Even Nick Wilson seemed a little surprised at how hearty a cheer he received when he announced, “Chicken pox is making a comeback.”
The return of chicken pox, and of measles too, was good news in Dr. Wilson’s considered opinion, and the 1,400 or so supporters of preventable childhood diseases gathered at the Freedom Summit at the Lake Geneva Christian Center in Alexandria last Saturday could not agree more.
Now in its seventh year, this daylong event, subtitled “Empowering Voices for Faith and Health Freedom,” gathered an Evangelical crew now marching under the banner of “Make America Healthy Again” and energized by broad, disturbing successes at the federal level.
You could call them “anti-vaxxers” as shorthand, but vaccine resistance was just the tip of the needle here. All of modern medicine is “a demented, sick cult,” in the words of propaganda film producer Del Bigtree. Over the course of a 10-hour program with 15 speakers, we were taught how to “win” (a direct quote) against our doctors and exposed to health insights that “the elites” (another) are hiding from us. We were reminded, again and again, that god wants us to be healthy and happy but hubristic man keeps getting in the way with his intrusive science.
The day was a kaleidoscope of American superstition. There were shards of hippie naturalism, Christian Science perfectionism, airport-bookstore positive thinking, West Coast New Age bullshit, and creaky old Calvinism. Each speaker gave the tube a turn and allowed these elements to fall into a new nonsensical pattern that attendees viewed as enlightened truth.
Yet no matter what hokey byways these speakers travelled, they arrived at the same place, a stripped-down Christianity that hopped from one cherrypicked biblical maxim to the next in defense of its monopoly on the truth. God speaks to these people in a still, small voice, and he says, “They’re coming for your children.”
I was as vaxxed as legally possible and medically necessary before I entered the church on Saturday, and I would have worn a mask too if that wouldn’t have marked me as an enemy.
That word is not mine, but theirs. “Satan and his stupid minions are the enemy,” Pastor Arron Chambers announced early in the day, while many hours later, comic JP Sears declared “The Democrat Party has largely been infiltrated by an evil agenda.” He wasn’t joking.
It was a day of terrifying buzzwords like “weather modification,” “Chinese agenda,” “genomic surveillance,” and “transhumanism,” and of empty slogans like “Knowledge Is the New Medicine” and “Healthy Is the New Wealthy.”
Both on the grounds and inside the church, vendors worked booths catering to a fear of contamination. Some sold 5G shields, others peddled organic oils and honey at a stand identical to what you might find at your local farmers market except for the “Walz Lies” sign. A product that allegedly protects you from electromagnetic frequencies was verified with a reference to a verse from Isaiah.
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