Anti-Vaccine Megachurch Hit With Measles Now Offers Free Vaccination

Alan: Personally, politically and ethno-racially, Christian conservatives engage "the world" in ways that are essentially selfish. 

Blinded by religious "certainty," conservative Christians set themselves "apart" from the perceived sordidness of life on earth, "knowing" that their immaculate purity -- or at least the impeccability of their sect -- will save them, will forfend the fire of hell. 

"Look at the damned unbelievers" they proclaim. "The lost souls. The spiritually bereft destined to The Lake of Nervending Fire. 

For every religion "the infidels" are "over there," "outside," living in different "camps," flying different colors. 

They do not look like us. 

They do not act like us. 

They do not believe like us.

They do not speak the same "language."

They do not enjoy the light of Truth and thus lurk in Darkness.

They are the source and center of the world's wrong.

Nor do they enjoy the lovely accoutrements that adorn the lives of true believers on whom God's favor rests.

Often, the heathens live like animals, shunning the one true religion, the religion that would set them apart from the beasts, that would lift them to the saintliness of heaven.

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In the late sixties, while studying at the University of Toronto, a handful of lectures burned themselves in life-long memory.

One such lecture described the concept of predestination popular among breakaway Reformers, most notably John Calvin.  http://christianity.about.com/od/denominationscomparison/ss/comparebeliefs2_4.htm 

Although predestination aimed to comfort believers with the conviction that salvation came through faith alone, the Roman Church persisted in teaching the central virtue and value of good works.

In Rome's view, sola fide was not enough.

Curiously, most protestants agreed.

Almost immediately the schism began, predestination's intended alleviation of "existential angst" backfired. 

Unable to insure salvation by "working" toward toward paradise, one's certainty of salvation was only as strong -- and, unsettlingly, as immaterial -- as one's belief.

"Yes!" the predestined proclaimed. "We are faithful. We are meticulously faithful. We cleave to every jot and tittle of The Creed. But, how can we know -- beyond flatulent profession of "faith alone" -- that God's graceful favor really rests upon us?"

As soon as this question was asked, sola fide Christians -- certain that good works were not needed for salvation -- dedicated themselves to work, relentless work, frenzied work, hard, non-stop work.

And so the fruits of mighty labor rewarded them with the property, the goods and the baubles that were the surest hands-on, coin-bitable sign-of-salvation. 

There could be no doubt that God showered these blessings on "the faithful" as external signs of their salvation. 

Nothing rings true like cash on the barrelhead.

As for swarms of ne'r-do-wells living in poverty and thus deprived of any "divine sign," they could be ignored, abused, vilified -- even damned -- in whatever way "The Saved!" deemed edifying and fit. 

I have come to see Christian's inordinate concern with personal salvation as a self-serving distraction from serving others.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Paralytic Fear Preventing The Experience Of Heaven

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/people-go-to-hell-by-being-so-fearful.html

Anti-vaccine megachurch hit with measles epidemic, now offering free vaccinations

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An outbreak of the measles at Kenneth Copeland's Texas megachurch has gotten some attention because (1) measles is something children are generally vaccinated for, these days and (2) Kenneth Copeland is, of course, an anti-vaccine crackpot. In what seems to be yet another bitterly ironic attempt by God to teach noisy religious fundamentalists what-for, the church has thus become the epicenter of a small but worrisome outbreak that has so far infected 10 and resulted in the Department of State Health Services issuing an alert spanning North Texas.

That has megachurch pastors doing a bit of fancy dancin', with Pastor Terri Pearson (Copeland's daughter) walking back their leader's anti-vaccination stance to explain to the congregation that no, God does not really want your children to contract a potentially dangerous disease that vaccinations have all but licked because duh.

"There are a lot of people that think the Bible -- we talk about walking by faith -- it leaves out things such as, I don't know, people just get strange. But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law.

Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious. And the interesting thing of it, it wasn't a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood…."

See there? Even back in the before-times, people were smart enough to know that if you could do a very simple thing in order to Not Die, you probably ought to do that thing and not just trust that all of God's various plagues and viruses had built-in piety detectors that would run away when they got a taste of the likes of religious you.

Helpfully, the church now states that it was an unclean outsider that brought this evil into their midst, which is a bit of a cop-out:

Eagle Mountain International Church, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, released a statement Tuesday that said a visitor attended a service who had been overseas and was exposed to measles.

“Therefore the congregation, staff at Kenneth Copeland Ministries and the daycare center on the property were exposed through that contact,” the statement said.

Which is, of course, how epidemics work. Somebody goes somewhere and brings back a something that none of the other somebodies have an immunity to, infecting them all and allowing the something to spread ever-further. By vaccinating yourself and your children, you are not only making sure your family does not get the disease in question, you are also making sure that your family is not a disease-riddled pus vector oozing easily preventable plague onto all the other people in your community, causing you to be scorned as an "outsider" and the state department of health to issue up bulletins specifically naming you and your community as the disease-riddled pus vectors in question and warning your fellow human beings to wash their hands a lot if they have to come in contact with you.

And that, children, is why the church run by an anti-vaccination crank is now holding free vaccination clinics in apparent contradiction to the beliefs of said crank. Curiously, there doesn't seem to be any word from Copeland himself; barring other evidence we can only assume that the rest of the church leadership locked him in a nice, sturdy cupboard for a while?