Meet the Ballards
About those religious/spiritual exemptions for vaccines...
We watch as more and more families, intent in their mistaken belief that the virus is a hoax/the vaccines come from aborted babies/and/or are experimental, file for religious exemptions so they can sidestep getting COVID vaccinations.
As we know from our legal studies, in situations like these, courts don’t explore whether someone is actually a good Christian or Muslim or Sikh, but only that the person has “sincerely held beliefs” about the issue at hand. In this case, people are insisting their spiritual practice does not allow them to get vaccinated.
This despite the fact that all major religious support COVID vaccinations, and some clergy have been quite eloquent in arguing that getting vaccinated is a means of showing love for a neighbor.
Court reticence around judging the validity of a belief stems from a 1944 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Ballard, which included a whacky couple convicted of mail fraud. The Court opted to assume that the Ballards — including Guy Ballard, who also went by “St. Germain,” “Jesus” and “George Washington” — believed that they had supernatural powers to heal people with serious diseases. Ballard was a former mining engineer who said he’d met St. Germain at Mount Shasta and the rest is pretty far afield, religiously speaking. Together, Ballard and his wife, Edna, birthed I AM, a vaguely Christian speaking-to-the-dead movement that was tied in with American patriotism. One writer critiqued it:
It is a concoction of Unity, New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, and some other things with here and there a touch of Spiritism. Many of the adherents have forsaken Mrs. Eddy, Mr. Fillmore, Madam Blavatsky and Anna Besant.
A belief that one has super natural powers to heal people would be pretty easy to dismiss on a witness stand, but given the courts’ support of individual freedom of religion, validity of a belief is never the point. From U.S. v. Ballard:
As far as this Court sees the issue, it is immaterial what these defendants preached or wrote or taught in their classes. They are not going to be permitted to speculate on the actuality of the happening of those incidents. Now, I think I have made that as clear as I can. Therefore, the religious beliefs of these defendants cannot be an issue in this court.
The issue is: Did these defendants honestly and in good faith believe those things? If they did, they should be acquitted. I cannot make it any clearer than that.
Exemption rules vary from state to state. In Connecticut, the process of filing for a vaccine religious exemption is outlined in Gov. Ned Lamont’s Executive Order No. 13D, and you can read that here. With positivity rates rising, it’s tough to comfort one’s self with the knowledge that if there was a validity test, these anti-vaccine come-latelies would be sucking hind tit.
So this little fundamentalist will now retire to pray for a few well-placed lightning bolts. I don’t want any one to die. You can’t advocate for more vaccinations and hope for someone’s death. But a few really loud booms that strike near these yahoos would be totally cool.
Is anyone else besides evangelical non-denominational Christians who belong to a denomination of one -- or perhaps two -- asking for a religious exemption? Can we assume they have also never been vaccinated for measles, mumps, chickenpox, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, smallpox, etc.? And why aren't they visiting the ICUs and healing people? Is it because those people on ventilators are in a coma and can't talk? God forgive them for all the innocent people they are going to take down with them. These are probably people who don't believe in the harm of second-hand smoke, either, and still get mad about not being able to smoke anywhere and everywhere.
Great column as usual, Susan.
I agree with Jac too. It reminds me of my years as a social worker when parents would state that the Bible allows the to hit their children.