During the height of the Covid pandemic, a certain kind of Christian community opposed to Covid mitigation practices like mask-wearing, social distancing, and (eventually) receiving vaccines advanced a position of “faith over fear.” This language has reappeared with the release of the newest Covid booster by a segment of those who are opposed to taking it. But what exactly do they mean by this? What do they mean by “faith” and “fear”? What social judgements and identities are lodged in this rhetoric? What’s going on beneath the surface of this rhetoric? Dan lifts the hood to take a look at these questions in this week’s episode.
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Hello and welcome to It's in the Code, a series that is part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
I'm your host.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Delighted, as always, to be with you.
And as always, I want to start by thanking those of you who listen, those of you who support us in so many different ways.
Whether it is through your patronage, literally, by being a patron and supporting us financially, whether it is just through the emails and feedback that we get, whether it is the word of mouth that draws new listeners, whatever you do, we can't do it without you.
We are completely self-funded and so thankful for all of you.
This series, in particular, is driven by you.
Thank you so much for the emails.
Keep them coming.
Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
I have been closing the gap on some of the emails.
I have been responding to more, but there are still more coming in that I don't get to respond to yet.
I'm doing what I can.
As always, humbled and gratified by the responses.
Thank you so much for the very thoughtful Questions that you raise, topic ideas, and so forth.
Please keep them coming.
I want to dive in today.
So last week, I looked a little bit at the concept of fearing, quote-unquote, God.
And there's sort of more to be said about this.
And I was thinking about this, and last week, last weekend, I guess two weekends ago, if we can keep it straight, I got my new COVID booster.
I was really excited to do that.
I'm a big believer in vaccines and vaccine efficacy.
Eventually got COVID.
It was very mild, I think, because of the vaccines and so forth.
I think it's part of a new normal post-COVID, right?
I got my flu shot at the same time.
I think that's going to be a pretty normal practice.
If you listen to the podcast at all, you know that we are big Believers in vaccines and medical science and so forth.
Okay.
But what it brought to mind for me was a slogan that I'd run across before.
And then as I was rereading and going through people's emails, this came up again.
It was a slogan that sort of came up during the height of the COVID pandemic, but I think it sort of flares up or sort of comes into view when there are new boosters and you start getting these public service announcements and pushes to get people to
to get the booster and so forth and it was captured in the slogan as one listener sent me and I thought this was a great way that sort of captured it was faith over fear or I've seen it as faith not fear right a kind of slogan that you might see on a church billboard right
faith over fear i've talked to people who've heard this in sermons i've seen online things uh of you know christians especially oftentimes like conservative pastors who say the this is a church that practices faith not fear and it comes up with the concept of specifically Not being governed by a spirit of fear.
Talked about this before.
This is a pair of episodes I did a long time ago.
I invite you to go take a look at that.
Fear is turning into kind of a theme here.
And I don't want to rehash that discussion here.
But it's that idea of not living in a quote-unquote spirit of fear.
But what I'm interested in specifically here is how this faith, right, the faith over fear or faith instead of fear here has to do really with this politicized concept of anti-vaxxing and what I also take to be related areas as sort of a general sort of anti-science stance within a certain kind of American Christianity.
That's what sort of gets my attention here.
That's why the phrase I think crops back up.
When new boosters come out because it really, I think, took shape or became more noticeable to a lot of people or became really prominent in the context of the pandemic, right?
And I've talked a lot, again, I invite you to go look at those other series, Not in a Spirit of Fear.
I've talked a lot about how appeals to faith Within a certain kind of Christian circle have to do with assurance.
And I want to be clear, I get emails from folks sometimes, and I try to be clear about this, who say, well, there are other kinds of religion that don't do what you're talking about, or other kinds of Christians who don't think what you think.
That is absolutely true.
To everything we could say about any religious articulation, there will be exceptions, right?
So I'm not trying to talk about all Christians.
I'm not trying to talk about all religious people who might use the language of faith, though most religions don't use that language.
But within a certain kind of Christian circle, appeals to faith are really claims to assurance.
