Even Nick Wilson seemed a little surprised at how hearty a cheer he received when he announced, “Chicken pox is making a comeback.”
The return of chicken pox, and of measles too, was good news in Dr. Wilson’s considered opinion, and the 1,400 or so supporters of preventable childhood diseases gathered at the Freedom Summit at the Lake Geneva Christian Center in Alexandria last Saturday could not agree more.
Now in its seventh year, this daylong event, subtitled “Empowering Voices for Faith and Health Freedom,” gathered an Evangelical crew now marching under the banner of “Make America Healthy Again” and energized by broad, disturbing successes at the federal level.
You could call them “anti-vaxxers” as shorthand, but vaccine resistance was just the tip of the needle here. All of modern medicine is “a demented, sick cult,” in the words of propaganda film producer Del Bigtree. Over the course of a 10-hour program with 15 speakers, we were taught how to “win” (a direct quote) against our doctors and exposed to health insights that “the elites” (another) are hiding from us. We were reminded, again and again, that god wants us to be healthy and happy but hubristic man keeps getting in the way with his intrusive science.
The day was a kaleidoscope of American superstition. There were shards of hippie naturalism, Christian Science perfectionism, airport-bookstore positive thinking, West Coast New Age bullshit, and creaky old Calvinism. Each speaker gave the tube a turn and allowed these elements to fall into a new nonsensical pattern that attendees viewed as enlightened truth.
Yet no matter what hokey byways these speakers travelled, they arrived at the same place, a stripped-down Christianity that hopped from one cherrypicked biblical maxim to the next in defense of its monopoly on the truth. God speaks to these people in a still, small voice, and he says, “They’re coming for your children.”
I was as vaxxed as legally possible and medically necessary before I entered the church on Saturday, and I would have worn a mask too if that wouldn’t have marked me as an enemy.
That word is not mine, but theirs. “Satan and his stupid minions are the enemy,” Pastor Arron Chambers announced early in the day, while many hours later, comic JP Sears declared “The Democrat Party has largely been infiltrated by an evil agenda.” He wasn’t joking.
It was a day of terrifying buzzwords like “weather modification,” “Chinese agenda,” “genomic surveillance,” and “transhumanism,” and of empty slogans like “Knowledge Is the New Medicine” and “Healthy Is the New Wealthy.”
Both on the grounds and inside the church, vendors worked booths catering to a fear of contamination. Some sold 5G shields, others peddled organic oils and honey at a stand identical to what you might find at your local farmers market except for the “Walz Lies” sign. A product that allegedly protects you from electromagnetic frequencies was verified with a reference to a verse from Isaiah.
Spectratherapy and probiotics were on offer, and the John Galt Mortgage Company offered an alternative to all those socialist banks. You could get your non-medical vaccine exemption form notarized. (Minnesota allows parents not to vaccinate their child “based on their beliefs.”) A table run by the company Crunchy Patriots sold T-shirts with messages like “Health Is Not Injected,” “Farms Not Pharma,” and “Spread Truth Like a Chemtrail,” along with a few celebrating the legacy of Charlie Kirk.
Kirk was the day’s guardian angel. The summit’s tickets, originally $160, were marked down to $47 in his honor (and not at all because they weren’t selling, I’m sure). The man they celebrated was not the free speech advocate that liberals have claimed we must respect. Kirk crony Joshua Feurstein was among the many who called out “evildoers” in Charlie’s name, indulging in orotund phrasing like “You will meander into the maze of mediocrity” while promising that we were on the verge of “the greatest revival in American history” (Jonathan Edwards and, hell, Billy Graham would like a word).
“Informed consent” may have been this cadre’s market-tested byword (who could dispute such a fair and just concept?) but these people were not merely “asking questions” about vaccines, though they might have said that if you’d met them outside the conference. This was not an orientation for conspiracy-curious fellow travellers, but training for the battle ahead. Chambers, using Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians as a model and homey metaphors like “We are god’s leafblowers” (noisy and unnecessary wastes of energy?), advised his listeners to go among non-believers in love, if only for pragmatic purposes—a kind of sales tactic.
Given the atmosphere, I expected uncomfortable conversations over lunch—at the very least, I thought, revealing that I came from the Twin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah might blow my journalistic cover. But mostly the women I spoke with were merely curious how I fared in a town where presumably so few people shared my beliefs. They had complaints about how their children had been "indoctrinated" by the U and some honestly reasonable concerns about Ozempic, but overall it was a pleasant experience. A polite white, middle-aged man can get away with a lot in this country.
“Jesus loves the bass, and he loves to dance,” the DJ bumping innocuous EDM told us when we got back from lunch, and that seemed as true to me as anything else I’d heard that day.
Raised Catholic, since lapsed, and therefore inoculated against the spiritual enthusiasms that afflict so many Americans, I spent the day wondering just what Christianity meant for these people.
