{"id":1700597,"date":"2022-10-17T22:32:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T02:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1700597"},"modified":"2022-10-17T22:32:58","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T02:32:58","slug":"how-church-leaders-aligned-with-fauci-to-discredit-experts-opposed-to-covid-mandates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-church-leaders-aligned-with-fauci-to-discredit-experts-opposed-to-covid-mandates\/","title":{"rendered":"How Church Leaders Aligned With Fauci To Discredit Experts Opposed To COVID Mandates"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhow-church-leaders-aligned-with-fauci-to-discredit-experts-opposed-to-covid-mandates%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1700597&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In late February of 2022, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford, delivered a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GljbhvGQ9EE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sermon<\/a> to his Silicon Valley church on the theme of \u201cclean and unclean.\u201d As he spoke of Christ\u2019s revolutionary compassion in physically touching lepers and other diseased outcasts of the ancient world, he paused to reflect on how our society \u2014 in which 64 percent of the population professes to follow Jesus \u2014 conducted itself over the last two years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI started receiving emails almost immediately after the pandemic started from doctors and nurses asking me if it was okay to hug their wives and their husbands,\u201d Bhattacharya shared from the metal music stand serving as his pulpit. \u201cBecause they worked in the hospital, they were unclean. Your COVID patients, they were unclean.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He described seeing pedestrians swerve wide to avoid an unmasked person on the sidewalk, though it was known early on that coronavirus is very unlikely to spread outdoors. Then he asked the congregation, \u201cWhen someone comes down with COVID, what\u2019s the first question we all ask? \u2018Where did you get it? Who gave it to you?\u2019 We treat contracting the virus as a sin. As punishment for not being careful and doing all the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The point was clear \u2014 throughout the pandemic, Americans treated one another as if they were unclean.<\/p>\n<p>Bhattacharya rose to national prominence after he and a group of colleagues from Harvard and Oxford released The Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, an open letter that opposed pandemic policies like lockdowns and instead advocated focused protection for the most vulnerable. Since then, he has spoken out against mask and vaccine mandates and called for more serious attention to vaccine injuries and risk.<\/p>\n<p>But few are aware of the religious convictions that also help frame Bhattacharya\u2019s scientific outlook.<\/p>\n<p>Born to a Hindu family in Kolkata, India, he became Christian at age 18 after he arriving in the U.S. for college. He\u2019s been a member of First Presbyterian Church in Mountain View, California, where he has served as both a deacon and elder, for 27 years.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps if they had known this, fewer prominent evangelical pastors, theologians, and seminary heads would have been so willing to follow the lead of another famous scientist and Christian \u2014 former NIH Director Francis Collins \u2014 in labeling Bhattacharya\u2019s medical opinions \u201cfringe\u201d and \u201cconspiracy theories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Love Your Neighbor, Get the Shot\u2019<\/p>\n<p>From the beginning of the pandemic, Collins <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/how-the-federal-government-used-evangelical-leaders-to-spread-covid-propaganda-to-churches\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leveraged his relationships<\/a> with church leaders like Purpose Driven Life-author Rick Warren and apologist Tim Keller to convince Christians across the nation that submitting to lockdowns and mandates was a matter of obedience to God. Collins and his personal friends Christianity Today theologian Russell Moore and Billy Graham Center director Ed Stetzer also argued that Christians had a responsibility to tamp down on \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d like the notion that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab or that masks were ineffective.<\/p>\n<p>But a public <a href=\"https:\/\/statement.biologos.org\/#the-statement\">statement<\/a> that was unearthed on social media last week from BioLogos, an organization Collins founded in 2007 to create bridges between scientists and Christians, reveals further spiritual manipulation to discredit medical experts like Bhattacharya who disputed the establishment narrative.<\/p>\n<p>Titled \u201cLove Your Neighbor, Get the Shot,\u201d it was published in late August of 2020, as Bhattacharya was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464\">publishing<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-10321143\/We-stop-viral-spread-COVID-end-pandemic-writes-Dr-Jay-Bhattacharya.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> widely-circulated<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/we-should-focus-protecting-vulnerable-covid-infection-opinion-1543225\"> op-eds<\/a> in outlets like The Wall Street Journal and sitting down for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interviews<\/a> warning that COVID risks were being inflated and lockdown harms were being minimized.<\/p>\n<p>The signatories (which included celebrated theologian N.T. Wright, best-selling Christian authors Philip Yancey and Lisa Sharon Harper, Christianity Today CEO Timothy Dalrymple and several seminary presidents) promised to \u201cactively promote accurate scientific and public health information from trustworthy, consensus sources.\u201d They also promised to counter \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d from non-\u201cconsensus\u201d sources wherever they found them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen Dr. Fauci, the nation\u2019s leading infectious disease expert, tells us what scientists have learned about this infectious disease,\u201d the Christian intelligentsia exhorted their followers, \u201che should be listened to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Who should not be listened to? Scientists outside the \u201cconsensus\u201d who were only providing \u201cone person\u2019s theory on YouTube.\u201d In other words, scientists like Bhattacharya and his fellow medical dissidents.<\/p>\n<p>In the closing section of the Love Your Neighbor statement, the signers pledged that, \u201cbecause of their faith in Jesus Christ,\u201d they would:<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0  \u201cWear Masks\u201d because \u201cMask rules are not experts taking away our freedom, but an opportunity to follow Jesus\u2019 command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 6:31).\u201d \u00a0  \u201cGet vaccinated\u201d because \u201cVaccination is a provision from God\u201d and the vaccines are \u201csafe and effective.\u201d \u00a0  \u201cCorrect misinformation and conspiracy theories when we encounter them in our social media and communities.\u201d Because \u201cChristians are called to love the truth; we should not be swayed by falsehoods (1 Corinthians 13:6).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the end, more than 8,000 people, many of whom were pastors and ministry leaders, promised to work against the evidence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late February of 2022, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford, delivered a sermon to his Silicon Valley church on the theme of \u201cclean and unclean.\u201d As he spoke of Christ\u2019s revolutionary compassion in physically touching lepers and other diseased outcasts of the ancient world, he paused to reflect on how our society &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1890424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1890424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}