Cool Zone Media.
I'm Stephen Manicelli. I'm a journalist in Dallas and an occasional contributor to Cool Zone Media. And this is episode three of Anti VAXs America, a special five parts series exploring anti vaccination beliefs in the United States through the lens of the West Texas measles outbreak that has since spread to several other states in the nation and claimed three lives. One of those lives was the daughter of a man named Peter, a member of a Mennonite community
in West Texas. For Peter, the death of his child was basically God's will. He did an interview in which he described that if it's God's plan, you know, that is basically what he has to accept. But he also continued to oppose vaccines, and his wife said that they
wouldn't recommend them to other parents. Now, Mennonites have been singled out in a lot of the coverage about this measles outbreak, given that the outbreak has centered in their community in West Texas, and there's been a lot of pushback with regard to the idea that Mennonites broadly speaking, are opposed to vaccinations. There's nothing explicit in their theology
or worldview that opposes vaccinations on principle. But these are individuals who hold strongly held beliefs regarding their religion, regarding their theology, and what they believe is right for them to do for their families and for their communities. It's not merely a few sectarian Mennonite communities in the United States that are hesitant to vaccinate their children in this way. It's actually a much bigger problem among what we could call.
You know, some people might say mainstream evangelical Christians. Others might specifically refer to it as non denominational charismatic Christianity. But no matter which way you cut it, there is a clear and observable relationship between conservative Christianity and anti
vaccination beliefs. Now, as a journalist in Texas, I've done my fair share of reporting on conservative Christianity, particularly the highly politicized strains of it that are popular in the Lone Star State and in North Texas where I live. I didn't grow up in one of these communities. I'm an outsider, So to help me unpack how conservative Christianity became so intertwined with this sort of anti vaccination movement. I brought in a special guest with whom you may be familiar.
Hi, I'm Garrison Davis. I write about politics, extremism, and how much fun it is to be in the twenty first century for cool Zone Media.
So, you know, in terms of what I hope to hear from you, I mean, let's go back to your upbringing. Tell me a little bit about the community you grew up in and the sort of religious system that you were brought up in.
Yeah, so I grew up in a non denominational evangelical community that was largely at least on like the leadership side was transplanted from Texas to a well, not a small town because it's actually the biggest town in the in the province, but a relatively medium sized city, I
guess in Saskatchewan. Definitely an interesting mix of like Canadian customs matched with the whole Texas vibe, but definitely the type of like Bible belts, post fire and brimstone Christianity that came out of Texas was like the dominant form of Christianity, which was like preached from the pulpit and like influenced all other life choices beyond just your Sunday morning service or your Saturday night service, or your Wednesday night service or your Tuesday morning service, et cetera.
So let's let's dig a little bit more into the character of it. So, you know, in tech, we've got you know, a wide variety of congregations and sub sets and non denominational Christianity is absolutely the fastest growing flavor of Christianity, not just in Texas but in the United States. There's some good research about this, and some people describe it as evangelical, some people describe it as charismatic. Sometimes both of those descriptions are accurate. There could be some
differences between these types of churches. Some of them are focused a lot on like things like prosperity gospel, Others maybe towards more Southern Baptists esque style of preaching and theology, and some really lean into maybe more like Pentecostal style beliefs in miracles and supernatural power of God to directly
intervene in people's lives and things like that. So, you know, how would you characterize your church and the community that you were part of, Like, you know, was it common for people to talk about spiritual healing or sort of those miraculous interventions totally.
Yeah, yeah, no, it was. It was kind of like a Christian Chile. We certainly had some prosperity gospel elements. You had some like Southern Baptist elements certainly when it comes to like social views. But yeah, no, like the spirit healing aspect, huge, huge people will get like healed
during services. People would like faint and pass out. They would like bring in preachers from the States, or would go go on these big like tours where you're you know, both trying to like recruit people and then also like offer these like miraculous healing services during these like you know, five hour long sermons. So yeah, certainly a Pentecostal element was pretty dominant, combined with like you know, focus on the family type stuff, some Southern Baptist stuff that makes sense.
