Michelle Boorstein -
When famed televangelist Marcus Lamb died this week at 64 after contracting covid-19, a who’s who of conservative Christian leaders sent out regrets. Evangelist Franklin Graham said Lamb is now “experiencing heaven.” National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference head Samuel Rodriguez called him a “faithful follower of Jesus ... with a heart for the lost and broken.”
Absent was a painful truth: Lamb had led his global Christian network, Daystar, for months in spreading inaccurate information about coronavirus vaccines and instead promoting treatments that are not proven remedies. The vaccines, a May segment on Daystar said, falsely, are “killing your immune system.”
But the silence and unanswered questions by some Christian leaders, as well as Lamb’s family and network, sit atop what some experts say is a deep base of politics, conspiratorial thinking and a skepticism of anything that appears secular
And that makes frank discussion of Daystar’s activism against vaccines, even in the face of death, unlikely.
Robert Morris, the Dallas-area pastor whose Gateway Church will host Lamb’s funeral Monday, declined to comment on the topic. He “has not and will not engage in the medical debate or dialogue regarding vaccines,” Morris spokesman Lawrence Swicegood told The Washington Post in an email. “Those are personal choices, and one should consult medical advice from their doctor to make their own choice. As a church pastor his sermons at Gateway Church address spiritual issues and biblical content.”On social media, vaccine misinformation mixes with extreme faith
Daystar for months has hosted conspiracy theorists pressing unproven treatments for the virus, including some who framed vaccines and mandates as ungodly and satanic. Lamb and others featured on Daystar described the virus, vaccines and vaccine mandates as evidence of the devil trying to attack followers of a true God.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” Lamb’s son, Jonathan, said on the network last month about his father’s covid-19 bout, Relevant magazine reported this week. “The enemy,” he said, is angered by the promotion of vaccine alternatives. “And he’s doing everything he can to take down my dad.”
Pollsters say the religious group most reluctant to get vaccinated are White evangelicals. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation research out this week, 25 percent of that group say they still “definitely won’t” get vaccinated. About 14.5 percent of Americans are White evangelicals, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
Curtis Chang, a divinity school professor who last year launched the Christians and the Vaccine project, said the repulsion among evangelicals to vaccines is multilayered — and in some ways new.
“Built into conservative evangelical Christianity, at its best, is a critical stance towards all institutions. There is this belief: ‘Look, we follow Jesus, and all other loyalties have to be critically evaluated.’ Anything secular is held in immediate suspicion,” Chang said. “That impulse in evangelicalism has gotten so weaponized by a bunch of influences in politics, media and movements like the anti-vaccine movement. It adds a spiritualization of that suspicion, such that they see demonic forces. It’s so entangled.”New survey: Most U.S. churchgoers trust their clergy for covid vaccine guidance, but clergy aren’t really offering it
Graham, the son of Christian icon Billy Graham and president of Samaritan’s Purse, the huge humanitarian aid group, was slammed by some evangelicals in the spring after he urged people to get vaccinated and called the vaccines “pro-life.” Criticism came from people distrustful of medical institutions and those calling the vaccines “devilish” — or both.
Asked this week why he did not mention the vaccine issue in his tributes to Lamb, Franklin Graham wrote to The Post that he had noted that Lamb died of complications from the virus.
“I have been very clear about my support for vaccines. As a Christian, I am pro-life, and I believe vaccines are tools that are being used to save lives,” Graham wrote. “Of course, Daystar Television Network and millions of others have a different opinion, and even though we may disagree, I respect them. Like all medical treatments, vaccines are a personal choice.”
The issue can be explosive for businesses that serve vaccine skeptics. Some Christian media executives say they hear from many angry customers when they promote vaccines.
Dan Darling lost his job as spokesman for the National Religious Broadcasters in August after he publicly endorsed vaccines from an evangelical perspective. The NRB is a conservative-leaning group of Christian media professionals.
“While most evangelicals have seen the prudence and safety of the vaccines, there are many who are hesitant,” Darling wrote to The Post. “Part of the reason for this skepticism is a deep distrust of American institutions, many of which have failed in recent years. And part of the reason is misinformation. I’m saddened by the passing of Marcus Lamb. His ministry was very influential and was felt by millions around the world. We should mourn every death from COVID and pray for an end to this pandemic.”
