As secular sources revisit the COVID-19 pandemic response, some evangelical leaders are doubling down on mitigation measures
March 2025 marked the five-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic response, and the lockdowns which shuttered churches around the world. The legacy press largely cheered these measures at the time, but now even The New York Times is asking “Were the Covid Lockdowns Worth It?” To the extent evangelical leaders are asking these questions at all, they are drawing the wrong lessons from the pandemic response, further exposing the unbalanced scales many of them apply.
Rev. Dr. Gregory Poland’s analysis of the pandemic response in byFaith, the Presbyterian Church in America’s flagship publication, is a prime example. For Poland, the pandemic laid bare “the rise of individualism and narcissism where personal preferences and freedoms were elevated above communal well-being”—jarring claims from a graduate of and now trustee at Westminster Theological Seminary, an institution whose founder, J. Gresham Machen, denounced “the materialistic paternalism of the modern state.” Not mentioned in the article is that Poland, a physician and vaccine researcher at Mayo Clinic, has been a beneficiary of industry over the years. As a 2023 WORLD article noted, Poland “gives consultative advice to nearly every Western vaccine manufacturer, including Pfizer and Moderna,” and was a “vaccine adviser to the Biden White House.” He also appeared eager to advise evangelical ministries during the pandemic.
During the pandemic, Poland, who was ordained last year as a teaching elder in the PCA, appeared in several videos and penned a forward for a book from the Westminster’s press. Around the same time, he appeared on a program for Ligonier Ministries. In each case, his message mirrored that of his byFaith article. What is shocking is that the likes of Bill Maher and the Times now exhibit more appetite for reassessment and correction than Poland.
Poland acknowledges the biblical command to gather in person for worship. Regardless, he defends “virtual gatherings” as part of “cultivating a spirit of mutual concern over individual entitlement.” Poland calls masking an act “of sacrificial love and care for the vulnerable during a times of elevated risk.” Likewise, in Poland’s telling, physical distancing is “a temporary and partially effective measure to protect life.” Beyond those measures, Poland presents vaccines “as a God-given means of common grace.” A means of “common grace” that, apparently, was to be applied indiscriminately to everyone regardless of their health status.
The lessons Poland has for us involve not just the body, but the mind. Poland complains about “the false belief in the democratization of expertise, and the dangers of mixing political ideologies into the individual- and public-health decision-making process.” He calls on pastors to help shield their flocks from “misinformation” by making “credible and respected physicians” available for interviews while encouraging the faithful to “consult[] legitimate medical and scientific sources.”
Poland registers hardly any recognition of the consequences of the non-pharmaceutical interventions he touts. Children were among the hardest hit. The pandemic’s restrictions caused food shortages that claimed the lives of infants in the developing world. Here at home, in many states, children missed out on in-person education for more than a year, as single-parent households found themselves conscripted into homeschooling.
The pandemic response undermined family relationships. The elderly talked to their children and grandchildren through plastic barriers. Many of these people later died alone, spending their last moments on this earth with their hands clasped to water-filled balloons simulating the grasp of a loved one’s hand, denied the honor of dying on their staffs like Jacob. (Hebrews 11:21.) There were also harrowing tales of people suffering in hospitals alone without their families while loved ones looked on helplessly from the outside as videos of health care providers gyrating in hospital hallways went viral online. Domestic violence cases increased markedly during lockdowns. Gallup reports that 45% of parents say the pandemic negatively impacted their child’s social development while 42% cite negative impact to their child’s mental health. The lockdowns disrupted academic development as well. In short, the externalities of the masking and lockdown regime are still manifesting.
And then there were all-to-familiar contradictions. Families buried their dead alone as the Mayor of Minneapolis kneeled and wept over a golden casket in early June 2020, flanked by a crowd mourning George Floyd. Public gatherings to protest alleged “systemic racism” took place unhindered by the authorities, with many in public health providing their full-throated approval. Churches shut down, but liquor stores and abortion clinics stayed open to the public. Working-class Americans and small business owners deemed non-essential lost their livelihoods as white-collar professionals worked from home, buoyed by Paycheck Protection Program money. Christianity Today, which advised believers disappointed in the outcome of the 2020 election “to be better losers,” and to “put not your trust in princes,” availed itself of those taxpayer funds.