I mean, that's tracks with what I expected and the sort of things that I see around here. Maybe you're familiar with Kenneth Copeland.
Kenneth Copeland is how do I try this? So the main pastor of the church I was from is the uncle of a pastor in Oklahoma who used to run a church called Church on the Move, and he is very close personal friends with Kenneth Copeland, and I think I've seen Copeland a few times in person, like dinners and stuff. He was a pretty regular figure, I believe preached at the church a few times I was younger, but I know my dad's met him through works. My
dad worked for the church. And yeah, so no, very very Kenneth Copeland d vibes.
Well, that makes sense because Kenneth Copeland, you know, he's not only the wealthiest pastor in the United States, but he's one of the most influential as well. And definitely in North Texas where his home base is. He's got a big church in you know, Terrant County, and I've been to his annual convention, which is special time. So you know, I totally understand the vibe that you're talking about.
Then it also illustrates the vast reach of someone like Kenneth Copeland for it to be all the way up in Saskatchewan.
And like the interconnectedness because like the pastor of my old church is American, born in Texas, is currently in America because he's in hiding from Canadian authorities related to a series of court cases and criminal complaints about abuse in this church. So he's currently he's currently fled and is in hiding somewhere in the US, hiding from His Majesty's Royal Court.
Incredible.
Yes, he's also my step grandfather.
I'll get back to my conversation with Gahre here shortly, but first an ad break. So before we go any further, we need to talk a little bit more about Kenneth copel One. So he's the wealthiest and one of the most influential pastors in the United States, perhaps the world,
but he's also a highly political one. He's affiliated with the Charismatic Christian movement, which is one of the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing Christian movements in the United States, and early on he lent his support to Donald Trump in Donald Trump's first campaign in twenty sixteen. Three years before that, in twenty thirteen, the church led by his daughter Terry, which is called Eagle Mountain International, was at
the center of a measle's outbreak. At the time, the church and its leaders were criticized for preaching against vaccinations, and even as they set up vaccine clinics at the back of the church. When things got really bad, they continued to speak out against vaccinations in this way and implying to their flock that they need to place their faith not in medicine but in prayer and in God.
And when the COVID nineteen pandemic was first kicking off in America, Kenneth Copeland spoke of the disease as a sort of tool of Satan, but he actually called for vaccinations. Interestingly enough, I execute judgment on you, COVID nineteen.
I execute judgment on you, Satan. You destroyer, you killer, you get out, you would break coper, you get confiscation.
I demand judgment on you. I modh man, I demand a vaccination of Commadien.
Yes.
But Copeland's belief in spiritual healing and his ties to the Trump administration seemingly led him to quickly return to his old antics. He preached that COVID would be over soon because God would destroy it.
OVID nineteen.
I'm go.
God, on you, on you.
You are destroying forever, and you will never be back and you'll never lead that.
Thank you hard, Thank you a God. Let it happen.
Pause this.
Over the course of many sermons, Copeland compared the virus to the flu. He suggested people who attended his services could be healed in person, and asserted that the president's opponents had quote opened the door for the pandemic with their quote displays of hate against him. Later that fall, with the pandemic fully raging across America, Copeland still held
his annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. In August of twenty twenty, a television news report showed that no one at the conference was wearing a mask, and in September twenty twenty one, Copeland begged his view was to help him fund the purchase of a new private jet that would allow him to avoid travel restrictions that were still in place around COVID nineteen and requiring vaccinations. He compared those vaccination requirements for flying to the satanic quote mark
of the beasts. By the time that I attended Copeland's annual convention in twenty twenty three, he had embraced the likes of Mike Lindell, the election conspiracist who has promoted junk cures for COVID while sewing doubts without vaccines. So you know, I didn't grow up in one of these communities. I had been to some megachurch sermons and services in
the past. I knew people who went to places like Gateway Church, which is a huge one here in North Texas, very politically involved in their founding pastor was just implicated in you know, child.
Sex abuse, many such cases, many such cases.
