“I’ll just tell you today, if anti-mask and anti-vaccine are anti-government, then I’m proud to be anti-government,” said Spell, who made a national name for himself and opposed Covid. 19 rules protested. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told the members of the Life Tabernacle Church.
He goes on to say falsely, “If you have a 99.6% survival rate, why would you want someone to pollute your bloodstream with something that may or may not hurt you?”
The experts believe that the anti-Covid vaccine sentiment among evangelists is fueled by a mixture of mistrust in government, ignorance about how vaccines work, misinformation and political identity.
“They (Evangelicals) are the group that will say the most that they are not going to take the vaccine,” Samuel Perry, a professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma who specializes in religion, told CNN. “They have been or have been most resistant to the vaccine from the beginning.”
And they’ve maintained that attitude over and over for the past six months, according to Perry.
Incorrect information contributed to the evangelists’ distrust of the vaccine
“There’s a tendency in white Christian nationalism to want to believe such conspiracies because I think it reinforces this idea of an us towards them,” Perry said. “The problem is that the people who feed the fear have an incentive to keep the fear going, because people keep clicking, and people keep listening.”
News and information “silos” also play a role in vaccinating vaccines among evangelicals, who listen to conservative media hosts questioning or denouncing the vaccines, Perry said.
Some of the Life Tabernacle Church say they will not get vaccinated
Although people of color have the greatest risk for Covid, the pastor said he still discourages vaccines.
“I do not know anyone in my church, black, brown, El Salvador and Honduran and Mexican who had the virus,” he said. “I do not know anyone.”
Perry said leaders like Spell “really bought into this idea that if I continue to sow this narrative where people feel victimized and fearful and angry, I can build my audience, build my own credibility in this group of people who say, ‘ Yes, everyone else is unreliable except you. ‘
At Life Tabernacle Church, a handful of people CNN spoke to said they were not interested in getting the vaccine.
Jeff Jackson, a member of the Life Tabernacle Church, told CNN he believes vaccines are “harmful to your health.”
Patricia Seal, also a member of the Life Tabernacle Church, said while liking former president Donald Trump, “when he spoke to get the chance, I said, ‘You can have anything you want. I want it.’ not have. “
Jacob McMorris, another member of the Life Tabernacle Church, said he did not want a vaccine either.
“I feel like, and I know it works medically, but if you put something in it to help you not get it, it just does not work for me,” he told CNN. “I never liked the idea of it.”
Only one person interviewed by CNN, Kerry Williams, said he received a vaccine. “Yes, I got the vaccine,” he says, noting that he still has to go get his second.
Health expert: 70% of the population needs to be vaccinated to help control viruses
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of Americans who have been vaccinated and who intend to be vaccinated is increasing, while the number of people who say they want to “wait and see” is declining.
But for White Evangelicals, the number who say they are not against a Covid vaccine remains high, Perry said, and that could be a problem for some areas, where they represent a much higher percentage of the population than what they do nationwide.
“We are going to see consequences in those regions of the country,” Perry said. “And it will feel the defenseless and the elderly.”
According to Pew, evangelicals make up about 25% of the American population. And some experts believe that 70% of the population should get the vaccine to control Covid-19.