Influencers! This was the term government officials used in reference to pastors who they drafted to become a crucial part of the public education campaign to get Jamaicans to take the COVID-19 vaccine, including AstraZeneca, which was recently withdrawn from the market after some startling revelations.
Several church leaders sought to woo the public to take the vaccine during a round-table event organised by Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in August 2021.
“I have been bombarded by persons who tell me, ‘My pastor told me that if I take the vaccine, I am putting my faith and confidence in the vaccine (instead of God),’ that is very sad,” said president of the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance (JEA) and senior pastor of Hope Gospel Assembly, Rev. Dr. Peter Garth, at the time.
Rev. Garth was very critical of those pastors with anti-vaccine sentiments.
“I encourage Jamaicans to look at the facts. I prefer to stand with God and be judged by anti-vaxers than to stand with anti-vaxers and be judged by God,” he said during the round table event.
The JEA was just one of five major religious bodies that were represented at the event. Others in attendance included president of the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (SDA), Pastor Everett Brown; Anglican bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and head of the Church in the Province of the West Indies, Howard Gregory; head of the Roman Catholic Church, Archbishop Kenneth Richards; and president of the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC), Reverend Newton Dixon. They all appealed to Jamaicans to take the vaccine.
“The social ethic of the Bible is one that promotes the common good, looking out for others, particularly those who are voiceless and vulnerable and in need of help. What we have seen is a threat that can unravel all of those social interests that we promote. We really are dealing with an existential threat,” said Rev. Dixon, whose support for the national vaccination campaign was endorsed by member churches of the JCC, including the Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Moravians, and the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
Many Christians took the jab, thinking that they were doing so for the common good, as their pastors and the government had suggested. Those who said God told them not to take it were ridiculed and, in some cases, ostracised. There were cases of some being persecuted at their workplaces because of their
reluctance to disobey the voice of the Holy Spirit.
AstraZeneca withdrew from the market last week. The vaccine maker admitted that its vaccine could cause very rare, but life-threatening, injuries. The company was slapped with a class action lawsuit in the UK, which claimed that the vaccine had caused deaths and severe injuries and sought damages up to £100 million for about 50 victims. “It is admitted that the AZ vaccine can, in very rare cases, cause TTS. The causal mechanism is not known,” AstraZeneca said in court documents in February, the Telegraph reported.
There were 42 post-vaccination deaths reported in Jamaica up to March 2022, but with the increasing reports of sudden deaths on the island, some people feel there might be many more. AstraZeneca was one of four vaccines that were approved for use locally by the government.
Archbishop of the West Indies, Rev. Howard Gregory, had urged the Government of Jamaica to embrace mandatory vaccination against the COVID-19 virus in an article titled “Leadership and the Pursuit of the Common Good.”
“These are not normal times when every individual can choose to play by their own rules while untold suffering and loss of lives, well-being, the ability to conduct one’s daily life, and the return to vibrancy in the economy are at stake. We are in a critical time which requires unusual action, and the good of the whole must count at some point,” the Archbishop noted.
“It seems clear that the government, through the leadership, must do what leaders do in times of a crisis and take decisive action,” he asserted.
He, too, criticised church leaders who were hesitant to take the vaccines. He accused them of promoting uninformed teaching regarding Scripture and its interpretation and application to our contemporary world. He also said they were misguiding people with notions that the vaccine represents some kind of evil device and an instrument for hurting the people of God.
“You can be assured that this is a fallacy. One of the things that this should do for us as a people is to acknowledge that there is the existence of a pluralistic religious culture w
hich does not promote critical thinking and an informed religious people, and who are subject to manipulation and being misled, something which is inherent in the multiplicity of religious traditions which exists in the nation,” he noted.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness also urged pastors to refrain from encouraging their congregants not to take the vaccine.
“I would appeal to those persons who hold religious objections (to taking the vaccines), not to seek to impose them on the people who you lead,” he said.
Several churches went beyond just encouraging congregants to take the vaccine, as their church properties were converted into vaccination sites on occasions. The Bethel Baptist Church was given grant funding to purchase equipment required to meet the health ministry’s standards for cold chain management and safe delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. According to USAID, the purchases made by the church included laptops, tablets, ice packs, thermometers, and refrigerators. In the first three months, Bethel vaccinated over 263 people, many of whom initially refused to take the vaccine.
“The opportunity to contribute to the achievement of the Government of Jamaica’s target of vaccinating 65 percent of the population fits into our church’s mandate of providing a service that people need at a cost they can afford,” Bethel pastor Rev. Dr. Glenroy Lalor was quoted as saying by the USAID team.
In July 2021, Holness pointed to the need for church leaders to become influencers and counter vaccine hesitancy.
“I am encouraging all of you to put aside the hesitancy, the ‘wait and see.’ For your own health, take the vaccine when it is your turn. Look out for your local clinic, your local church hall; that is where we will be mobilising, and when it comes, take the vaccine,” he told Jamaicans then.