My brother, the associate pastor at his church, was dismayed to find that his senior pastor and deacon board were all in on banning unvaccinated congregants from everything but the Sunday morning service. He (my brother) headed a weekly Bible study/prayer group and was unwilling to tell anyone- vaxed or not- that they couldn't attend, and said so. At my sister-in-law's request, he hadn't pushed back when she was removed from her position as church pianist and choir director for being unvaccinated (on advice from her doctor). But this he could not let go, believing it to be unbiblical and immoral. So he met with the pastor and deacons, explaining his conviction that this was wrong, backing up his position with scripture. They weren't interested; the senior pastor went so far as to argue that not following the policy might result in people going to Hell. What if, he posited, some unsaved person caught COVID from an unvaccinated person (apparently if they caught it from a vaccinated person, they'd have a special dispensation) and died without coming to Christ? Would my brother want this on his conscience? The disingenuousness of this argument still staggers me. If Christians adopted this attitude, we'd never do anything- drive a car? What if you get in an accident and someone dies without being saved? It's ridiculous. Also, it was more than evident by this point that COVID was being spread by vaccinated people just as quickly as it was by the unvexed; quicker, in fact, since only the vaccinated were allowed to travel, attend public events, or even go to a gym. But none of this mattered to the church leaders, the inescapable conclusion being that this was about control and punishment, not safety. They would not compromise- and my brother tried, even offering to move his Bible study completely online until the restrictions lifted, so that no one would be excluded. They refused to allow it; the study group would take place in person or not at all. Wrap your head around that: the "spiritual leadership" of that church would prefer that no one hear the Word of God to having their dictates modified or countermanded in any way. My brother stated calmly but firmly (he's the eldest sibling, very level-headed and much less likely to lose his temper and froth at the mouth than some of us) that he could not and would not turn anyone away and left it at that. No one showed up for his next Bible study; it turns out that without notifying him, the deacons called all the regular attendees and told them the meeting was cancelled.
This was all bad enough, but what occurred at the church where my brother-in-law is a pastor was in some ways worse. I'll discuss that in part five.