Editor’s Note: For the first part of this article, where Dr. Caneday frames the issue of Covid vaccines as they relate to the Christian conscience, click here.
For laughs, humorists like Groucho Marx (1905–76) spoke of “military intelligence.” Today, talk of “government integrity” would be worthy of the same mockery were it not for the gravity of the topic. Attentive Americans noted that on January 26, 2020, Anthony Fauci was asked concerning the virus arriving from China, “Should [Americans] be scared?” He responded, “I don’t think so. . . . It’s a very, very low risk to the United States, but it’s something we, as public health officials, need to take very seriously.” Five days later, President Trump banned all travel from China. Promptly, presidential candidate Joe Biden twisted a concern for national health into racism and alarmism: “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia—hysterical xenophobia—and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science.” Again, on March 8, 2020, during a CBS 60 Minutes interview, Fauci assured Americans:
There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences—people keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face.
Then within a month, the CDC called for cloth facemasks “in public settings when around people outside their household.”
Citizenship in God’s Kingdom Obligates Us to Question and Verify Whether to Obey Edicts from Governing Officials
All Christians have dual citizenship. We are American citizens, but our citizenship primarily is in God’s Kingdom. As citizens of God’s Kingdom, we must obey God’s Holy Word without hesitation and with resolute belief. But this is not the case toward government officials—whether local, state, or federal. Blind trust in governing officials is always foolish and dangerous. Over recent decades, many citizens’ disposition toward government statements has evolved from “trust, but verify” to “verify, then trust,” and finally to a prudential “doubt until proven reliable.”[1]
1. To counter the falsehoods that flood the media, Pastor David Schrock posted this needed blog article in November 2021: “Thou Shalt Not (Believe) Lie(s): Faithfulness in an Age of Fake News.”
Despite numerous reversals by public health officials, most magistrates issued decrees with penalties, ordering us to “stay at home,” to “mask our faces” in public, to suspend the commerce of private businesses, to shut down academic classrooms, to forsake extended family gatherings of funerals or celebrations, and to close our churches—thereby preventing us from congregating in worship to the Lord. What is our Christian responsibility in such instances? Are we simply to “submit”—as many have claimed—and to bear the scolding of others when we don’t?
Lamentably, many Christians (including pastors, parachurch leaders, and Evangelicals in government) have cited Romans 13 as the definitive response.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? (Rom. 13:1–3)
Despite asserting that Romans 13 obligates citizens to obey government closures of churches to avoid the spread of COVID-19, some qualify that the passage does not “command blind obedience.” Even so, many dismissed the claim that “being forced . . . by your employer” to receive a vaccine is a “matter of conscience.”
Why is it not obvious to all Christians that Romans 13:1–7 does not obligate us to obey governing officials even when their orders claim to be “working for the good of society”? Such claims should prompt wariness, as C. S. Lewis observes: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” Stephen Wellum rightly affirms that God ordains governments for our good and to be obeyed, but our obedience to them must always be in keeping with the truth. When governing officials stray from doing good and “demand that we act contrary to the truth by harming our bodies,” our duty is to disobey them to obey God (Acts 5:29).
Mandates Exposed a Dearth of Pastors Who Guard the Christian Conscience
Despite public health officials’ contradictory claims, unwarranted actions by governing officials exposed a dearth of mature, wise, and courageous evangelical pastors and leaders. Church leaders readily shuttered churches, required facemasks once churches resumed congregating, and failed to instruct parishioners concerning the sanctity of the conscience and the need to act from faith in response to employers who required experimental injections and who dismissed “religious exemption” appeals.
Is it not troubling that Rick Warren merged a magistrate’s demand with God’s commandment: “Wearing a mask is the great commandment—love your neighbor as yourself”? Is it not a sad irony that the former president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, Russell Moore, ignored the matter of “religious liberty” by advocating obedience to the judgments of public health officials who did not tell the truth and magistrates who issued in many cases arbitrary mandates? Is it simply a coincidence that, after admonishing Christians to submit to governing authorities (Rom. 13:1–7), the Apostle Paul instructs them that every act should be done from faith, including how we behave concerning disputable matters, or things that are amoral (Rom. 14:1–23)?
Thankfully, some pastors and leaders did resist, calling for Christians to carefully ponder the sanctity and freedom of the Christian conscience. In August 2021 Ben Purves published: “Vaccine Mandates and the Christian’s Liberty of Conscience: From 2021 to 1721 and Back Again.” In September 2021 David Schrock posted an insightful critique: “A Secular Sacrament: Why Mandates Violate Liberty of Conscience and Enforce a New Religion.” Joining these calls were many other faithful pastors of low-profile churches, most of whom escaped having their reputations besmirched on social media and blogs by busybodies who endorsed church closures and other intrusive government mandates. Likewise, many unheralded pastors taught their congregants the need to recognize that God has arranged his created world with different realms of ordered governance: (1) the individual, (2) the family, (3) the church, and (4) civil government.
“Love Your Neighbor” Requires Christians to “Act from Faith”
Given the sanctity of our individual consciences, what is our responsibility when employers or magistrates who grasp emergency powers and bypass the legislative process, impose mandates that require us to act on matters that are morally indifferent in themselves? Likewise, what should be a Christian’s response when one’s employer attempts to seize lordship over one’s conscience by making employment dependent upon violating one’s conscience? When we receive such orders, what is the first question we must ponder: to submit or not submit to the decree? No! Our first duty is to object when anyone seeks to impose prohibitions or commands that nullify our free consciences concerning things indifferent and consequently make it impossible to obey from faith. Thus, our first question must be whether we can obey the compulsory orders from faith—that is, honor the Lord by not violating our consciences.