Poland deals with none of this. For him, the question is not whether governments should have done this, rather it is “how long some measures should have been imposed and continued . . . once vaccines and antivirals became available.” The contradictions and failures of the pandemic response provide no barrier.
When it comes to vaccines, Poland brushes aside concerns about side effects, himself having suffered one in the form of tinnitus, calling them “a Gift of Health.” Whatever the vaccine’s merits, Poland ignores the vaccine mandates that came down in 2021, which put especially working-class people in the position of having to take a shot against their will to keep their job. The laptop consulting class did not experience the same effects. Worse yet, the legal liability shield provided under federal law allowed those employers to shift the risk of those shots onto workers. There is no hint of the compassion for these workers in Poland’s article, a value that he had elsewhere said was essential for medical practice. To his credit, Poland reportedly advocated for including tinnitus as a covered side effect for the limited benefits available to those injured by the COVID-19 shots, but he evinces no concern about the special dispensation from products liability vaccine manufacturers enjoy. Nor does Poland address the demonstrable falsehoods told by the government to mandate compliance with pandemic measures like masking.
Poland’s effort to enlist pastors in the “misinformation” battle is similarly tone deaf. Not only do his concerns about “the democratization of expertise” ooze credentialism, he evinces no humility regarding how the expert class of which he is apart repeatedly failed during the pandemic, providing inconsistent guidance while encouraging social media companies to censor speech regarding the origins of COVID-19 and reporting on the vaccines. In the book forward mentioned above, Poland writes, “no scientist, no physician and no public health official is absent an underlying philosophical or religious motivation for their understanding and recommendations regarding plagues and pandemics.” Query exactly what motivates Poland in his recommendations.
Poland is not the only public evangelical at peace with the public policy response to COVID-19. With rare exceptions, particularly early on, churches complied with the government dictates. That was consistent with the guidance from evangelical leaders at the time. In March 2020, Russell Moore wrote in The New York Times that “we must listen to the medical experts, and do everything possible to avoid the catastrophe we see in Italy and elsewhere.” Around the same time, Moore concluded that shutting down churches did not violate religious freedom.
When Moore sat down with former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins in September 2024, the pair commiserated about the public’s resistance to mitigation measures in the event of a future pandemic. Collins said he was “worried about the public reaction” to “the only real public health response” to a pandemic flu, which would be “extreme measures to try to prevent transmission.” According to Collins, business closures would be “absolutely essential to save lives” while a vaccine is developed. “We are so suspicious now of everything to do with public health,” Collins complained.
Collins pointed to the changing nature of the virus to stave off critics who pointed to shifting government guidance. But that never justified so much of what we saw with our own eyes, including divergent treatment of churches, privileging some protests over others, and selectively extending commercial liberties. “Diverse weights and differing measures—the Lord detests them both.” (Proverbs 20:10.) The pandemic response put the uneven scales on display for all to see.
When Ann Coulter and Donald Trump took issue with Christian medical missionaries infected with Ebola returning home in 2014, Moore suggested nothing less than the Gospel itself was at stake. John Piper, whose Twitter portrait during the pandemic featured his face hidden behind a plaid mask, penned a poem about the missionaries’ return. “Fly back to us, our joy, our crown,” Piper wrote.
Having said this world is not our home, many evangelical responses to the pandemic were indistinguishable. Of all people, reformed evangelicals could have and should have been at the forefront of pushing back against the panic. Leaders like John MacArthur who did were repeatedly criticized and belittled as “confused” and foolhardy for their stand. Certainly now, with the benefit of hindsight, we should restrain government from wreaking havoc on life, liberty, and property, not encouraging a rerun. At the very least we should not now excuse or endorse it.
In the most chilling scene in his dystopian novel That Hideous Strength, the third book in C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy, the protagonist comes face-to-face with his own mortality. Mark Studdock becomes convicted of the utter frivolity of pursuing a place within the elite of Bracton College and the technocratic world of the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E. By the book’s end, Studdock is redeemed and reconciled to his wife through the efforts of a hopelessly outmanned, underdog counterforce.
With the repeated failures of the expert class on display for all to see, the Studdocks of the evangelical world need reminding that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27.) The world is watching.
Image: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Rembrandt, 1632. Wikimedia Commons.
