Worth noting: The "Jesus is my vaccine" crowd at the anti-shutdown rallies already lost this fight--almost exactly 300 years ago. And the most prominent Christian clergyman in America delivered the decisive blow.

In 1721 Massachusetts was in the grip of one of the periodic smallpox epidemics that had ravaged New England for decades. Half the population of Boston showed symptoms. Mortality in the city approached 10%.

The Puritan worldview insisted all that could be done to prevent this illness was to pray. God sent epidemics for the same reason as fires, earthquakes, and lightning strikes--to punish sinners & encourage the pious to look heavenward for relief.

Yet because Puritan ministers were the public intellectuals of their day, some styled themselves men of science as well as men of the cloth. Boston's Cotton Mather was eager to prove his learning equal to that of any of his peers back in England.

Mather proposed a radical new treatment--inoculation--be used to fight smallpox. Doing so, he broke ranks with both the religious elite & what then passed for common sense: If plagues were sent by God, to work against them was blasphemy.

The controversy that followed was the first conflict between science & religion in America *and* the first media-addled public health disaster. Printer James Franklin (Ben's brother) fanned the flames by publishing screeds against inoculation and Mather.

While also known as a witch-hunter, Mather was surprisingly broadminded about inoculation. He learned of its efficacy from Boston's enslaved population, who had received the treatment before being kidnapped, sold, & brought to America.

Like current anti-shutdown efforts, opposition to inoculation was shadowed by violence. A lit grenado thrown through the minister's window came with a note: "Mather, you dog! I'll inoculate you with this!" Apparently the fuse fell out when it hit the floor.

Tying a note to a bomb seems like something the reopen rallies' cosplaying Rambos might do, but the two protests have more in common: You don't throw an incendiary or put on tactical gear unless you're terrified the way you see the world might be wrong.

These lines from a 1721 anti-inoculation pamphlet get to the heart of it: If inoculation worked, then God was not in control, and if God was not in control, many feared they would not have their greatest source of solace just when they needed it most.

It may be giving too much credit to assume reopeners are moved by heartfelt feelings they're unable to articulate & don't just want to be seen. But "Jesus is my vaccine" is the prayer of someone sad & scared--scared both of covid and all they don't know. /END