They're almost claims to knowledge, right?
And if I want to draw a contrast here with a different articulation of Christianity, I might talk about those that will also use the language of faith, which is pretty pervasive, right, within Christianity.
But faith is a kind of hope.
Something that we hold on to because of a lack of assurance or a lack of certitude versus this idea of faith as a form of assurance, almost like another form of knowledge, a higher form of knowledge.
And again, I invite you to go back and listen to those earlier episodes.
You want a fuller discussion of that, right?
But that faith, that faith that sees it as a kind of assurance, that's the faith that I think is active when somebody says, we practice faith over fear, especially when it relates to, say, COVID or something like that.
Is that kind of faith that I want to talk about?
And I want to appeal, I want to talk about two features of it, right?
The first is the selectivity of it, right?
And the second is the connection, again, that I see with anti-scientism and, sorry, not anti-scientism, as sort of anti-science mindset and anti-science initiatives on the political and religious And I want to start with that ladder point.
I want to start with that notion of the connection of this conception of faith and the way that it specifically plays out in that context of contesting the findings of science.
And then I want to look into how selective that is.
And I think the reason why will become clear as we go along.
So I want to decode this faith language and this slogan, faith over fear, and look at what it's actually doing.
Right?
And so the slogan, faith over fear, or faith not fear, coming up with the vaccine boosters, it does a lot of rhetorical work, right?
And the first thing is this, and you can imagine the conversation, maybe it's not a conversation you've had, I haven't had it in these exact terms, but I've had it close, where maybe you're talking to somebody, what are you doing?
Well, you know, the kids and I are going to get the new booster, so we're gonna take it easy the next day in case there any, you know, feel a little rundown from that or something, well, whatever.
And the person might say, well, you know, I'm a person of faith over fear, or I put faith first, I govern my life by faith, not fear or something like that, right?
The idea is that taking the vaccine or the booster is a sign that you are giving into fear.
Right?
And I think at the very least, it's an implicit judgment on the part of those taking the vaccine booster.
When that person contrasts what they're doing and says, you know, say, well, I'm getting the booster this weekend.
What are you doing?
Well, I try to live my life by faith and not fear.
Right.
The contrast, the judgment is there.
Right.
The idea is in that hypothetical conversation, which, again, is not imaginary.
I've had conversations like those.
I've corresponded with those of you who have.
I have seen them take place.
It's the accusation, the judgment, essentially that by getting the booster, I'm living a life governed by fear in taking the vaccine.
OK, that's the judgment.
And from a certain perspective, I guess that's true.
I guess I'm quote unquote afraid of getting COVID again, in my case, or having my family get it again.
We've all had it, right?
But we were all boosted.
I guess I'm afraid of transmitting it to others who can't take the vaccine or booster or for whom that's ineffective, right?
Immunocompromised people, for example.
I don't want to transmit it to them just because I don't get super sick if I know it might kill them.
But I would also push back on that language of fear here and say there's a difference between fear, which I think is presumed to be sort of irrational or unreasonable.
When people say you're giving in to fear, I think that's what they're saying, right?
It's not reasonable.
It's not rational.
I would contrast that conception of fear with something like prudence, right?
Taking a booster and reducing the chances of severe COVID is the prudent Thing to do.
Now it's also relatively accessible.
Even if it wasn't deadly.
This is like the flu shot, right?
I'm an age now, you know what?
It's just not worth it to get the flu and feel awful and miss work and do everything else.
If I can just get a shot and like either not get the flu or if I get it, it's really mild.
Right?
And yes, I know the flu can kill people too.
It's unlikely to kill me, but it's just prudent.
Like it's there.
Why not just do it and have things be easier and better, right?
It's a prudent course of action.
It's like wearing a seatbelt, or having renter's insurance, or life insurance, or locking the front door at night.
I mean, yes, I guess you can describe these things as being done out of fear.
When I get in the car, I'm not fearfully putting on the seatbelt.
I'm not acting irrationally.
I'm acting very rationally.
If I get in an accident, I'm much less likely to be injured if I'm seatbelted.
