Whatever position you might hold regarding vaccinations, masks, and COVID-19 policy (including the little box that will surely be attached to this posting by our social media overlords), it should concern you that we have entered unchartered waters in this generation.

The Church in the United States will have a decision to make in the coming days – a choice that will challenge the expression of our faith as it applies to social issues. We have lived conveniently isolated from the evils perpetrated in cultures where a lack of engagement allowed evil agendas to prevail at the expense of the “greater good.” That disengagement has now come to pay us an unwelcomed visit.

French President Macron recently said the unvaccinated “are no longer citizens.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau commented about the unvaccinated “They ‘do not believe in science, who are often misogynists, often racists, too; it is a sect, a small group, but who are taking up space, and here we have to make a choice, as a leader, as a country.”

These comments came from leaders in the “free world” where democracy and freedom are supposed to be the foundational structure of these cultures, not from some backwater dictatorship in a Third World country. To separate and dehumanize our fellow citizens no matter what the issue is the first step that opens the door to all forms of evil. 

History tells us this kind of evil must be confronted before it gains traction and acceptance in the social dialogue, even at the risk of our relationships and social status. A weak, silent, and fearful expression of the Church will be written up by historians as complicit with the very lies that made it possible for evil to prevail.