And as an outsider in my mind, I directly link sort of belief in spiritual healing with vaccine has it? And see, yeah, because you know, there's there's this sense that will, if God can heal you, why would you need to rely on something like a vaccine, But also that you know, you need to place your faith in God more than man or the government.
It is more that thing. It's that by electing to get a vaccine, that demonstrates that you do not have faith in God like it's it's it's it's more so like a larger theological issue beyond just like you know, we don't we don't trust the science like I trust
God more than the science. It's that like even electing to do that demonstrates this deeper, like more core belief that you do not have the faith in God that is adequate in order to like take care of you your body and whatever He may have planned for you, perhaps that includes getting measles and you'll you'll work through that maybe or not, you know, as we're seeing now in Texas a lot. But yeah, like it's it's not
just about like medical skepticism, science skepticism. It is this deeper aspect that that more relates to someone's like individual relationship and faith in God.
So when you were growing up, I mean, did you pick up at all on this sort of skepticism with regard to not you know, I guess modern science broadly, but also medical interventions totally?
Totally Yeah, No, I mean like literally this the school that I went to, which was which was a part of this church, like I was, I was I was taught from from like an American creationist curriculum for like the first I guess like seven grades called ACE. There was big ACE conferences that that like the teachers and my dad would travel to the States for every year.
But yeah, like this stuff is literally like taught to all the kids because in order to go to this church you have to also send your kids to the school. You are raised in this and like you have no choice in the matter, and that that just becomes like what is real? Like that just is reality, Like it's it's not. It's not that there's like an alter alternative to that. It's like like a nine year old kid, like that just is what the world is. So like
what you're reading those textbooks, that just is truth. It's very isolated environments, like you're you you aren't really fully aware that there's like an alternative to that, and if there is, it's like, what's the word? We didn't even use words like like like atheists. I think secular was
was maybe the word. That was maybe the word that they use, Like you can't you can't like listen to like secular music or like be aware of like you know, like like secular culture because that's satanic or it can lead you away from God or it's a distraction from God, you know that that sort of thing. But no, like yeah, it's this is built in and like yeah, you know, very basic creationist stuff like answers in Genesis being like the highest Bastion of science, which is like a fake
science website touted by creationists and evangelicals. But this also extends to medical science as well. The same way you believe the Earth is six thousand years old, you maybe also don't believe in like cancer treatment right.
So to the extent that you can recall if you know, or you know, if you're willing to share. Like, do you recall if you were vaccinated as a child.
I was not. No, The first time I got vaccinated was as an older teenager when I gained medical autonomy and I was like, hey, I should probably get vaccinated. Huh okay, because both like unplugging from these takes time. Like I think my family got away from this community when I was like eleven or twelve, But because I'm like the oldest of all my siblings, this was the most like baked into me, more so than my other siblings. So like, even if you like get away from this physically,
you still have to like mentally detalk. You have to realize that you were kind of in a cult, and then you have to like deprogram yourself, and that like takes years. So like I didn't like fully disconnect from this style of Christianity and like, you know, Christianity in general until like a few years after. So by the time I was like a you know, middle to older teenager is when I started like sort this type of stuff out and eventually got caught up on those vaccines.
Luckily I never got chicken pox, although people did throw chicken pox parties when I was a kid, which I can recall the concept of, especially if like a baby or a toddler or even like you know, like a like like like a ten year old has chicken pox. No one else's of course, is vaccinated for this in
this whole community. So if someone has chicken pox, you will not just isolate them, You will actually encourage other people to like hang out and play together with the express intent of getting sick yourself as a form of like natural immunization. And I think I was offered to go to one of these chicken pox parties quote unquote, I think as like a ten year old or something. Declined, Wow.
I mean, good on you for at least having that wherewithal So, and you know, Saskatchewan and Canada are different than the United States and Texas, and medical exemptions, exemptions of conscience or religious medical exemptions are are a big thing. And there's actually a bill in the state House right now to expand that sort of thing with regard to vaccines. I mean, was that something that was going on up there? I mean, was just because were you in a private school?
