Snake oil salesmen are bad enough, with their slickly packaged products masquerading as cures for what ails you.
But Texas Pastor Kenneth Copeland has taken it up a notch. In his case, the product is his persona, which he milks for power, prestige and profit.
Copeland is thought to have a net worth of US$760 million, amassed through offerings to his ministry and the sale of magazines, books and DVDs, property deals and other ventures.
Now, if people want to donate money to Copeland and other televangelists of his ilk, that’s their choice — perhaps they think it will bring them closer to God or help those less fortunate.
But Copeland’s current campaign is downright repugnant.
Anyone willing to take him up on what he’s offering could end up paying with their life.
In a video, Copeland is wearing a pale cream suit and a light blue shirt and tie. Leaning forward, flanked by four acolytes, he blows mightily into the television camera.
1. Copeland declares the wind of God to blow to destroy COVID-19. 2. He then says it doesn’t have to be a fast wind. 3. Then the Lord tells him “It’s even better if there’s no wind at all. 🤔 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/tFWc7Mv8lD
— Brandon Kimber (@BKimber) April 4, 2020
“I blow the wind of God on you,” he exclaims. “You are destroyed forever and you will never be back.”
The “you,” in this case, is COVID-19.
That’s right, Copeland claims the cure he previously boasted could be accomplished by just touching the television screen during his program, can now be had through a simple gust of wind from God or a blessed blast of heat.
Then he goes one further. “I just heard the Lord say this… it’s even better if there’s no wind at all.”
The sad thing is, there are people who will take Copeland at his word and put their lives at risk. They might think a walk in a breeze or a stroll on a hot day offers immunity from a virus that — as of this writing — had claimed nearly 97,000 lives worldwide, with the United States ranked second among countries with nearly 17,000 dead.
What Copeland and others are doing in claiming to have cures for COVID-19 should be illegal.
Ken Nickel is an associate professor of philosophy at Ambrose University — a private Christian liberal arts school in Calgary. He wrote on faith healing and harm for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Western Ontario.
In the Criminal Code of Canada, the two most relevant sections deal with “failing to provide the necessaries of life” and “criminal negligence,” he explained via email.
But the fact is, he said, is “it’s not illegal when adults are involved. … The law permits each one of us to martyr ourselves for our own beliefs. But we cannot impose martyrdom on others. Religious beliefs are tricky because it’s not obvious how ‘voluntarily’ they were adopted. Faith, like love, is often blind!”
What Copeland and others are doing in claiming to have cures for COVID-19 should be illegal.
Nickel uses the analogy of snake-handling in church, a practice carried on by some fundamentalist Christian preachers in the U.S.
“At least with snake-handling, only the ‘fire and brimstone’ preacher who gets bitten risks his life,” he writes. “But with COVID-19 these people are all part of one big metaphorical snake-handling community. … They refuse to acknowledge the risks they’re imposing on society.”
I can understand how fear and desperation can lead people to seek strange quarters for salvation, so if you have loved ones who could fall prey to this sort of hucksterism, please warn them.
“We are living at a time when the entire world needs an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ mentality,” Nickel said. “When this pandemic is over, people can go back to the ‘sophisticated interpretations’ of their religions, but right now we need people to rally around the best of what science can tell us. We have to collectively rally around that which is publicly observable.”
Referring to oft-cited quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that “Freedom of speech doesn’t include the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre,” Nickel makes an apt observation of his own.
“If you want pray, go right ahead; no harm done there,” he says. “But, sorry, laying hands on this fire is a publicly demonstrable harm. It doesn’t extinguish the fire; it throws fuel on it. Government has the obligation to protect ‘the public good’ from people like this. Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion: these are useless to dead people.”
Amen.
Pam Frampton is The Telegram’s managing editor. Email [email protected]. Twitter: pam_frampton
