At the end of last week, I received an email from the Wesleyan Covenant Association about their efforts to vaccinate delegates from Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and the Philippines. The goal is to make it possible for these folks to attend the General Conference currently scheduled for late August 2022. Included in the email is a fundraising appeal for supporting such efforts.
As a director with Global Ministries and a past coordinator for our Imagine No Malaria efforts, I must admit that the question of how we help get folks connected with vaccinations has been an important question on my mind. However, from those experiences, I also know that we cannot look at this question in isolation. Fundamental to any such effort must be an awareness about health equity and disparity.
I think, first, about the timing of my own vaccination here in the United States. With limited availability in the early months of 2021, we prioritized the most vulnerable in our communities. I worked with elderly members of my congregation to navigate the complex online systems for scheduling appointments and arranged rides for access. It was a celebration each time one of them got their jab.
In some of those early months, there were a few times when healthy, younger folks like myself could have made a case for getting a vaccine, but it felt wrong to be taking a shot away from someone who might have been an essential worker or someone with far greater health risks. When my time eventually came, I signed up and took my turn.
This effort, on behalf of some of our United Methodist siblings, puts our central conference delegates in an incredibly awkward position. Do you accept the funds in order to travel, spend a few weeks away from home and your livelihood so that you can get access to a vaccine, simply to attend General Conference, when there are other folks in your local community/family who are likely more vulnerable and at-risk than you?
I have been so proud of our efforts at increasing the strength of health systems all across this globe. It has not been easy work, but it is fruitful and faith-filled work. And the efforts like the Global Ministries Covid-19 Response Fund have done incredible things to provide medical supplies, increase the water, sanitation, and hygiene within vulnerable communities, and focus on education and awareness for Covid-19 prevention and vaccine promotion. One of the key factors here is that everyone in the community is impacted by these efforts. This is not a targeted efforts simply at United Methodists within these communities. As our General Secretary Roland Fernandes said, “no one is safe until everyone is safe.” It is also a reminder that simply vaccinating a delegate when their larger community remains largely unvaccinated does not cause the boost we might imagine. There are layers of mitigation efforts that are important and if we have not focused on other factors, the risk of transmission is still high.
There is also an Advance joining with interfaith partners on equitable distribution of the vaccine around the world through COVAX. The hoarding of vaccines by wealthier countries is contributing to the crisis felt in many parts of the world and efforts at redistribution and funding for places without the same resources is vital. Our own UMC health systems are part of this effort of distribution in many places – although we also must work within the policies of governing bodies.
You can also find support for global vaccination equity coming out of the Global Consultation on Vaccine Equity – brought together by numerous UMC partners and leaders, as well as efforts by the United Methodist College of Bishops to name vaccine access a missional priority.
What we are not doing… and what would not be ethical to do… is to create our own vaccine distribution network and limit who has access. Can you imagine if, for example, in our efforts to stop malaria, we prioritized and distributed bed nets and life-saving medication based upon someone’s role within the global denomination, rather than making sure that every household in a community had access?
What if, early in 2021, we had attempted to hold our General Conference and put funds together to fly delegates (including from the U.S.) to other places? Vaccine tourism was a pretty controversial and widely disparaged move in those early days. What kind of witness would we have shown the wider world if we promoted the health and safety of a small group of delegates over clinic workers and elderly without funds and access?
Do I wish that I could wave a magic wand and solve the problems of equitable distribution of vaccinations? Absolutely.
Am I eager to get to a decision-making gathering for our denomination so we can all move forward? Yup.
But the kind of effort being launched by the WCA and their partners does more harm than good. It creates disparity between delegates and their local communities. It reinforces a colonialist attitude where money and resources from outside the region are being leveraged… not simply so that these delegates might be protected, but so that those providing the resources might themselves benefit. And, the witness it makes to the larger world is that rather than put our funding towards making sure that all are able to get access, we are going to focus on ourselves and those we believe are important.
I want to finish by amplifying some voices from outside of the United States that have similar concerns: The Human Cost of General Conference.
EDIT: I am adding today a statement from the Central Conference bishops rejecting the WCA proposal as a form of colonialism.