You were kind of outside of any sort of regime of accountability.
Yeah, we were in the private school, and I know people who worked in the private school did like lobbying in the province to like keep their medical freedom, you know, intact to make sure the state does not interfere. Though I do remember when my family moved to the States, throughout the immigration process, we had to fill out a lot of those like religious exemption forms because you're supposed to get vaccinated and make sure you're not carrying like
tuberculosis when you immigrate to a new country. But even for those, there is like religious exemptions that if you have enough money, you can pay.
For When was this like roughly timeline when you know, when you were a child, when you're in private school? Was the broad range?
This is? This is like the knots right, this is the early two thousands. Yeah, I mean, like I'm in my early twenties now.
Vaccine hes intency has clearly been a part of certain conservative Christian congregations for some time.
Something I remember happening kind of because of like what my parents were involved with at the time. Is you know, there's on one side, this whole like theological side of like not wanting to do vaccines or like unnecessary medical
procedures because of your faith in God. On the other hand, kind of around like twenty ten, and like you know, a few years before and after, we started to really see kind of that aspect along with like the hippie mom Facebook group aspect kind of collide right and like this healthy you know, like organic natural like hippie mom thing used to be more associated with, like you know, people on the left, especially in the nineties, and you started to see these two kind of polls converge around
twenty ten. Because this is like what happened with like my two parents at the time, where like my dad was more in the theological side, then my mom was kind of more on like the the kind of like crunchy side of things. And these things like combined this new breed of evangelical Christianity that you see as like very popular right now with like the tradwife angle combined with like you know, crunchy like naturalistic organic stuff that used to be left wing and is now like very
very right wing. You had a very very like conservative like family values coded which which did not really used to be the case as much, and that's kind of like strengthened the anti VACS hold on this like section of the population.
So, I mean, this is incredible. You were part of a church that basically had connections to Texas by way of Kenneth Copeland, and you had mentioned, you know, kind of having a crunchy, more maybe left leaning mom. How apparent in retrospect was sort of the political nature of your church? Was it particularly political? You had mentioned lobbying, but you know, lobbying isn't necessarily partisan.
They preached, like Glenn Beck from the pulpit, like very very conservative, openly conservative, like that is like the Christian godly correct path. I guess like this is where it's tied in a bit more with some of like the some of like the Southern Baptist these type stuff, right where you have like anti gay conversion therapy like camps that they can send people to. Like no, like this is very very like Bill O'Reilly, very very Glenn Beck like that was that was the moment, right, this is
this is two thousand and eight. The Antichrist has just been elected president of the United States, possibly literally, and even though they're up in Canada, this is still like concern number one on the like the transnational like Christian Christian world, so no, like extremely openly conservative to the point where it is it is being preached alongside the words of Jesus and Paul.
You had a front row seat to sort of a shifting ground because you know, Southern Baptist Christian Christianity is kind of declining and it has I think has been supplanted by this quote unquote non denominational, totally set of networks. You know, there's a there's a term that some scholars use independent network Christianity where the leaders of the churches, they are non denominational, They're not a part of a hierarchy.
They answer to no higher power other than God, you know, so their interpretation of God is basically the rule or or it is the authority.
It's like a post Billy Graham era. Oh yeah, like networked churches, but are not part of like a coherent structure. They're kind of like terrorist cells. Essentially, they offer very similarly to like a cell network of terrorists. Try to remember what the with Like the most wild faith healings I've seen are the thing I think people were faith healed the most for is probably back pain a lot
of back pain gets faith yield. Of course the right the odd person who's able to claim that, like you know, a faith healing cured their cancer, who then probably died three years later of cancer. But you also get faith field for a bunch of like smaller ailments, right and so, And someone will walk up to you, put hands on you. You might start convulsing like this like psychosomatic thing. Sometimes you'll pass out. A lot of people pass out. It
becomes like this performative thing, like subconsciously. I remember there was there was people they were stationed where people would pass out with with little I think they're called modesty blankets, so that when they pass out, maybe your shirt will come up a little bit and someone will see a little bit of tummy. You can walk over and put the blanket over as you're recovering from you from your healing session. All this is happening during like essentially like
an acoustic concert. So it creates a very peculiar vibe of people kind of poorly play musical instruments as other people like walk through like an auditorium and just start like passing out, and you just get this pile of bodies and as a as a ten year old? Do you think this is totally normal and fine? And then you later realize why you're into so much weird shit? Oops.
