from the smorgasbord of anti-religious offerings. Just Monday, the media attacked American success-story Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, for his faith and simply his appearance at a White House press conference after the CEO announced he would be converting 75 percent of his company’s production from pillows to masks. The gall.
Lindell, who encouraged Americans “to use this time at home to get back in the Word. Read our Bibles and spend time with our families,” received endless flak from journalists, who were too busy promoting themselves as the big story of the day to applaud an addict-turned-businessman for aiming to produce 50,000 much-needed masks per day.
https://twitter.com/JamieOGrady/status/1244739234587725831?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1244739234587725831&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2020%2F03%2F31%2Fmedia-freaks-out-on-mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-for-encouraging-americans-to-read-the-bible%2F
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1244744904523370496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1244744904523370496&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2020%2F03%2F31%2Fmedia-freaks-out-on-mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-for-encouraging-americans-to-read-the-bible%2F
Let’s not forget about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, while his city is in shambles, went out of his way at a press conference to flex his tyrannical muscles at churches and synagogues.
After noting that most religious leaders had heeded social distancing warnings and disbanded regular gatherings, de Blasio went after “a small number of religious communities,” saying, “Everyone has been instructed that if they see worship services going on, they will go to the officials of that congregation, they’ll inform them they need to stop the services and disperse. If that does not happen, they will take additional action up to the point of fines” — adding in a particularly unconstitutional swing — “and potentially closing the building permanently.”
.@BillDeBlasio threatens to shut down worship services, fine congregations, and permanently closing the building if worshipers don't "stop the services and disperse" pic.twitter.com/fZO6a6HiuU
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 29, 2020
Never mind that any human interactions, including outdoor meetups or ride-sharing, or even encounters at essential businesses such as grocery stores, could result in COVID-19 transmission. Did de Blasio threaten to “permanently” close Kroger too if people are caught standing closer than six feet apart in the deli line? No, grocery shoppers and reckless spring breakers aren’t the primary culprits. It’s those pesky religious folks. Shut ’em down.
Coronavirus Is Christians’ Fault
The bigotry didn’t get much clearer than a glaring New York Times headline: “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals.” The March 27 article, the title of which was later changed to “The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response,” blames so-called Christian nationalism for its “major role” in “America’s incompetent response to the pandemic,” saying, “Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.”
Coronavirus hell couldn’t have been paved by the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party, which silenced whistleblowers and covered up the truth about the virus, ensuring its spread throughout the Western world. The World Health Organization can’t be faulted, despite its kowtowing to the same propaganda machine, perpetuating lies that the Wuhan virus couldn’t be transmitted between humans and that China’s handling of the pandemic was exemplary.
American media, peddling false information and launching partisan smear campaigns, bear no responsibility for our spiral into coronavirus Hades. Nor do House Democrats, who withheld aid from ailing American families while trying to pork-barrel their leftist pipe dreams into an urgent relief package. No, for anti-religious writer Katherine Stewart, religiously conservative Republicans, or “Christian nationalists” as Stewart terms them, are the drivers of the deadly virus.
Luckily, Stewart defines this provocative “Christian nationalist” label, saying:
Religious nationalism has brought to American politics the conviction that our political differences are a battle between absolute evil and absolute good. When you’re engaged in a struggle between the ‘party of life’ and the ‘party of death,’ as some religious nationalists now frame our political divisions, you don’t need to worry about crafting careful policy based on expert opinion and analysis. … Fealty to the cause is everything; fidelity to the facts means nothing.
Instead of strengthening her argument, Stewart’s description of the right’s alleged disregard for facts in favor of religious or Trumpian fanaticism exposes glaring leftist hypocrisy, to the point of even strengthening the suspicions from conservatives that progressivism is a surrogate religious credo.
By “party of death” and “party of life,” Stewart is referring to the religious right’s commitment to eradicating abortion as the gravest human rights abuse of this era, and in lockstep with the rest of leftists, she regards concern for human life within the womb to be “science denialism” — because women’s rights or whatever. She seems to be forgetting about — or ignoring — “life and death” rhetoric from her side.
Don’t mess with our future.
When it comes to climate, it’s all our lives at stake. The younger you are, the more consequences you’ll see.
It’s life and death for us.
And we will fight like it. https://t.co/jlyFGkzCUW— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 13, 2019
Hypocrisy on Display
Are we to believe it is “fidelity to the facts” that prompts Democrats, the media, and radical environmentalists to reject “expert opinion and analysis” in favor of a Swedish teen on the autism spectrum or a freshman New York Democrat’s preposterous and unscientific Green New Deal resolution? Is it not a “conviction that our political differences are a battle between absolute evil and absolute good” that leads a 17-year-old gun control activist to proclaim that his opponents are “on the wrong side” of history? Or has the left succumbed to “fealty to the cause”?
Stewart spends much of her remaining space cherry-picking fringe religious figureheads completely unrepresentative of evangelicals as straw men, railing against Trump’s cabinet members she doesn’t like, and shaming Christians for not sharing her affinity for big government, while failing to demonstrate that evangelicals paved the road to Wuhan virus hell. She even states, “President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction.”
While it’s worth noting the sheer volume of Bible-bashing that occurs with each new crisis or social issue, this latest list is hardly surprising. Leftists have found a way to fault Christians for most everything, it seems.
Most remarkable is the left’s ability to fall at the feet of the dubious Communist Party of China — singing its praises and defending its honor while its leaders cover up the truth and infect the globe — while at the same time dragging churchgoers into the mud, scoffing at their charity and threatening to close their doors. We most certainly are living in coronavirus hell, but Christians aren’t the ones who got us here.