Even Daystar, which devotes prominent space on its network and webpage to doubt about the vaccines, declined to comment when asked about this topic. A spokesperson declined to say whether Lamb was vaccinated.
Sarah Posner, a journalist who has written two books about the Christian right, said “the predominant theology” for watchers of networks such as Daystar — the second-biggest Christian network in the world, according to its competitor CBN — centers on life as a spiritual battle in which faith healing is possible.A pastor’s life depends on a coronavirus vaccine. Now he faces skeptics in his church.
“Marcus Lamb was seen by his audience as a very godly Christian figure who is telling them that the vaccines are bad and these [alternative treatments] are good and to do these things instead,” Posner said. “So how could he get covid? Because satanic forces are against his truth-telling and are trying to bring him down.” She added that secular politics is also an essential part of the picture for White evangelicals, who are overwhelmingly politically conservative. “If vaccines are being promoted by Democrats or a government controlled by Democrats, they must be bad.”
Chang, a former evangelical pastor, cites Pew Research polling showing that White evangelicals as recently as 2016 overwhelmingly favored vaccine mandates, at rates around 76 percent.
“It’s this extreme hijacking of the evangelical movement by these forces,” he said, adding that he does not expect Lamb’s death to change the segment of the vaccine-resistant. “It’s like a cult — you just revise and tweak the belief system to accommodate the new fact.”
Opinion by Nicole Hemmer -
At least five conservative radio hosts who warned their audiences against the vaccine have died of Covid in recent months. But the death of Marcus Lamb this week highlights a different network of misinformation that has nearly as broad a reach in conservative circles but receives far less attention in political media: conservative Christian broadcasters.
Marcus Lamb, a televangelist who founded the Daystar network and was a major source of Covid-19 misinformation, died after being hospitalized with the disease. Lamb's son, Jonathan, described his father's diagnosis as "a spiritual attack from the enemy... As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on in the pandemic and some of the ways to treat Covid, there's no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that, and he's doing everything he can to take down my dad." A statement from Daystar Television Network said in part, "The family asks at this time that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss, and they wish to express their deep love and gratitude for all those who prayed during Marcus's health battle. Continue to lift them up in prayer in the days ahead."
Those concerned about the effects of misinformation and disinformation have devoted a great deal of attention over the past two years to addressing the problem, especially as it relates to the pandemic and Covid vaccine: their focus tends to be on outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News, as well as the right-wing talk radio shows that clog the nation's airwaves.
This parallel network of media is both popular and profitable. Daystar, the network Lamb co-founded in 1993, claimed $233 million in assets in 2011, and is carried on nearly every major satellite and cable provider in the US. Among peer outlets, it was not alone in its reach: Trinity Broadcasting Network is even larger, and Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network produces some of the most well-known Christian shows in the country, including The 700 Club. Add to that a cohort of national and local radio programs dedicated to conservative Christian broadcasting, and you have a network of media outlets that enormous audiences of Americans consume on a regular basis, and that most political outlets tend to ignore.
There are reasons that this sector of conservative media gets overlooked. The first is historical: conservative Christian broadcasts with a political bent have been around for nearly a century, with roots in the radio show of Father Charles Coughlin, who moved across the political spectrum before settling on a vitriolic anti-New Deal, antisemitic politics by the late 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of hardline anti-communist radio preachers emerged, with programs like Billy James Hargis's Christian Crusade and Carl McIntire's 20th Century Reformation Hour.
Those shows arose alongside more traditional right-wing radio that focused more tightly on politics, shows like The Manion Forum and The Dan Smoot Report that launched in the early 1950s and grew in influence throughout the 1960s. But while the ideas and audiences of the religious and political shows overlapped -- they all warned about the twin evils of Soviet communism and US liberalism -- the institutions they built with the influence they wielded were distinctly separate. The religious broadcasters were embedded with churches and conservative evangelical organizations, while the political shows developed ties with the Republican Party and more secular operations.
They also relied on different forms of authority. Political shows often rooted their arguments in ideological frameworks rooted in assumptions about the benefits of traditional hierarchies, conservative interpretations of founding documents and ideas, and the fundamental correctness of Christian and western values. For religious shows, the appeals were more spiritual: preachers claimed to have spiritual gifts and a direct connection to God.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of an organized and active religious right in the Republican Party began blurring the lines between religious and secular broadcasters on the right. No one embodied that gray area more than Pat Robertson, whose Christian Broadcasting Network represented one of the earliest and most successful forms of televangelism in the US. Making inroads into cable broadcasting in the 1960s, Robertson created a televangelist empire, one that made him wealthy, famous, and politically powerful.