God’s Word accounts for a classification of things that are in themselves morally indifferent (Rom. 14:1–23; 1 Cor. 8:1–13; 10:23–32). These are things God neither forbids nor commands, like what type of car to drive, whether to drink soda, what type of instrument to learn, whether to give gifts on birthdays, etc. To these, theologians apply the Greek word, adiaphora, meaning “things indifferent.” We must understand that “things indifferent” includes facemasks and vaccine injections. While these things are amoral (neither moral, nor immoral), nothing we do is ever morally indifferent or neutral. No matter how mundane our actions, including wearing a facemask or receiving an injection, they are all morally significant, for good or ill. Because we are moral agents in God’s creation, moral accountability is inescapable.
The Apostle Paul assures us that however ordinary or trivial our deeds may be, such as eating an apple, drinking lemonade, or mowing grass, every act we perform entails moral accountability. We must not do these activities casually or mindlessly, because to do so is to sin. Scripture calls us to do everything from faith that we might glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:17). Thus, all our actions are done either to God’s glory, or we sin against his glory.
Paul is not nitpicking or trivializing when he mentions eating, followed by this reminder: “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). Gluttonous devouring of food and drink is sinful (Prov. 23:2, 21). Thanklessness when receiving God’s gifts of nourishment is also sinful (1 Tim. 4:4–5). But neither of these is what Paul has in view in Romans 14:23. Instead, his concern throughout Romans 14 is the freedom of a Christian’s conscience. He argues that there is a right use and wrong use of inherently amoral things. Food is morally indifferent, neither holy nor unholy, but our eating is not amoral. Eating food is God-honoring only when done from faith. Yet not everyone has this knowledge that what we eat is inherently neither holy nor unholy (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1–2). For various reasons, some Christians, who are “weak in faith” or “weak in conscience,” regard certain foods and beverages as unclean and defiling if ingested (Rom. 14:1; 1 Cor. 8:7).
For all whose consciences are free, Paul insists we are obligated never to despise fellow believers who abstain from various indifferent things. Likewise, abstainers must not condemn anyone who, from a free conscience, does not abstain. God welcomes both, so to condemn another is to sin presumptuously (Rom. 14:1–4).
Of Food, Drink, Days, Facemasks, and Vaccines
What does a Christian’s conscientious pondering whether to eat, to drink, or to observe certain days have in common with determining whether to wear a medical facemask or to receive a vaccine injection? “Much in every way!”—with due credit to Paul (Rom. 3:2). If our ingesting food or drink and our observing of days must be done from faith, then our submission to orders to wear a medical mask or to receive the injection of a foreign agent into our bodies require no less conscientious consideration. Otherwise, we sin by acting from unbelief.
As with food and drink, God’s written Word neither commands nor prohibits the wearing of medical facemasks or the receiving of a vaccine, especially one that has not passed multiple years of testing and was initially released for the public only under Emergency Use Authorization (Pfizer and Moderna have been upgraded from this status as of January 2022). As with all other matters that God neither requires nor prohibits, what God’s Word commands is completely clear. The Lord God obligates us individually to ponder carefully whether we can act from faith and glorify God.
Concerning things disputable like the COVID vaccines, to avoid being condemned for one’s actions, Christians must learn how to converse with one another while privatizing their own actions. This is Paul’s wise admonition: “You, the faith you have, have it as your own before God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself in what he approves” (Rom. 14:22).[2] When Christians disagree about getting vaxxed or masked, we must each be fully convinced in our own minds, act in faith, refuse to violate our conscience (Rom. 14:5, 23), and purpose not to condemn one another (Rom. 14:1–4).
2. Author’s translation.
Following on this, pastors must avoid either endorsing or denouncing things that are amoral. Concerning a vaccine, in and of itself, he must never denounce it as sinful or pronounce it holy. It is neither. He must lead others to welcome one another and to guard the unity of believers against quarrelling (Rom. 14:1).
If an employer requires receiving a vaccine as a condition of continued employment, a Christian whose conscience objects for any reason is within one’s rights as a Christian and as a U.S. citizen to file for a religious exemption. It is not because Protestant Christianity condemns the use of vaccines wholesale. We heartily affirm the use of medicine (1 Tim 5:23) and that some vaccines have accomplished profound good. Rather, Christ’s Lordship obligates us never to violate our consciences—in this case, by putting what we believe to be harmful into our bodies—even if our employment is at stake.
Vaccines and facemasks are morally indifferent in themselves. Actions, however, are moral. Therefore, to receive vaccines into our bodies or wear masks on our faces is not a morally neutral matter. The same is true concerning every act, especially when the actions calling for careful consideration are commanded by fellow humans who must never be granted lordship over one’s Christian conscience. Our Creator has endowed us each with a sacred trust: our conscience. Because God requires all our actions to originate from faith, our duty is to guard and defend our own and others’ consciences concerning things indifferent from constraints by human dictates, including magistrates’ edicts (which they claim are for our own good).[3] Pastors and teachers are obligated, by the good news as it is in Jesus, to provide proper biblical instruction to assist their parishioners to guard their consciences against intruders who would burden them with commands that make no account of the Christian’s free conscience.
3. See my five-part blog series “Does Christian Love Obligate Us to Receive a COVID-19 Vaccine?”.
Of all people, America’s evangelical pastors and leaders should lead the resistance against governing authorities who forget their duty to uphold the whole U.S. Constitution, including the First Amendment, which derives from Scripture’s very own teachings concerning a free conscience:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
