Almost a year and a half into the pandemic, I’ve been thinking about how the church has responded to it. And [deeply fatherly voice]: I’m so disappointed.
It didn’t have to be this way, of course. The church started out great, cancelling all church meetings at the front end of when we (in the U.S., anyway) realized this was a serious problem. But since then, it hasn’t done a lot to deal with this unprecedented (in recent memory, anyway) worldwide issue.
There are two main areas that really stoke my fatherly disappointment: vaccines and the return to the status quo.
Vaccination
It’s clear that ultimately, universal (or, short of that, mass) vaccination is our best route to safety here. And again, the church started out decently. Pretty much as soon as they qualified for vaccination, top church leaders (including Pres. Nelson) got vaccinated and posted pictures of themselves being vaccinated to social media. They apparently also issued a news release encouraging people to get vaccinated (though honestly, I—who am Very Online—didn’t see the news release until I was searching to find the social media link).
And that should have been enough. After all, we have no religious objection to vaccination. In fact, providing immunizations is one of the church’s official humanitarian activities. Church leadership could have been forgiven for assuming that members would follow suit.
Until members didn’t. It became clear, though, that a not-insignificant portion of members opposed vaccination. That opposition has now led to Utah County—where somewhere around 80% of the population are members of the church—to see a surge in Covid, including, notably, among unvaccinated teenagers. And, embarrassingly for the church, this surge is fueled partly by Youth Conferences, Girls Camps, and whatever is replacing Boy Scout camps (and, Carri Jenkins notwithstanding, BYU camps. Only 38% of Utah County residents have been vaccinated.
So why are they not following the prophet? I suspect it’s because, photo ops notwithstanding, the church has signaled that it doesn’t see Covid vaccinations as important (or, at least, its statements can easily be read that way).
But why, if it issued a press release and Instagram pictures? Because the church doesn’t communicate its important directives through Facebook and press releases. When the church wants members to do something, it sends a letter, signed by the First Presidency, to be read in sacrament meeting. It says explicitly to members that they need to get vaccinated. Perhaps Pres. Nelson or one of his counselors says it clearly and unequivocally in conference.
But it hasn’t done any of these things. Moreover, it has signaled its lack of seriousness about vaccination in other ways. It has encouraged, but not required, domestic missionaries to get vaccinated. And, counter to an enormous trend, BYU and BYU-Idaho aren’t requiring students, staff, or faculty to be vaccinated for the 2021-2022 school year. (BYU-Hawaii, by contrast, deserves huge plaudits for requiring vaccination, counter to the BYU trend.)
I’ve heard that BYU’s attorneys believe that they’re subject to an idiotic Utah law that prevents state actors from requiring vaccination. On the face of the law, it’s plausible for reasons I explain here—like many state laws, it’s really poorly drafted—but I’m deeply skeptical that a definition of “government entity” that included private universities would stand up if challenged. And, in fact, Westminster College has decided to mandate vaccines. BYU at the very least should require vaccines and, if the state tried to enforce the law, challenge it.[fn1]
A friend argues that maybe the church is hesitant to challenge any vaccine laws for good reason. And he may be right (though I don’t think either of us is entirely convinced). But if that’s the case, at the very least, the church should use its lobbying power in the Utah legislature to try to get the law repealed or fixed.
Now don’t get me wrong—conspiracists notwithstanding, the church doesn’t always get what it wants when it lobbies. But lobbying at least sends to the membership the message that the church takes this seriously. And the church lobbies the Utah legislature about alcohol and cannabis, not, it says, solely because of religious opposition but because of public health concerns. And if it can lobby on public health grounds, there’s no reason it can’t lobby about vaccination.
I’m under no illusions that if the church did signal explicitly that members should get vaccinated that all members would. I’ve said before that members aren’t automatons. Vaccination, for some strange reason, has become a marker of political identity and, as C.S. Lewis notably observed nearly three-quarters of a century ago, it’s easy to shift from prioritizing our religious to our political ideology. Some portion of members would continue to refuse vaccinations. But for those on the margins—not ideologically opposed to vaccination but also not entirely sure—it could prove a determining factor. And the church would demonstrate its prophetic care for its members and for the communities in which they live.
Status Quo
This one’s fuzzier and I’ll be a lot less wordy here. But in my experience—both in Chicago and from hearing from friends and family throughout the country—the church seems to be primarily interested in returning to the status quo ante. Which is a huge missed opportunity. We’ve had a year and a half to figure out how to succor those in need of succor in new ways, to meet truly necessary needs of our people.
A couple examples: I recently saw a high school friend who is now a pastor. Her congregation hasn’t met in person since March 2020. And they’ve taken as a theme, she told me, protecting the vulnerable. Early in the pandemic, that meant the elderly. Today it means kids under 12 who can’t be vaccinated yet. They’ve sacrificed—they miss their in-person community and are looking forward to reenacting it—but they’ve had deep Christian meaning in their sacrifice.
Another friend’s priest has announced that, even after returning fully to in-person Mass, they will continue streaming Mass online. They plan on streaming both to reach those people who, for whatever reason, cannot attend and to allow their congregants to participate in Mass while they’re travelling.
Us? Well, my ward is back to unmasked singing with no distancing but is still streaming sacrament meeting and, until the end of the month, the second hour. A relative’s stake president has announced that even streaming is done.
I understand that we want to put the pandemic behind us. I do too! But if we didn’t learn anything from the last year and a half, if we haven’t figured out how to minister better to our ward members, we’ve wasted an opportunity. And if we treat the pandemic like it’s over, even through the Delta surge and the fact that our children cannot yet get vaccinated, we’ve failed as a people. And that strikes me as true failure.
[fn1] Heck, we could have been using our buildings as pop-up vaccination clinics.