Something I also covered in a previous episode in this series was a quote from the Seattle Public Health commissioner during a smallpox outbreak in the early nineteen hundreds. He called Seattle hotbed for anti vaccination and Christian science and various anti medical cults. So you know, we are kind of truly like reliving a period of history.
I hate it when times a flat circle. This sucks.
Why should I live in history?
Huh?
I don't want to know anything anymore.
This is a world where nothing is solved.
And someone once told me time is a flat circle.
Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do over and over and over again.
Lone Star man, fucking Lone Star Texas. The one thing I I remembered through not being vaccinated as a kid, something I did develop And this was like behaviorally ingrained is a paralyzing fear of rust because you don't have, Because you don't have, the teton is shot. So even though we're told God, will you know keep us safe and healthy, we are also taught you have to stay
like ten feet away from like rust. If you see rust on anything, like, you have to be on high alert because even though God should protect you, he might not if you get a rusty nail, like poking your finger.
So rust is still something I'm like really afraid of, despite being vaccinated now, just because this was ingrained so young, which just kind of shows the kind of like a paradoxical thought process behind some of this sort of thing where it's okay if your kids aren't vaccinated, but you also have to teach them to like never get close to anything rusty because that could send them to the hospital.
We'll return to my conversation with Gehar after a short ad break. So what was it like moving out of this science skeptic religious community.
It's funny because when I moved away from this like conservad community in Canada, we moved to Portland, Oregon, which has its own anti vaccination problem, but from like the other side, So I was still around a whole bunch of people and kids who aren't vaccinated where there is frequent measles outbreaks, but it's it is more for that like crunchy hippie thing that then is kind of you know,
converged with this evangelical side. But at that time it's interesting going from you know, one of these worlds to another. And in some ways the medical reality did not change that drastically.
Right, But I'm wondering if you agree on this. My sense is that that form of anti vaccination belief, the sort of hippie crunchy stuff, it's dying. It's not only dying, yeah, it has not spread, it has not been turned into like a program that is far reaching.
Those types of people have either evolved in their beliefs and have caught up with like consensus scientific understandings, or have married, you know, far right Christian husbands and have just gone full conservative, like they have split in twine. Who are much less likely to now find you know, someone who would describe themselves as like liberal or like leftist,
who would hold these beliefs. If they're like, you know, like a forty year old mom with like you know, braids or beads in her hair like that, that is definitely less less likely to have that person beholding like anti vax beliefs now than it was twenty ten years ago.
You just gave me the beautiful idea of making sure. I include an audio clip of the anti vax rasta Christian guy whose videos have been going viral. Have you seen these at all? No? Oh, man, you're gonna love.
Thissolation projectively, projectively, in adjectively, jectivity.
Oh that's good.
It really does encapsulate this sort of you know, the quote unquote conspirituality.
Even the way like Russell Brand has moved the past ten years. Right, it's a pretty clear example of this thing we've been talking about. Yes, how how he's now this weird Jesus guy who can't stop raping? Not not good?
Yeah, it is so fascinating that now. Yeah, like Maha is appealing to that that sort of like orphaned set of people that you were describing who have less of a political home.
Yeah.
RFK Junior is similarly to Russell Brand as like a prime example of someone who used to be more of like a you know, left wing environmental lawyer who is now Trump's anti autism take away red number forty anti
vax dude. And you know, another thing about growing up in these communities is like beyond vaccine hesitancy or anti vax beliefs, is also this like anti psychological beliefs like like like therapy or like or like psychoanalysis or like mental diagnosis are framed the same way, like you shouldn't need real therapy. You can talk to like a Christian counselor and you can pray, and that should be all you really need. You don't need to go to like
a therapist or a psychologist. Like that delayed my understanding of like being autistic by like maybe fifteen years, which you know didn't serve younger gear very well in trying to un pack like social interactions as a as like a teenager or even like a preteen, because like I, you know, wasn't even aware of like the concept of like what autism actually is until so much later.