Right.
If something happens and I should die, I want to have life insurance.
I do have life insurance so that my family can be taken care of and not suffer financially on top of everything else that would come with with losing me.
Right.
I think these are prudent.
So I don't think it's giving into fear, but that's the judgment.
Right.
So here's the key with that first point.
The person who says that they're not giving into fear, right, who's living the life of non-fear, who's living a life of faith, they not only demonstrate this by not taking the vaccine or booster, right?
There's a sense in which they are also claiming moral superiority in not doing so.
That's the judgment that you hear.
That's the sense of indignation when they say, oh, well, okay.
Glad that's important to you, but I live a life of faith.
I try not to be governed by fear in what I do.
It's not merely a description, it's a moral valuation.
It is a judgment.
And those of us who give into this fear, we are to be pitied at best.
You know, I feel kind of sorry for somebody who thinks that, you know, you've got to go get a shot every year to feel safe in the world.
And those who would be morally condemned at worst, the people who, you know, all the conspiracy theories about vaxxing and everything else, right?
The moral condemnation that comes from this.
So that's the first point.
When people talk about this faith over fear, or faith and not fear, is that they're making a kind of judgment here.
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet.
In the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
Then second to this, it's not just any judgment.
A minute ago I said it's a moral judgment and it is, but it's even more than that.
It's a religious judgment, right?
Because that fear stands in contrast not to confidence, not to rationality, not even to prudence or something.
It stands in contrast to faith.
To give into fear when it's articulated this way is not merely a moral failing, it's a spiritual failing as well.
It demonstrates a lack of trust in God and God's power to deliver us from whatever, including COVID.
If one truly has faith, this person would say, if one truly trusts in God, this is demonstrated by not giving into fear and getting the jab.
Right?
So to get the vaccine or booster, it's not just to live in fear.
It's not just to be irrational.
It's not just to maybe even be immoral.
It is to be anti-Christian.
It is to live a life in opposition to God because you're demonstrating a lack of faith, a lack of trust.
And this is where the second point is not limited to COVID boosters.
It's a rhetorical move that is deployed in lots of contexts.
And it is deployed as a legitimation for conservative Christian opposition to all kinds of practices or issues.
And what I'm thinking about today, right, is the broader anti-science stance.
So it's there, it's in anti-vaxxing, and I feel like the blowback in response to COVID that helped mainstream anti-vaxxing, talked about that on the Weekly Roundup a couple episodes ago.
We've seen it front and center there, but it's also there in things like climate skepticism.
The same people who will advocate that I live a life of faith over fear are the same ones who not just oppose vaccines and vaccine mandates and things like that.
They also are the ones who refuse to even contemplate the possibility that climate change could be real or that humans could do anything to slow it or that there are policies we could enact to do so.
And so on.
Why?
Because all of that is fear.
And we are supposed to act in faith, right?
Our faith tells us that God will take care of us and whatever, right?
So if you're one of those people like me, who for them, you believe the myths and the conspiracies about climate change, I'm living in fear, I'm being irrational, a person of faith, This is what is the rationale that's given.
I'm a person of faith.
I don't need to worry about the climate warming up.
I don't need to consider that that's real.
I don't need to consider that we could do anything about it.
So it's I think part of a broader anti-science skepticism or science skepticism It is to live a life of fear.
It's to be subject to the moral and spiritual failings that we have talked about, right?
While a life of faith is one in which we live with the assurance that God will protect us and if anything needs to be fixed, God will fix it.
On a side note, yes, I can anticipate the emails now.
There's also the element within conservative Christianity that says that this world is passing away and God's going to burn it down and recreate and so forth.
That kind of apocalyptic vision is another reason for climate denial among that kind of American Christianity.
We've talked about that in the past as well.
Invite your comments.
I know it's there.
Cool topic, different episode, right?
Back to our topic, though, what we see is when we start decoding this idea of faith over fear, there's a lot going on, right?
And the first thing to note about all the stuff that's going on with that claim, we've talked about moral valuations and spiritual valuations and judgment and so forth.