I didn’t get much guidance from the pastors. In addition to Chambers and Feurstein, there was Ben Graham, Faith Director of the U.S. Department of the Interior, who quipped, “I know you all live in Communist Minnesota,” compared being unfriended on Facebook to Daniel visiting the lion’s den, and gleefully recalled the time Trump asked him to rename Lake Ontario.
Instead it was the doctors who preached the gospel of god-powered health. Communicable disease enthusiast Nick Wilson began his talk by saying that post-Covid, we were all wondering, “Will I ever be able to trust medical doctors again?” He assured us that was the wrong question to ask. We had “misplaced faith” in the “tricks of medicine,” he said, noting that “pharmakon” is used in the Bible to mean witchcraft. He also said, “The germ theory is a lie.”
The Wilsons are “non-interventionalists,” he explained, ready to throw a fit if a doctor suggests giving their kids Tylenol. The body is self-regulating, but we insist on “outsourcing our god-given design to medicine.” And so with a deft turn of phrase or two, the leftish belief in the primacy of the natural and organic combines with a faith that humans are born innocent and can be preserved free of corruption. Here is a Christianity flexible and omnivorous and maybe unprincipled enough to amalgamate all sorts of spiritual eccentricities into its creed.
(Incidentally, the one branch of medicine uniformly celebrated at the summit? Chiropractic. Event organizer Jerod Ochsendorf is a chiropractor, as were several of the other folks with Dr. before their names. Make of that what you will.)
With lank, shoulder-length hair and the assured vocal demeanor of a late-night radio crackpot, Dr. Ed Group was a real trip, the closest the day came to genuine comic relief. This was a guy who seemed to believe that the Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones because Group had just been a guest on his show and had revealed information THEY didn’t want you to know.
From Group, we learned of the ancients’ great secret, “the frequency and vibration of lovemaking” (OK, Barbarella), that humans had once lived for 600 years and emitted a visible body aura, that the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds started World War II so they could plunder gold from the pyramids. We learned about the importance of “semen retention” and Biophonic Liquid Gold (available from Group’s company, Global Healing), as well as the wonders of “urine therapy.”
If Group was entertaining in a wide-ranging “Art Bell caller” sort of way, Del Bigtree, the producer of the widely discredited documentary Vaxxed, was the first speaker who started to crack my composure. Much of his talk was given over to dodgy video in the manner of the great misleader, James O’Keefe, but his talk itself was as overheated as any hellfire preacher’s sermon.
Bigtree called modern medicine “the most powerful religion on Earth” and argued that vaccines are the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate. One slide showed the Caduceus symbol of the medical alongside the serpent snaking up the tree in Eden. Makes you think, huh? I’m sorry, this was nuttier than the guy telling me that gargling my piss will improve my posture or whatever.
Things then got pathologically Californian as First Lady Runner Up Marla Maples (who may or may not have actually been played by Jane Krakowski) interviewed Plandemic director Mikki Willis, whom she very much seemed to have the hots for. In a tone so chill it verged on the sociopathic, Willis explained his new project, which argues that Einstein did not understand the fifth element, aether, because he was an atheist.
Together, the duo discussed “the secrets that are being kept from us” like stretching and breathing exercises and the importance of spending time in the sun. “Pay attention to the little things in life,” Willis advised us. Maples touted the Marla Maples Foundation, created to serve the people who are constantly asking for her help. “I’m just one person. I can’t do it all,” Jenna Marla said.
In this context, once and future failed gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen came off as a relatively reasonable fella. Sure he hauled out Thalidomide as an example of regulatory failure (anything more recent?) and invoked the dreaded name “Fauci,” and sure he discussed “observational evidence” about Tylenol and autism. But he’s been working hard with the public speaking instructor he’s been working with, even delivering a little “I love fishing more than my wife” joke with the ease of a born hack. Granted, this was an easy crowd: The mere mention of Lipitor drew a huge groan.
Truly, the jokes were dire on Saturday. Nancy Pelosi remains a favorite target. (“That’s mean,” chuckled a lady behind me after Chambers joshed about the former Speaker greeting you in Hell.) And comic JP Sears, a jacked guy in a “Natural Immunity” T-shirt, told both a “Kamala is dumb” joke and a “Tim Walz tampon” joke. He did do a neat little Trump impression—the president was treated as a respected figure but also slightly comic, like your grandma who occasionally says racist things and raises tariffs when she’s mad.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he was their guy. “Bobby,” they all called him, with an intimacy often justified by their access to the HHS secretary. If there was any doubt that Trump was a divine instrument, his appointment of Kennedy cleared that all up. Even Sears was on shaky ground when he indulged in an RFK Jr. impression that was met with stony silence.
Curiously, it was Sears who was the most direct about what everyone in this church believed. “We’ve got god on the blockchain,” he quipped, telling us to trust no one but god and self. Here was Protestantism in extremis, where skepticism toward external authority became rejection of anything that authorities believe. What could be more American (derogatory)?
My foolish Papist brain had been seeking out doctrine all afternoon where these believers relied solely on personal revelation: Christianity simply meant they were right.
