{"id":231852,"date":"2021-04-17T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=231852"},"modified":"2021-04-18T07:54:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-18T07:54:57","slug":"vaccine-passports-christians-awake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=231852","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine Passports: Christians awake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Fantom \u2013 April 16, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Normally obedient to their leaders, organised Christians are generally reluctant to speak out against their Establishment. The Church of England has traditionally supported the British Establishment in their wars. Indeed, the supreme leader of the church is the Queen, and the church has representatives in the House of Lords.<\/h4>\n

On one occasion my group, Keep Talking, held a meeting in a church hall in central London, for a talk by Israeli Jew Miko Peled. The church people were very co-operative, and even produced a poster announcing the meeting, which they placed at the entrance. Following the meeting, we were amazed to discover that the rector had subsequently issued a public apology for the meeting, following what looked like intimidation from the Zionist lobby; a photo of a man holding an Israeli flag outside the church entrance was a good hint as to what was going on. The vicar claimed he had full support from his superiors. Quite clearly the rank and file members were supportive of the Palestinian cause, but the hierarchy of the church was giving in to pressure. I wrote up the incident in The Unz Review under the title \u2018The Church of England Apologises for Talk on Palestine<\/a>\u2019<\/span>.<\/h4>\n

During the current COVID crisis, I have been aware of only one religious group that has been campaigning for the truth, and that was Christian Voice<\/span><\/a>, though there may be some others. I know some Christians who have broken away from their eclesiastical organisations and are campaigning as individuals. Clearly, there is widespread support amongst Christians in the UK for the Palestinian cause. Yet it seems that the top dogs in the church organisations have been indifferent to the Fascist-Communist takeover that we are currently witnessing.<\/h4>\n

However, it seems that now Christians in the UK are waking up. An \u2018Open Letter from Christian Leaders to the Prime Minister Concerning Vaccine Passport Proposals<\/a>\u2019<\/span>, launched this month (April 2021) has so far been signed by 1231 Christian leaders in the UK. They are overwhelmingly from local Christian leaders, presumably representing by-and-large local Christian opinion. The full text of the open letter is:<\/h4>\n

To: The Prime Minister Boris Johnson<\/h4>\n

April 2021<\/h4>\n

Dear Prime Minister,<\/h4>\n

As Christian leaders across a range of denominations, we continue to pray at this time for your government \u201cand all in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity\u201d (1 Timothy 2:2).<\/h4>\n

However, we write to you concerning an area of the most serious concern, namely the potential introduction into our society of so-called \u201cvaccine passports\u201d which have also been referred to as \u201cCOVID-status certificates\u201d and \u201cfreedom passes\u201d. We are wholly opposed to this suggestion and wish to make three points about the potential consideration of any scheme of this type.<\/h4>\n

Firstly, to make vaccination the basis of whether someone is allowed entry to a venue, or participation in an activity, makes no logical sense in terms of protecting others. If the vaccines are highly effective in preventing significant disease, as seems to be the evidence from trial results to date, then those who have been vaccinated have already received protection; there is no benefit to them of other people being vaccinated. Further, since vaccines do not prevent infection per se<\/em> even a vaccinated person could in theory carry and potentially pass on the virus, so to decide someone\u2019s \u201csafe non-spreader\u201d status on the basis of proof of their immunity to disease is spurious.<\/h4>\n

Secondly, the introduction of vaccine passports would constitute an unethical form of coercion and violation of the principle of informed consent. People may have various reasons for being unable or unwilling to receive vaccines currently available including, for some Christians, serious issues of conscience related to the ethics of vaccine manufacture or testing. We risk creating a two-tier society, a medical apartheid in which an underclass of people who decline vaccination are excluded from significant areas of public life. There is also a legitimate fear that this scheme would be the thin end of the wedge leading to a permanent state of affairs in which COVID vaccine status could be expanded to encompass other forms of medical treatment and perhaps even other criteria beyond that. This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens\u2019 lives. As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics.<\/h4>\n

Finally, as Christian leaders we wish to state that we envisage no circumstances in which we could close our doors to those who do not have a vaccine passport, negative test certificate, or any other \u201cproof of health\u201d. For the Church of Jesus Christ to shut out those deemed by the state to be social undesirables would be anathema to us and a denial of the truth of the Gospel. The message we preach is given by God for all people and consists in nothing other than the free gift of grace offered in Christ Jesus, with the universal call to repentance and faith in him. To deny people entry to hear this life-giving message and to receive this life-giving ministry would be a fundamental betrayal of Christ and the Gospel. Sincere Christian churches and organisations could not do this, and as Christian leaders we would be compelled to resist any such Act of Parliament vigorously.<\/h4>\n

We draw your attention to the recent Judicial Review overturning the Scottish Government\u2019s ban on public worship, which demonstrates that such disproportionate prevention of the right to worship is a clear infringement under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights. We cannot see how any attempt to prevent people gathering for worship on the basis of either testing or non-vaccination would not similarly be ruled to be a breach. We agree with those members of Parliament who have already voiced opposition to this proposal: that it would be divisive, discriminatory and destructive to introduce any such mandatory health certification into British society. We call on the government to assert strongly and clearly that it will not contemplate this illiberal and dangerous plan, not now and not ever.<\/h4>\n

Yours sincerely,<\/h4>\n

There follows a list of the signatories. It will be interesting to see what effect this open letter will have, not only on government policy, but also on those in charge of the larger Christian heirarchies. It will also be interesting to see how many of the church establishments are influenced by the sort of lobbying that we have experience of in Keep Talking.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally obedient to their church leaders, it appears that Christians in the UK are beginning to stir. Ian Fantom explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":231854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231855,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231852\/revisions\/231855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/231854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}