Weekly Roundup: President Lysol, Mark of the Beast Conspiracies, and Reporters Kidnapped
Brad tells the story of buying an heiress a crepe in France. Then he and Dan discuss the president's remarks on using disinfectant to help with COVID, the conspiracy theories about vaccines and the Mark of the Beast, a reporter who was kidnapped at a Re-Open protest rally, and more.
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Hello and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, and I'm Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.
Today will be a shorter episode.
It's just me today because we are busy curating our new series, A History of the Religious Right, since 1960.
We're busy working on that, but I did want to just provide some commentary today on a An image that is making its rounds on social media and it comes from protests against stay-at-home orders.
I posted yesterday on our Patreon feed about an image from Harrisburg, PA where protesters were loudly proclaiming their disdain for shelter-in-place orders and having to stay at home and the economy being shut down and all this kind of stuff.
And at the protest, a truck was driven by the crowd and it said on its hood, Jesus is my vaccine.
And I talked about this on the Patreon feed yesterday because there was another image of a nurse standing sort of in front of the protest blocking some of the traffic.
And it said, you know, please go home.
I don't want to see you in the ICU.
And I thought that was interesting because it was two pictures.
Of two worlds colliding, one of a Christian worldview that is refusing the authority of science and governmental authority, and the other of a medical professional who represents secular authority, who represents scientific evidence, who represents health care.
And she obviously had a much different take on what's happening than the protesters.
Well, today I was reminded by Peter Manceau of some history that is actually pretty relevant to this.
So, Peter Manceau is the Curator of Religion at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
And Peter's written a number of things, but one of the things that he's written that I've read and recommend is One Nation Under Gods.
And it's a nice sort of history of religion in the United States in a kind of concise form.
But he said this on Twitter today, and I'm going to go through a couple things and just talk about him.
Worth noting, the Jesus Is My Vaccine crowd at the anti-shutdown rallies already lost this fight almost exactly 300 years ago.
And the most prominent Christian clergyman in America delivered the decisive blow.
So he's commenting on this picture that I just talked about, this truck that's driving by this protest and has Jesus Is My Vaccine spray-painted across it.
This really brings to the fore the fact that those who are protesting are not just government, are not just political libertarians.
They're not just people who have a certain very conservative political ideology.
But there is also a strong element of religion in this.
There's a strong element of Christianity.
And, you know, people have noted this online, but overwhelmingly the protesters appear to be white.
They appear In many cases to be carrying weapons and flouting their sort of firearms and Second Amendment rights and they're dressed in combat clothing.
And one of the elements, however, of this is is Jesus is my vaccine.
Other people have said people in Texas have said they will not take a vaccine because it is the mark of the beast.
So the religious elements of these protests are front and center in many cases.
Well, Peter Manso goes on to say this.
In 1721, Massachusetts was in the grip of one of the periodic smallpox epidemics that had ravaged New England for decades.
Half the population of Boston showed symptoms.
Mortality in the city approached 10%.
So 1721, obviously before the War for Independence, We're in Massachusetts, we're in Boston, and half the population is showing symptoms of smallpox and 10% is the mortality rate.
He goes on.
The Puritan worldview insisted that all could be done to prevent this illness was to pray.
God sent epidemics for the same reason as fires, earthquakes, and lightning strikes, to punish sinners and encourage the pious to look heavenward for relief.
Yet because Puritan ministers were the public intellectuals of their day, some styled themselves men of science as well as men of the cloth, Boston's Cotton Mather was eager to prove his learning equal to that of any of his peers back in England.
Just stop for a minute and say, if you're not familiar with Cotton Mather, look him up.
He was enormously, enormously influential in American religious history, was part of, obviously, the Puritans in Massachusetts, and I recommend a book by Ibrahim X. Kendi.
It's called Stamped from the Beginning, and it will give you just a nice window, not only onto his religious influence, but his understanding of race, which is coming next in the story.
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