“Why are 80% of the attendees at events like this women?” Maples would ask later in the afternoon, and in response Willis would blame this gender lopsidedness on, what else, feminism. (The MAHA faith faces no question that cannot be answered simply.) Men have apparently been taught that they are useless and so are incapable of leaving their armchairs and joining the struggle against modern medicine, the poor babies.
But there was a powerful faux feminism at work at the Freedom Summit. Maples’s estimate was not far off, after all. This was a mommy war, and you could buy T-shirts IDing you as a “MAHA Mama” or “Banned From the Mom Group.” Attorney Leah Wilson, executive director of Stand For Health Freedom (and Dr. Nick’s Mrs.), spelled it out for us: The goal was “a world where mothers are trusted over all outside authority.”
And I gotta say, activists, including resistance liberals (who, like their conservative opponents, tend to be matter-of-fact, energetic women) could learn something from the MAHA model. Speakers shared action steps throughout the day, instructing us to follow QR codes and jot down important information.
Dr. Bob Zajac showed us how to use Grok to complain about our doctors. (One thing that unites the disparate strands of the current right-wing coalition, regardless of their pet issue, is that they’re natural snitches.) Zajac, whose talk was called “When Doctors Attack,” was there to send us into battle against our physicians. “Doctors make up half of what they tell you,” he said, and I wondered which half he was making up.
The summit was a veritable feast for connoisseurs of logical fallacies. No study by the medical establishment could be stringent enough for these speakers; no evidence in favor of their own beliefs could be too anecdotal. Every uncomfortable experience in the physician’s office was proof of the profession’s corruption. Every pharmaceutical side effect proved they were poisoning us.
During his talk, Del Bigtree asked everyone who had measles as a child to stand up, as proof that the disease isn’t fatal. (I wonder if there’s any reason that the kids who died of measles couldn’t make it to the meeting.) When he asked who had “vaccine-injured” family members, more than half of the room rose.
And yet, throughout the day I’d hear a smattering of sensible advice. Eat healthy, natural food. Exercise regularly. Breathe calmly. Stay off your phone. All of this was treated as arcane knowledge that THEY were keeping from us, rather than common sense practices no sensible physician would gainsay.
But even when I’d hear a phrase like “Your health insurance is killing you” from speaker Evelio Silvera, who’d already badmouthed United Health, I knew he and I weren’t thinking along the same lines. For him, the U.S. suffered from obesity, decreased life expectancy, and maternal mortality (abortion went mostly unmentioned, though Bigtree freaked out that fetal tissue is used in vaccines) because… of the Affordable Care Act. He also complained that insurance will be there “if your three year old [boy] thinks he’s a female fire engine,” which, yeah sure, Ev. His solution was a kind of Christian health cooperative that I would very much check with your financial advisor before plunging into.
Yet for all this railing at insurers and pharmaceutical industries, you wouldn’t find a foe of capitalism in the room. The convenience of figures like Satan and terms like “evil” is that they displace the real systems that are killing us. Why are we tired and stressed after all? Because we have jobs and mortgages and, yes, doctor’s bills. What good was all this advice to avoid stress if we could not, like Marla Maples, afford to luxuriate in the sunlight of our Malibu home?
Throughout history, “I’m just protecting my family” is a phrase that has often, even when spoken with the best intentions, presented selfishness as selflessness, serving as the justification for some horrible crimes and for refusing to resist others. Because of the choices the people at this event make, acting out of love, their children will grow sick and sicken other children.
Summit attendees accepted as an article of faith that what we had experienced five years ago was not a successful mass immunization campaign that allowed us to escape the worst of a global pandemic. No, it was a wake up call, a shocking government attempt to control our bodies—and our children’s bodies, which of course belong to their parents. (The idea that children have any rights of their own was so implicitly nonsensical it was never mentioned.)
I set out for Alexandria with little sympathy for the MAHA cause. Whatever skepticism I feel toward the medical profession is counterbalanced and then some as a person whose cancer was effectively treated two years ago. And also, less dramatically, a person whose life-debilitating allergies have been kept in check by regular shots, not to mention as someone who didn’t die in childhood, as was once so common.
Still, let’s imagine an honest skeptic walking through the doors of the LGCC on Saturday. Like any good American she hates the insurance industry, which has hoovered up her cash while fighting every claim she’s ever filed. Her doctor haughtily dismisses her questions and concerns—she’s just another over-emotional mom, after all—and always seems to have a needle and a pill on hand. Big Pharma pushes its drugs while Big Ag poisons the land and our food. She’d never call herself “anti-vax,” but maybe some of what Robert Kennedy says about unprocessed foods makes sense to her.
Our straw woman would have found a few kindred spirits at the church. Anyone of a truly skeptical bent could debunk much of what was being said in real time with a few quick clicks. What the Freedom Summit offered was not questions, but answers.
What’s happening here shouldn’t be mistaken as a correction for possible excesses by doctors or politicians. This is a religious crusade, firm in its belief that the medical profession is not to be believed, whatever it says. When right-wingers took the same approach to the media, they were quite successful. Speaking as a journalist, doctors should be very concerned.
