Vaccine missionary

19 August 2021, 09:26 AM

rontuner

Vaccine missionary - how to...

"We don’t need better vaccine messaging on social media. We need a grassroots movement of vaccine evangelists — people who lovingly share the gospel of Pfizer and Moderna.

I know because I am a former fundamentalist, the daughter of a Baptist minister who could preach the socks off any book in the Bible. He was that good.

What my father taught me about evangelism applies to the current problem: how to proselytize the unvaccinated, many of whom are evangelicals and whose hesitancy stems from their fundamentalist take on COVID-19. "

https://www.huffpost.com/entry...f3ece4b0ff60bf7bbd50

19 August 2021, 09:40 AM

RealPlayer

Yes, but somehow all this relationship-building and hand-holding wasn't necessary for our parents in the 1940s and 50s.

19 August 2021, 10:48 AM

Piano*Dad

quote:
Originally posted by RealPlayer:
Yes, but somehow all this relationship-building and hand-holding wasn't necessary for our parents in the 1940s and 50s.

I think you may be correct, and it leads to very interesting lines of questioning.

Were fundamentalists/evangelicals less closed-minded about things like that in the past? In other words, did they reserve their fundamentalism for Sunday and for more overtly religious issues about personal salvation?

Is this a function of the 1970s and the move of fundamentalism from the religious sphere to the political? We know that this movement started earlier, of course. The Scopes Trial was in the 1920s in response to Darwinism's encroachment, but maybe that was exceptional.

How much of this reflects a feeling of power today, relative to powerlessness and acknowledged backwardness in earlier years? Has the hillbilly ethos moved from a defensive crouch into an offensive posture? Flexible its muscles now that a political party has become single-mindedly aligned with its social and cultural views in ways not imaginable in the middle of the 20th century?

All questions I'm not qualified to answer, of course.

19 August 2021, 11:49 AM

AdagioM

quote:
Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
quote:
Originally posted by RealPlayer:
Yes, but somehow all this relationship-building and hand-holding wasn't necessary for our parents in the 1940s and 50s.

I think you may be correct, and it leads to very interesting lines of questioning.

Were fundamentalists/evangelicals less closed-minded about things like that in the past? In other words, did they reserve their fundamentalism for Sunday and for more overtly religious issues about personal salvation?

Is this a function of the 1970s and the move of fundamentalism from the religious sphere to the political? We know that this movement started earlier, of course. The Scopes Trial was in the 1920s in response to Darwinism's encroachment, but maybe that was exceptional.

How much of this reflects a feeling of power today, relative to powerlessness and acknowledged backwardness in earlier years? Has the hillbilly ethos moved from a defensive crouch into an offensive posture? Flexible its muscles now that a political party has become single-mindedly aligned with its social and cultural views in ways not imaginable in the middle of the 20th century?

All questions I'm not qualified to answer, of course.

Maybe related to the change in media, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, and the ability to partake (in massive doses) in an echo chamber of misinformation that confirms what one wants to believe?