It's fascinating and perhaps even a little sad to reflect on
how the entire Covid episode could have played out in such different terms –
especially for the Christian Church in the United States.
Had an Evangelical-friendly president taken a different
posture, it's not hard to imagine that Christians would have viewed getting the
vaccine as one's patriotic duty.
But it's clear enough that the American Church is under
judgment and we've also seen this recently with Right-wing calls for the
repudiation of the Patriot Act. This is more than a little ironic because that
piece of deeply anti-constitutional legislation was passed with great eagerness
and cheered on by the Right and the Christian community in the wake of 9/11.
Over two decades later the historical record has been forgotten and warped and
now they oppose it. It goes to show how malleable, ungrounded, hypocritical, and
unprincipled these sections are and it testifies to the fact that had say
George W Bush been president during Covid – the entire narrative and now the
post-event analysis would be completely different.
I say post-event but that's not entirely true either as
hundreds are still dying every day from Covid and only now is the mainstream
beginning to acknowledge and seriously talk about some of the long-term
consequences that seem to affect a segment of the population. It is nothing
less than tragic that the American Church collaborated with the forces of
mammon and foisted a narrative on the pandemic – that would lead to well over a
million deaths in the United States alone. And they continue to lie about this
and explain away the evil they committed and continue to endorse. This in truth
is the mass murder that took place – not the fictions presented by Wolf.
As to the feminist author Naomi Wolf, it's very simple – her
entire argument can be repudiated with one question.
Where are the bodies?
Living in a rural area I can say the obituary pages testified
to the effects of Covid. It was remarkable and noteworthy to see how those
pages grew beyond anything ever seen before, and we personally know and know of
a lot of people who died. But this was all pre-vaccine.
Where are the vaccine deaths?
There aren't any to speak of. This is a contrived narrative.
There are always a handful of vaccine-related deaths – that's the ugly side of
public health and medicine. Side-effects will kill some and there's no doubt
the entire Covid episode was mismanaged. And yet contrary to the narratives,
figures like Anthony Fauci weren't revealed to be evil Machiavellian or crypto-communist
architects of public demise – they were exposed as spineless bureaucrats
willing to whitewash and spin the truth in order to protect the administration
and their standing. Figures like Deborah Birx have since denounced what
happened during those days – but her credibility and standing is already
destroyed. She needed to call out Trump on national television. It would have
meant receiving a pink slip but she would have gone down in history as a public
hero – and she might have saved lives.
None of this happened and (as I've argued extensively) the
Church quickly lost its way during this episode – confounded by its own
corruption, divided loyalties, and politicisation. The discussions that should
have happened never did, and now the Church in alliance with Right-wing and
Libertarian forces has turned to lying on a massive scale – being manipulated
by power brokers (like Steve Bannon) that are laughing behind their backs. The
recent episode with FOX and its promotion of election lies reveals this in the
starkest of terms. Money trumps all and an evil circularity developed that at
this point has left many in not just a place of epistemological darkness, but
oblivion – a void from which there is seemingly no escape.
The Church (broadly speaking) has so lost its way that a
Christian-affiliated/associated campus like Hillsdale has now reached the point
that it has more in common with a Libertarian feminist who champions Right-wing
narratives and writes books about her vagina than Christian teachers who try to
seriously interact with the application of New Testament ethics in our present
cultural milieu.
As I've stated previously, Dominionism (which dominates
institutions like Hillsdale and Grove City College) has provided the basis for
a new ecumenical movement that finds its unity not in Christ but in Right-wing
political activism. Wolf is not a social conservative but she does exhibit
Right-wing and libertarian tendencies and has found a platform and audience in
those circles. Most importantly the woman is not a Christian and in fact has
more or less dedicated her life to causes and ideologies that are in the end
anti-Christian.
However, because she's an ally on this particular political
front, the masters of Hillsdale in all their sage wisdom decided to invite this
woman to speak and impart wisdom to their (almost exclusively Christian)
audience of impressionable young people. What kind of message does that
communicate?
I know what it communicates to me. Wolf I can write off, but
it tells me in rather profound terms where the heart of Hillsdale College is
at, and what its allegiances are – as if we didn't already know. The confusion
is perhaps best typified by Wolf's invocation of 2 Chronicles 7.14 – perhaps
one of the most misused and abused passages in Scripture. The Covenant promises
made to Israel do not belong to the United States and this kind of thinking
typifies the pronoun confusion that drives the American Church to confuse the
identity of American society with the identity of the Church.
As far as Wolf, her presentation can be dismissed out of
hand. Take it point by point, spend a few minutes on each point – look these
questions and issues up and within a very short time you can see how she has
manipulated facts and obscured the larger picture. What few things she gets
correct, are integrated within a flawed grid and thus when interpreted within
its light and matrix are also distorted and become functionally untrue – as
revealed in the context she creates. This is nothing new with her and reminds
one of Alex Jones and his manipulations. I've heard her voice for many years in
the context of libertarian news and podcasts – she can be interesting at times
but for the most part is consistently a bit off. In more recent years, she
(like many others) has literally gone off a cliff and probably belongs in a
rubber room – as opposed to mounting the stage at Hillsdale and addressing its
student body.
The end result of her presentation can only be described as
dangerous and deceitful. Her invocations and allusions to the likes of Mengele
and the Nazis are frankly ridiculous – though certainly US medicine has engaged
in some pretty horrific things in its past, usually conducted in other
countries. A lot of this thinking also proceeds from a fundamentally false
premise that the leaders of the Democratic Party want to destroy America and
its wealth. Such thinking is completely off base. You may disagree with them on
a large scale but that doesn't mean they aren't invested in the system as it is
the source of their wealth and power. They are not dreaming of wearing Mao suits
while American languishes as a third-rate power. Such thinking needs to be
dismissed out of hand and those trapped into such modes of thinking need to
start over and revisit their intellectual foundations. They have lost their way
and demonstrate a woeful and even infantile misunderstanding of how things
work.
Covid was not a plan to destroy the American economy – be
assured they want everyone working and generating profits and tax revenues. The
goal was not for people to sit at home and to wipe out the population. Once
again, such thinking is completely misguided and represents a gross
misunderstanding of the nature of the American system. Don't misunderstand,
these people are evil – as are their Republican opposites, who are also
butchers and enemies of Christ. The system is evil and that should inform how
we understand things.
But she's a lost person chasing the lost kingdom-dreams that
lost people are wont to pursue. I don't care about Naomi Wolf. I care about the
fact that Hillsdale College which retains high standing within conservative
Christian circles allowed this to happen – and effectively endorsed her
message. That is alarming and a cause for great concern.
The leaders of the school should be held accountable by the
parents and students funding this school – but to a greater degree they should
be called out within the context of the Church.
But of that course will not happen – not in the
mammon-dominated American Church. For in the end that's what this is all about,
this is why they'll let deluded people like Wolf speak – it serves a purpose.
The goal is to get people angry, afraid, and motivated to go out and wage
culture war. Despite their professions it's clear they do not believe in the
power of the Holy Spirit. They believe they have to turn to gimmicks,
manipulation, and outright deceit in order to do the Spirit's work. A closer
read of Scripture would reveal their entire project is without Biblical
warrant, misguided, and in fact dangerous. But things have moved beyond that –
they are reaping the judgment they have sown, and it would seem are handed over
to lies, becoming what Paul describes as deceived deceivers (2 Timothy 3.13).
As such these false shepherds are revealed to be wolves – or at least have
invited them in.
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