Christian Freedom & the Pandemic

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of what Christian Freedom looks like, particularly during the Coronavirus Pandemic. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post. This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. For quite a while now I have been concerned about what some Christians seem to think religious freedom entails in our country. Over the past few years increasingly people seem to think religious freedom is the freedom to force others to follow your own personal religious beliefs, or those of your organization or company. This is people claiming, for instance, that they shouldn’t have to bake cakes for same-sex couples if they object to that sort of marriage—even though I’ve yet to see a baker refuse to bake cakes for an opposite-sex couple whose marriage might not meet their same moral qualifications. We see businesses and corporations insisting that they should be able to make decisions about what sort of medical needs are and are not covered under insurance, not given the religious conscience of their employees but given the religious conscience of the owners of the organization or the Board of Directors. And, as I’ve said over and over again, religious freedom isn’t about telling other people how they should live, religious freedom is about the choices you make in your own life. But during this coronavirus pandemic the claims of religious freedom have taken a truly insidious and dangerous turn, with people insisting that it infringes upon their religious freedom to require them to wear a mask or maintain social distance or not hold in person worship services… Even when doing all of those things would literally kill people. And so, this week I want to break the myth of religious freedom in our country, particularly for the follower of Christ. There is a group in Ottawa County right now calling itself “Ottawa Values,” they claim to exist to uphold the values of Ottawa County residents and to protect families from government overreach. They are encouraging people in our county to write letters to the Ottawa County Commissioners and helpfully provide a sample of what they suggest you should say to our Commissioners. They insist that the Ottawa County Health Department is inflicting harm upon them and upon parents and children in our county by not allowing parents, businesses, and Christian schools to exercise their “constitutional rights.” They say that this is not reflective of Ottawa County’s traditional values and urge the commissioners to direct the health department to stop interfering with their God-given rights. They claim the citizen simply want to exercise their God-given rights to raise their families in the manner they deem best. And I don’t know if I’ve ever read a message from a group of Christians that has made me more angry and more embarrassed to be associated with these sorts of people. Nearly 300,000 people have died in our country. Just last week, I donned full protective gear so that I could enter the ICU and hold the hand of the priest associate at my church while he died from COVID-19. Health officials around our country are trying to stop a deadly and dangerous disease and some Christians are upset because they think this is an intrusion upon the rights.