So you're saying that childhood vaccinations didn't cause your autism.
No, because I was never vaccinated as a kid, And yet here I am.
Yeah, I saw a nice little sign recently that it fooled me because I read it too quickly, but it said childhood vaccinations cause adulthood.
That's right, they sure to.
Gair's experience is not unique. There are countless children who are raised in religious communities that skeew medical interventions in favor of their faith and in the power of God to heal them. These communities seek exemptions from vaccination requirements on either religious grounds or on the grounds of what they call medical freedom. Consider the children who attend Mercy
Culture Preparatory, a private Christian school in Fort Worth. After the measles outbreak became nash news or report in the Dallas Morning News highlighted that the school had the lowest vaccination rate out of any private school in the state of Texas. And unlike the Copelands, who at the very least have facilitated vaccinations among their flock even as they've given contradictory messages from the pulpit, the leader of Mercy Culture was unapologetically thrilled at the news.
Hey, guys, quick video. I just walked into an EMPC prep board meeting and there's these balloons in a surprise gift. I'm like, what's this going out? And I just found out. I'm a little behind in the news, I'm a little slow getting old, but I just found out we are the number one school in Texas for least vaccinations. And I guess the news got a hold of it and they were trying to spin it like it was some
awful thing. But I just want to congratulate all of the family members of MC Prep that embrace freedom of health and they're not allowing government or science projects to affect how you live and lead your life. I know the time our world was shut down with insanity and people were fired from their job for forced vaccinations, and freedom is something that we take seriously, religious freedom, freedom of our health. And so shout out to MC Prep
for being the least vaccinated school in Texas. Will take it, or as mercy cultures say, we celebrate it, we'll put on the board.
State Representative Nate Shatzlin, who is also a pastor at the church and who has been a featured guest at Kenneth Copland's annual convention, spread a similar message in his own video that celebrated the news of low vaccination rates in their private school. Hey, what's going on?
This is state revenue shafts line up standing in front of our Texas state capital. And I was alerted on x from a ex post from Bud Kennedy.
Now you probably don't know who Bud Kennedy.
Is, but he is a reporter for the Star Telegram in Fort Work Texas Now star telegrams losing followers by the thousands.
It's crazy.
However, he attacks Christian Step churches more than almost anyone else elt I know, and this post said that Russell Culture Preparatory, which is a private school in my district, also happens to be where I send my kids to school. He said they are the least vaccinated school in the state of Texas. Now, I was incredibly concerned for a couple of different reasons. I was concerned that number one, we just finding out about them, because the second concern
is why haven't we celebrated this sooner? Look, I am so excited to say that Mercy Culture Prep is celebrating medical freedom, where we honor the wishes of moms and dads over any type of health official like Rachel Levine or so called public health expert like wood Community.
This brazen lack of concern about the risks of the spread of measles, which has already killed multiple children, is concerning for many reasons. One of them is that it implicitly asserts that it's better for people to be unvaccinated.
Another is that it effectively disregards the risk that vulnerable people face when diseases like measles spread unchecked, and when infused with this hardened belief that God can miraculously heal them and also that God makes no mistakes, it can lead some people like Peter, the Mennonite father of the first child to die from measles in over two decades, to believe that getting measles can actually make their communities stronger. This is basically survival of the fittest style quasi eugenic
thinking with the veneer of religion. In the next episode, we will explore why anti vax beliefs and the policies now being pushed by the leading vaccine denier Rfgay Junior are effectively eugenic in nature and now the twisted history of eugenics and racist public health abuses in the United States has unfortunately buttressed the viral anti vax ideology we are dealing with today. Thanks for listening to episode three of Anti vaxx America for It Could Happen Here. Until
next time, I'm Steve Monicelli. Thanks for listening.
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