The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of the 118th Congress
of the US House of Representatives just issued its Final
Report, entitled After Action Review of the
It’s probably not the definitive word on the scamdemic, and at times it seems a bit self-contradictory, but it’s all we’re going to get with the US government’s stamp of approval on it, and it’s as close to the truth as anyone in power cares to admit. It’s also wildly different from what both government and media told us at the time.
Time for the Fun Stuff
Now the fun stuff. The report is 520 pages in print, 557 in the linked PDF, and it gives us here at ComingUntrue the opportunity to revisit this CU post from late 2020, in which I pointed out that the religious media, including our most popular and well-read evangelical publications, were parroting the official narrative in lockstep with the mainstream media. “Christians have to do better” (Interfaith Now). “Let’s unite together in spreading God’s truth, not rumors!” (Christianity.com). Christians only believe in conspiracies because they need to feel they are in control (Relevant). “Gullibility is not a spiritual gift” (Christianity Today). All, to greater or lesser degrees, counseled us to stay away from alternative media, allegedly full of mis- and even disinformation, and to stick to mainstream news sources for our information lest we embarrass ourselves and sabotage the testimony of others.
So let’s compare what the great minds of the Christian media had to offer us in the Spring of 2020 to the latest version of reality, which, while it may not be definitive, includes a whole lot more information than was available four years earlier.
Exhibit A: Interfaith Now’s Medium
“Why Your Christian Friends and Family Members Are So Easily Fooled by Conspiracy Theories”
The current version of the webpage has a teaser telling us, “The author made this story available to Medium members only.” Thankfully, we have the archive sites to remind us exactly what Joe Forrest wrote back in May of 2020. (Now that President Trump has been re-elected, they are suddenly much easier to access.) Unlike Joe, I will call the Christians he criticizes what they were: not “conspiracy theorists”, but skeptics questioning an official narrative that oozed patronizing platitudes and outright falsehoods. Forrest’s article slams Christian skeptics from pillar to post, mostly generically, calling us, in effect, narcissists, scared rabbits and thrill seekers. In full attack mode, he writes:
“Most conspiracy theories are rotten at the core. It’s obvious they’re rooted in fear, insecurity, and loneliness. And they’re often designed to give us more reasons to loathe our ideological enemies.”
As an alternative, Forrest recommends a Saddleback Church website supposed to help pastors quell the spread of “misinformation” in their congregations. Today, his link contains nothing about the Coronavirus, but it does tell you how to write a successful ad on Craigslist. Why would Saddleback have buried their COVID resource site four years after the fact? Well, that would be a “conspiracy theory”, wouldn’t it? Let’s just suppose it aged badly.
In fact it did, as this archived version shows. So many confident assertions made in this so-called pastoral resource have been entirely shredded by the Congressional report that even comprehensive editorial rewriting could not hope to salvage it. We now know the “science” to which Rick Warren’s gang appealed to manipulate the COVID-fearful was pulled out of thin air.
Forrest’s final word for Christian skeptics?
“Of the seven things the Lord finds detestable mentioned in the sixth chapter of Proverbs, ‘a lying tongue,’ ‘a false witness who pours out lies,’ and ‘a person who stirs conflict in the community’ are included in the list.
No one is immune from conspiratorial thinking, but Christians have a bit more to lose from falling for conspiracy theories than the average person.
There are enough Christian conspiracy theorists doing enough damage that other Christians shouldn’t feel afraid to call them out. We need to hold ourselves and each other to a higher standard of objective truth.”
Where one might have found that “objective truth” during the COVID outbreak remains a mystery, as the Congressional report reverses almost everything both secular and Christian media assured us was true at the time.
Exhibit B: Relevant Magazine
“Why Do So Many Christians Buy Into Conspiracy Theories Like ‘Plandemic’?”
