When Pastor Sean Daniels heard his name called in the Food City parking lot in Harlan, he didn’t expect to be asked whether he thought the COVID-19 vaccine was an instrument of the biblical end times.
Daniels is a pastor at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Cawood, Kentucky, and this woman knew it. Having heard on social media and from friends that the vaccine was the Mark of the Beast, as it’s referred to in Revelation, she thought it made sense to ask a man of the cloth.
He recalled that conversation last Wednesday, sitting in the front pew of his church, which sits at the base of a hill a few miles outside Harlan. It was nearing 6 p.m. Cars were pulling in the parking lot and people were beginning to gather at the doors of the sanctuary, in anticipation of his mid-week evening service. “She wanted to know, “‘Is this true? Is what I’m reading online really true?’”
For the record, Daniels doesn’t believe the vaccine forebodes the end times, and he told her as much as they both stood there, holding their groceries. In fact, he was one of the first pastors in his southeastern Kentucky county to post a picture of himself getting the coronavirus vaccine back in January, when he first became eligible as a chaplain at one of the local hospitals.
But increasingly Daniels and other Harlan County church leaders are getting peppered with fear-based questions from their congregations and community about the vaccine, which they try to gently bat down. Though their denominations vary, most are white and all are evangelical. Read More
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