I think it's also clear to most of us that the claims not to fear often mask a great deal of avoidance because of fear, right?
It fuels a simple form of fear-driven denial.
It is terrifying to face the realities of what's happening to the climate, and it can be easier to put our head in the sand, pretend it's not going on, and to tell ourselves that this is an act of faith.
COVID was scary when it happened.
It could be scary again.
Herd immunity, or we're not quite at herd immunity, but increasing population immunity has defanged it a lot.
But it's scary to think about it, to face our finitude and so forth, and it can be very comforting to avoid having to face up to that through an appeal to faith, right?
We've talked about that in those earlier episodes again.
I don't want to go further into that.
That language of faith also masks or I think tries to hide a degree of very profound and willful ignorance about science behind things like climate change and vaccines.
As I always say, those things, science skepticism among other things, it's not really about knowledge or information, which is why it's hard to dislodge, right?
What interests me here is how selective that approach is.
Right.
Because here's what I can imagine.
A couple things.
Number one, I have heard the rhetoric.
I've encountered the rhetoric.
I know a lot of you have too.
Where somebody, a person, a quote-unquote person of faith, they will say that they oppose not just vaccines or climate science or whatever, but they will say that, you know, they have faith and not science.
They believe in faith and not science, sort of full stop, right?
It's articulated as if science is one monolithic thing and they don't accept it.
Now, it's not usually articulated in that thorough going away position.
But what I can hear, I can hear it from from listeners now, I can read the emails, I can imagine them as somebody who says this, who says, you know, Dan, that's all good.
But what about somebody that really believes that?
Right?
You talk about how this hides fear and so forth in this language.
But what if for them being a Christian really requires that they believe this?
That they have to put faith over fear and that when it comes to the claims of secularist scientists or whatever, they have to believe this.
They have to put their faith first.
This is what it means to be a person of faith.
Aren't you just dismissing any conception of faith?
Am I being too hard on religion, basically, is the way that that comment will go.
And my answer is no.
First, because again, I'm not articulating every, dismissing, sorry, every articulation of faith.
I'm gonna be really clear about this.
There are other ways of imagining faith other than this.
Okay?
But the bigger reason is this and this brings me to that that point that I highlighted a few minutes ago said I would come back to I'm coming back around I'm landing the plane right which is the other reason why I would say no is because of how selective this is and this is what I would say no one Including those Christians, those Christians who will pound on the desk and tell you how anti-science they are and how much they don't believe in science and how strong their faith is and how they're not governed by fear and so forth.
No one actually lives this way.
Or maybe I should qualify that and say nobody you're likely to actually encounter lives this way.
Which for me means it's not a matter of sincere belief.
No one actually lives out the rejection of science, quote-unquote, that this position suggests, and they exercise prudence in a million ways every day, right?
Those same people who tell you that they're not governed by fear, guess what?
They wear their seatbelts.
Or if they don't wear their own, they seatbelt their kids.
They hook in the baby's car seat.
They lock their doors at night.
They buy insurance to protect their belongings and provide for their loved ones.
They diversify their portfolio so that if stocks tank in one area, they aren't wiped out financially.
They have life insurance so that if something happens to them, their loved ones are protected.
They exercise the same thing they call fear in somebody else in lots of ways.
And they also accept science and the things that flow from it like technology and medicine in myriad ways as well, right?
Even most anti-vaxxers also take the kids to the doctor when they're sick.
They take them for their annual exam.
They take their kids to the dentist.
They take them to get their eyes checked.
When somebody says, your kid needs corrective lenses and they have to start wearing glasses or contacts, guess what?
They're not online talking about the conspiracies to try to convince us that we don't see well or something ridiculous like that.
They don't start conspiracies about the things that will happen or that there are tracking chips in like every pair of glasses that's handed out at the eye doctor or whatever, right?
When they feel sick, they go to the doctor.
Or, I'm of an age now where this matters, when their parents are sick, they take their parents to the doctor.
They make them go to the doctor.
They make them show up for their physical therapy.