The son of one of Virginia's staunch segregationist senators, Robertson was no stranger to politics. Still, his decision in 1987 to run for the Republican nomination for president had the potential to demolish the walls between televangelism and Republican Party politics.
But voters -- even the increasingly evangelical Republican base -- did not buy the argument that preaching was a path to the presidency. He had a hard time overcoming what TV host John McLaughlin called the "wacko factor," the mix of unusual religious practices and outrageous political statements Robertson had engaged in over the years. In addition to speaking in tongues and engaging in faith healings, he had recently called non-Christians "termites" and said only Christians and Jews should be eligible to hold office in the US. Add to that a series of televangelist scandals in the 1980s that didn't implicate Robertson but did tarnish his profession -- and both Robertson and religious broadcasting slipped out of the mainstream and into a subculture largely invisible to nonevangelicals.
Yet just because few people were paying attention to religious broadcasters did not mean they lost their influence -- or their interest in politics. The Christian Broadcasting Network received White House press credentials in the 1980s, and officials from the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations appeared on its shows. In fact, for all the focus on the cozy relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News, he and his team fostered close ties with the Christian Broadcasting Network well before he ran for president. In his first year in office, Trump sat for more interviews with the network than with CNN, ABC or CBS.
The Trump administration regularly turned to media personalities like Christian broadcasters who embraced Trump's message while relying on a different kind of authority than mainstream journalism or, during the pandemic, credible scientists. Conservative religious broadcasters were perfect for this: because viewers often understood this programming as an extension of worship practices, they trusted the preachers as a matter of faith and divine intercession..
That was true both when preachers like Marcus Lamb encouraged his viewers to vote for Donald Trump (citing Trump's willingness to appoint conservative judges who might overturn abortion rights and same-sex marriage laws) and when he began telling them in the summer of 2020 to be suspicious of any Covid-19 vaccinations. Over the course of the next year, the network developed a significant archive of Covid misinformation, not only airing anti-vaccination misinformation but promoting unproven prophylactics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as replacements for the vaccines.
Conspiratorial misinformation has long been part of radio and television preaching, from Coughlin's false rantings about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to McIntire's opposition to water fluoridation to Pat Robertson's bizarre warnings of a "new world order" run by the Illuminati and the Freemasons under directions from Satan. In that context, Lamb's pandemic misinformation seems predictable, even mild. But for him, it came at a much higher price: a life that ended at age 64 from the disease he convinced himself -- and many of his followers -- could not harm him as much as the vaccine that likely could have saved his life.
At least five conservative radio hosts who warned their audiences against the vaccine have died of Covid in recent months. But the death of Marcus Lamb this week highlights a different network of misinformation that has nearly as broad a reach in conservative circles but receives far less attention in political media: conservative Christian broadcasters.
Marcus Lamb, a televangelist who founded the Daystar network and was a major source of Covid-19 misinformation, died after being hospitalized with the disease. Lamb's son, Jonathan, described his father's diagnosis as "a spiritual attack from the enemy... As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on in the pandemic and some of the ways to treat Covid, there's no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that, and he's doing everything he can to take down my dad." A statement from Daystar Television Network said in part, "The family asks at this time that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss, and they wish to express their deep love and gratitude for all those who prayed during Marcus's health battle. Continue to lift them up in prayer in the days ahead."
Those concerned about the effects of misinformation and disinformation have devoted a great deal of attention over the past two years to addressing the problem, especially as it relates to the pandemic and Covid vaccine: their focus tends to be on outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News, as well as the right-wing talk radio shows that clog the nation's airwaves.
This parallel network of media is both popular and profitable. Daystar, the network Lamb co-founded in 1993, claimed $233 million in assets in 2011, and is carried on nearly every major satellite and cable provider in the US. Among peer outlets, it was not alone in its reach: Trinity Broadcasting Network is even larger, and Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network produces some of the most well-known Christian shows in the country, including The 700 Club. Add to that a cohort of national and local radio programs dedicated to conservative Christian broadcasting, and you have a network of media outlets that enormous audiences of Americans consume on a regular basis, and that most political outlets tend to ignore.
