President Russell Nelson, other top LDS leaders vaccinated against COVID

President Russell Nelson, other top LDS leaders vaccinated against COVID

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Church leaders are appealing to their members to get shots as well.

(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Church President Russell M. Nelson will receive the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 in Salt Lake City.

| 19 January 2021, 17:15

| Updated: 10:02 PM

Eight top-holy leaders of the last days over the age of 70 – including the president of the church Russell M. Nelson – 96 years old, received on Tuesday morning their first dose of the “prayed and fasted for” COVID-19 vaccination to “in word and act “. their years of support for vaccinations.

And they hope that all the others in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will follow their example.

The faith in Utah “encourages its members, employees, and missionaries to be good citizens of the world and to help suppress the pandemic by protecting themselves and others through immunization,” Nelson and his two First Presidency advisers, Dallin H. Oaks (88) and Henry. B. Eyring, 87, wrote in a news release.

The release acknowledged that all people would make their own decisions, but said they hoped individuals would “consult a competent medical professional about their personal circumstances and needs.”

Nelson, Oaks and Eyring were vaccinated on Tuesday, as were the apostles M. Russell Ballard (92); Jeffrey R. Holland, 80; Dieter F. Uchtdorf, 80; Quentin L. Cook, 80; and D. Todd Christofferson, 75. Most of their wives were also vaccinated at the same time.

Three other apostles, all under the age of 70 – Gerrit W. Gong, 67; Dale G. Renlund, 68; and Ulisses Soares (62) – previously contracted and repaired by COVID-19.

(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, will receive the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 in Salt Lake. City.

“I’m glad our vaccination is coming,” Oaks said. “We are very hopeful that the general vaccination of the population will help us prevent this terrible pandemic. It is hopeful, like the light at the end of the tunnel. There is relief and appreciation for those who invented the vaccine and for those who caused it to be widely available on a meaningful priority system. “

According to the release, the church has “recognized the importance of vaccinations and vaccinations for decades”. As early as 1978, the denomination called on members to ‘protect their own children through a vaccination’.

Since 2002, the faith of 16.5 million members has also helped fund 168 projects in 46 countries, including many that offer vaccinations. Latter-day Saint Charities, the church’s humanitarian arm, has provided financial support to prominent global vaccination partners to obtain and deliver vaccinations, monitor diseases, respond to outbreaks, train health workers, and eliminate elimination and eradication programs. set.’

These efforts, according to the release, led to “more immunized children and fewer lives lost through measles, rubella, maternal and neonatal tetanus, polio, diarrhea, pneumonia and yellow fever.”
Just in 2019, Saint Charities of the Latter-day Saints and partners such as UNICEF USA and Kiwanis International helped eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus in Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the release reads. With such partnerships, ‘Africa has eradicated the wild poliovirus.’

(Photo courtesy of UNICEF and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) A health worker vaccinates a baby while his mother holds him at the Center de Sante le Rocher Maternity Hospital in Lubumbashi, Congo, November 2018.

Most commentators among the hundreds on the church’s Facebook page celebrated the news of Nelson’s vaccination, and many said it was an answer to prayers, or that they believed the surgeon who became a prophet was doing what God did. want.

However, a significant minority said they would not follow his lead, arguing that vaccines are unproven or even dangerous and that a lack of confidence in divine healing power appears to be.

Some have suggested that Nelson accept vaccinations because he was a former physician, not a prophet, and said they want the church to stay out of medical decisions.

One woman, who identified herself as K. Moore from West Jordan, said in a message that she was not going to get the vaccine because her son was injured by a vaccine. She would prefer the church to be ‘vaccine neutral’.

This is hardly the first time that the Latter-day Saints have been divided over vaccinations.

Yesterday’s anti-waxxers

After one developed amid the smallpox epidemic of 1899-1901 in the US, the more educated and urban members insisted on immunization, while the less educated, working class and rural farmers preferred botanical and religious healing and nutritional health … [and] folk remedies, ”according to a history of debate by scholar Ben Cater. Among the most ardent opponents was Charles Penrose, editor of the ecclesiastical Deseret News and later a holy apostle of the last days.
Penrose estimated that 90% of “LDS churchgoers” at the time were “strongly opposed to … vaccination and they were very outspoken about it,” Cater, who teaches at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, last month. said on The Salt Lake. Tribune’s “Mormon Land” podcast.
Historian Matthew Bowman, who oversees Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, believes the opposition to the vaccine was due in part to mistrust of the U.S. government’s involvement in public health.

After all, Bowman pointed out that it was only ten years after the federal government rejected Mormons and demanded that the church abandon polygamy.

“This is where a clear LDS tension of Western libertarianism developed,” the historian said. “A lot of suspicion about government mandates was a hangover from that era.”

Bowman predicted that Tuesday’s announcement about leaders being vaccinated will change little opinion among Latter-day Saints. Those who are already in favor of the vaccine will get it; those who oppose it will not.

” The only one in the middle camp, ” he said, ” who could be fed by the general authorities of LDS and asked to do so. ‘

(Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Church apostle Jeffrey R. Holland receives the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 in Salt Lake City.

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