They make them show up for their cancer treatments.
They fall and get injured.
Somebody breaks a bone.
A kid falls off the monkey bars.
You take them to have those bones set.
Right?
They drive their cars.
They fly in airplanes.
They use computers and phones and a million other technological advancements that build on established science every day.
They could not articulate their anti-science views if they didn't.
They couldn't use social media or anything else.
So in a thousand ways, every day, the same people who insist that their science rejection in areas like vaccines and climate change and medical care for trans kids and on and on and on, those same people who insist that that science rejection is an aspect of their faith, accept science in a whole bunch of other areas where apparently their faith has no issue at all.
So don't give me this thing about how it's just a sincerely held belief and I need to understand that.
It's not.
Now you want to show me somebody who lives in a cabin in the woods somewhere and doesn't use any technology and rejects medical interventions and there are religious groups who do these things, then yeah, I can nod and say I profoundly disagree with them, but at least they're consistent.
But don't give me this nonsense that the people that I run into, I don't know, protesting outside of a CVS or somewhere when people are going in to get shots, don't give me this nonsense that they're like consistently anti-science or something.
Just don't.
Right?
So what does all that mean for me, right?
And this is what I'm interested in.
What does it mean?
It means for me that it isn't really about faith, quote-unquote, at all.
It is about an irrational opposition to well-established scientific fact Vaccines work and the science behind them is well established.
It's well established that humans have changed the climate of the earth and so forth, right?
It's about the fact that that is an irrational opposition that comes out of or expresses a particular religious or political identity.
And when people come along and say, well, as a person of faith, I believe X, Y, or Z, that is an after-the-fact rationalization For something that is much more basic and has to do just with a kind of irrational articulation of a particular kind of religious or political identity.
The last point I'm going to say about this is that this particular appeal for me is very similar in its rhetorical work to accusations of playing God.
If I believe in faith over fear, right?
I'm the one who's living in faith.
God will deliver me.
It's very close to that sort of old accusation.
I think doing that is playing God.
Then getting a shot is playing God.
If God wants me to get COVID, I'm going to get COVID.
And if God doesn't want me to get COVID, I don't need a shot to protect me or whatever, right?
I've been thinking about this as I was putting this together.
I cannot believe I haven't done an episode on playing God, so I'm going to revisit that soon.
But just hold that in your pocket, okay?
But for me, to sum this up, because I've got to wrap this up, I'm going on for too long here.
Faith over fear, it's a rhetorical gem.
I've talked about this a lot.
Those people on the right, those conservative Christians, they're good at turning a phrase.
Having faith over fear, it sounds good.
Who wants to be a person who gives in to fear?
Who doesn't want to be a person of faith, understood in that sense of assurance or confidence?
It sounds great.
It provides a religious articulation that is pithy and it's powerful and people can rally around it.
It's easy to remember.
But when we dig down into it, when we decode what it actually does, what it really does is provide, I think, a cover of legitimation.
To what is simply an irrational and, in my view, socially dangerous articulation of a particular religious or political identity.
That's what it is.
That's what the rhetoric masks.
That's what the rhetoric enables.
So, faith over fear.
Again, if you're a listener, you know people and they're like, I don't think that's what they mean by faith.
Good, fantastic, not the only understanding of faith, but it's on my mind as we come through another season now of COVID boosters and COVID opposition and renewed GOP specters of, you know, COVID shutdowns and so forth.
Faith over fear, it's usually neither.
I don't think it's real faith and I don't think that what they're critiquing is really fear.
Got to run.
Thank you so much for listening.
Once again, we can't do it without you.
Thank you so much for the support.
Please keep the ideas coming.
Daniel Miller Swag.
DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Threw out the idea a while back, we're coming into the holiday season.
If you've got thoughts or ideas or topics or slogans or you see church signs or you get holiday cards or whatever, Sort of holiday related that you think, wow, this really strikes me as something that would be interesting to decode, to take a look at.
Pass those along to me.
I'd love to see them.
I would love to kind of collect those ideas and take a run at some of those topics.
