These are questions that secular public health institutions are not equipped to answer, he said. “The even deeper problem is that the white evangelists are not even on their screen.”
Mr. Chang said he recently spoke to a colleague in Uganda whose hospital received 5,000 vaccine doses but could only administer about 400 due to the hesitation of the severely evangelical population.
“The way American evangelists think, write, and feel about issues is quickly coming to light all over the world,” he said.
At this critical moment, even pastors are struggling to know how to reach their flock. Joel Rainey, who leads the Covenant Church in Shepherdstown, W.Va., said several colleagues were forced out of their churches after promoting health and vaccination guidelines.
Politics is increasingly forming faith among white evangelists, rather than the other way around, he said. Pastors’ influence on their churches is diminishing. “They get their people for one hour, and Sean Hannity gets them for the next 20,” he said.
Mr. Rainey helped his own Southern Baptist congregation prepare false information by publicly questioning medical experts – a retired colonel specializing in infectious diseases, a church member who is a Walter Reed logistics management analyst, and a church elder who nurse is Department of Veterans Affairs.
On the worship stage, before the drum set of the praise group, he “asked them all the questions a follower of Jesus might have,” he later said.
“It is necessary for pastors to instruct their people that we do not always have to be opposed to the culture around us,” he said. “We believe that Jesus died for those people, and why then would we see them as adversaries?”