There are reasons that this sector of conservative media gets overlooked. The first is historical: conservative Christian broadcasts with a political bent have been around for nearly a century, with roots in the radio show of Father Charles Coughlin, who moved across the political spectrum before settling on a vitriolic anti-New Deal, antisemitic politics by the late 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of hardline anti-communist radio preachers emerged, with programs like Billy James Hargis's Christian Crusade and Carl McIntire's 20th Century Reformation Hour.
Those shows arose alongside more traditional right-wing radio that focused more tightly on politics, shows like The Manion Forum and The Dan Smoot Report that launched in the early 1950s and grew in influence throughout the 1960s. But while the ideas and audiences of the religious and political shows overlapped -- they all warned about the twin evils of Soviet communism and US liberalism -- the institutions they built with the influence they wielded were distinctly separate. The religious broadcasters were embedded with churches and conservative evangelical organizations, while the political shows developed ties with the Republican Party and more secular operations.
They also relied on different forms of authority. Political shows often rooted their arguments in ideological frameworks rooted in assumptions about the benefits of traditional hierarchies, conservative interpretations of founding documents and ideas, and the fundamental correctness of Christian and western values. For religious shows, the appeals were more spiritual: preachers claimed to have spiritual gifts and a direct connection to God.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of an organized and active religious right in the Republican Party began blurring the lines between religious and secular broadcasters on the right. No one embodied that gray area more than Pat Robertson, whose Christian Broadcasting Network represented one of the earliest and most successful forms of televangelism in the US. Making inroads into cable broadcasting in the 1960s, Robertson created a televangelist empire, one that made him wealthy, famous, and politically powerful.
The son of one of Virginia's staunch segregationist senators, Robertson was no stranger to politics. Still, his decision in 1987 to run for the Republican nomination for president had the potential to demolish the walls between televangelism and Republican Party politics.
But voters -- even the increasingly evangelical Republican base -- did not buy the argument that preaching was a path to the presidency. He had a hard time overcoming what TV host John McLaughlin called the "wacko factor," the mix of unusual religious practices and outrageous political statements Robertson had engaged in over the years. In addition to speaking in tongues and engaging in faith healings, he had recently called non-Christians "termites" and said only Christians and Jews should be eligible to hold office in the US. Add to that a series of televangelist scandals in the 1980s that didn't implicate Robertson but did tarnish his profession -- and both Robertson and religious broadcasting slipped out of the mainstream and into a subculture largely invisible to nonevangelicals.
Yet just because few people were paying attention to religious broadcasters did not mean they lost their influence -- or their interest in politics. The Christian Broadcasting Network received White House press credentials in the 1980s, and officials from the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations appeared on its shows. In fact, for all the focus on the cozy relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News, he and his team fostered close ties with the Christian Broadcasting Network well before he ran for president. In his first year in office, Trump sat for more interviews with the network than with CNN, ABC or CBS.
The Trump administration regularly turned to media personalities like Christian broadcasters who embraced Trump's message while relying on a different kind of authority than mainstream journalism or, during the pandemic, credible scientists. Conservative religious broadcasters were perfect for this: because viewers often understood this programming as an extension of worship practices, they trusted the preachers as a matter of faith and divine intercession..
That was true both when preachers like Marcus Lamb encouraged his viewers to vote for Donald Trump (citing Trump's willingness to appoint conservative judges who might overturn abortion rights and same-sex marriage laws) and when he began telling them in the summer of 2020 to be suspicious of any Covid-19 vaccinations. Over the course of the next year, the network developed a significant archive of Covid misinformation, not only airing anti-vaccination misinformation but promoting unproven prophylactics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as replacements for the vaccines.
Conspiratorial misinformation has long been part of radio and television preaching, from Coughlin's false rantings about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to McIntire's opposition to water fluoridation to Pat Robertson's bizarre warnings of a "new world order" run by the Illuminati and the Freemasons under directions from Satan. In that context, Lamb's pandemic misinformation seems predictable, even mild. But for him, it came at a much higher price: a life that ended at age 64 from the disease he convinced himself -- and many of his followers -- could not harm him as much as the vaccine that likely could have saved his life.
1 comment:
Speaking as a conservative evangelical--these are two great articles. Nice work.
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