Again, we need to resort to the archive sites to find what the
anonymous members of the Relevant staff had to say in May 2020, since they have heavily amended the article for
their current audience. The most telling feature? The post has been retitled “Why
Do So Many Christians Buy Into Conspiracy Theories?” [no “Like ‘Plandemic’ ”,
though it’s still in the URL, which cannot be easily edited away]. Even more
obviously, the headline photo of “discredited virologist” Judy Mikovits has
been replaced with a collage of generic images and all references to COVID removed
from the article. It’s now about conspiracy theories in general. A Word document
comparison between the September 2024 version and the May 2020 version demonstrates
the first three paragraphs were rewritten to purge any reference to the movie Plandemic,
Why? Well, in the movie, Mikovits accuses Fauci of all kinds of dishonesty and misconduct with respect to his public statements during COVID, including the notorious “gain-of-function” denials. Trashing the truth-telling Mikovits has also not aged well, and Revelant, in a bid to live up to its moniker, no longer pretends the Plandemic video’s claims are “easily debunked”. Many of these resurface in the Congressional report as well-attested and accepted facts. Fauci lied repeatedly, both in trying to cover up the Wuhan lab leak, now recognized as the pandemic’s source, and on numerous other occasions. Mikovits is still a marginal character in the scientific community, but her “conspiracy theories” turned out to be largely factual.
I do not see any retraction from Relevant, though, or any actual names on the piece. Seems a tad “unchristian” to me.
Exhibit C: Christianity Today
“On Christians Spreading Corona Conspiracies: Gullibility is not a Spiritual Gift”
My absolute favorite is this piece from Christianity Today. If you click on the hyperlink above in 2024, you get this message:
Oops! Looks like this page is formless and void.
Let's go somewhere good
The perfunctory notification replaces Ed Stetzer’s entire 2020 article, to which both previously-noted articles in other Christian magazines made copious reference. Apparently this baby aged almost as well as CT’s notorious George Floyd hagiography, a favorite of mine. Too bad it wasn’t “formless and void” in 2020 as well.
Well, as always, the archive sites are very helpful in refreshing fading memories, giving voids and formlessness a much more recognizable shape. Here’s the April 2020 version in its unedited brilliance. Ed starts by claiming Christians are “disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories” and “spread lies” that make us look foolish and harm our witness. That’s just in the second paragraph! How he would justify such smears is beyond me, given the revised narrative now available.
Here are some of Ed’s highlights [with a little light commentary]:
“If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.” [Thank goodness, since it’s now part of the public record.]
“Christians are becoming outraged about things that are not true. [Possibly, but also a great many things that turned out to be correct.] The end result is they are being easily fooled and join into ideas that can bring real harm, particularly when we do develop a vaccine that can bring substantial help to our communities.” [If only a few more Christians had been skeptical about those wonderful vaccines!]
“Unless you believe President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the media, and the scientific community are all in league together (a real leap of faith), you are just embarrassing yourself when you spread Coronavirus conspiracies.” [Unless, of course, the massive political pressure coming top-down over the virus intimidated a great number of people into saying and doing what they were told.]
Anyway, Ed’s article is history, and Christianity Today can chalk up another one for the archives.
In Summary
What will the people of God learn from all this? Probably not much, but here are a few reflections that may be useful:
- When the Christian media says exactly the same thing as the mainstream media, it’s probably time to start using your critical faculties. A regular dose of alternative media will get you closer to the truth than any mainstream source. Even when it doesn’t, you won’t do much worse.
- Today’s “disinformation” is tomorrow’s fact. No Christian should be voting for a government that wants more control over the media, especially and including the internet.
- The words “conspiracy theory” are wildly and unfairly overused to dismiss anything the media does not want you to hear.
- Christians can be as easily fooled as anyone, but it is the media and evangelical elites who are most easily fooled. The alternative is that they are liars and cads, which I hope is not always the case. Rank and file believers remained skeptical during COVID, or at least appropriately cautious, and turned out to be substantially closer to the truth than so-called “thought leaders” in the Christian community.
- Whether or not the Ed Stetzers and Rick Warrens are lining up to apologize now (by and large, they are not), they were still dead wrong about far more than they got right. Even an embarrassed “oopsie” would be a more Christian response than running and hiding from what they wrote.
- If you’re still reading Christianity Today or Relevant after all this for anything but a good laugh, nobody can help you.
The Congressional Report is well worth skimming. At least. 500+ pages is a lot, but you will not believe how much the media got wrong until you read the relevant subsections of the report. And if you think COVID is the only thing government, media and Christian elites were dead wrong about in nearly every respect, think again. A Congressional Report on the war in Ukraine four years from now may be twice as shocking as anything in the COVID report.
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