2,500 evangelicals sign statement on science and the pandemic

“ ‘A Christian Statement on Science for Pandemic Times’ expresses concern for the ‘politicization of science in the public square when so many lives are at stake.’ Signers pledge to wear masks, get vaccinated and correct misinformation and conspiracy theories.” - RNS

Related: New Christian Initiative to Pursue Criminal Justice Reforms

Discussion

“We felt like the faith side was being stereotyped as all being on the anti-science side and we wanted to show there are a large number of Christians in this country who are supportive of rigorous science and think the public health measures are important,” said Deborah Haarsma, president of BioLogos.

And

BioLogos, which receives much of its support from the John Templeton Foundation, takes concrete steps to educate evangelicals about science in a way that makes room for their faith. It accepts evolution and human-caused climate change, often debated topics in evangelicalism.

Yeah, sure. No politics here, just science. They sound just like the Governor and Health Secretary.

For my part, I can smilingly agree with Paul that Biologos is anything but politically unbiased—but to be fair, if anyone tells me they’re unbiased, that’s when I touch my right hip pocket to make sure my wallet’s still there, if you catch my drift. Everybody’s got a bias, it’s OK, but you just want to admit yours, and ask that others do the same.

To this point, regarding the possibility of getting vaccinated for it, I am (as an asthmatic who is slightly overweight and diabetic) in a risk category for COVID, so I am inclined to take such a vaccine when it becomes available, if there are reasonable tests of its safety and efficacy—even to the point where I’d consider taking it if the FDA had not completely signed off.

One thing that strikes me here as well is that in cases like this, we’re not going to get super high confidence levels because the disease is so new—so instead of having “confidence in science”, what we’re really doing is going on what we know and making our best guess. And you know what? That’s OK. We can proceed to some degree on faith.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.