Masks confused the church because of their swift move from technical public health mechanism into ritual totem. What may have been an acceptable response to the former becomes a matter of disloyalty to God in the latter. Church history and lore are full of accounts of Christians who courageously refused such compromises in past eras—sometimes to the point of martyrdom. As the demands of a new pagan religion grow, Christians must again reject such rituals.

Do Not Let Health Pretexts Disguise a New Pagan Liturgy
Masks are returning. As public health officials raise alarms about “BA.2.86,” the latest COVID strain, it is becoming clear that masking is developing into something of a seasonal enthusiasm. A certain segment of the population stands eager to don the mask at the slightest whiff of a new viral strain—rejoining a few devotees who have faithfully worn the mask since 2020. Most ominously, mandates are also being reintroduced.
Many Christians instinctively resisted COVID mandates—both mask and vaccine—imposed by public health authorities. Yet Christian leaders have struggled to offer compelling doctrinal analysis of this subject.
When pressed, many pastors and Christian intellectuals sidestepped theological or ethical discussion of masks, while resorting to established religious liberty arguments—particularly the use of aborted tissue in pharmaceutical development—for some vaccine concerns. This has been the stated basis for many vaccine exemptions and challenges over the past few years.
But this is not what most Christians actually think. First, many resisted vaccines prior to any awareness of aborted tissue use. While they may have been troubled by that fact, it was not the driving factor. Second, these vaccine objections do not address concerns about masks that Christians recognize as naturally related.
It’s undesirable to center our argument on a justification that does not reflect actual prevailing beliefs. Doing so not only exposes Christians to charges of hypocrisy when the same standard is not applied elsewhere (e.g., to the many other medications that also use aborted tissue in development), but it can also cause us to miss a more salient factor that drives underlying concerns and has better explanatory power.
The real problem goes to the heart of these ostensibly public health-related practices. Christians intuitively sense that both masking and COVID vaccines have become ritual practices—totems in a new and non-Christian religion. We must ground our resistance to these rituals in a clear rejection of the broader liturgy.
What is ritual masking?
Joshua Mitchell, in American Awakening, describes a new religion of innocence and stain. His thesis was developed before COVID, yet COVID rituals fit seamlessly into his framework.
Mitchell described how wokeness is a religion obsessed with innocence and with moral stain, two theological-moral categories inherited (if now bastardized) from Protestant doctrines of sin. What are commonly called “virtue signals” are actually words and actions designed to signal innocence from the pervasive sins of racism and various other -isms and -phobias that pervade American society. When some “stain” nonetheless taints a community, that community responds with ritual scapegoating designed to purge the stain and return the community to innocence.
The COVID-19 virus provided a physical “stain” that perfectly mapped onto this system. Masks and vaccines became symbols of innocence—totems reflecting faith in and allegiance to “The Science” as mediated by the priestly class of anointed experts led by “Dr. Fauci.” COVID exposure became not merely a health risk, but a sin exposing one’s community to this stain. The rhetoric of devoted adherents made this clear, complete with laments laden with guilt when one caught COVID (regardless of the severity of the actual infection) despite great efforts to protect against it—reminiscent of when sin is found in a community despite numerous purity rituals. Those who refused to follow such protocols, regardless of the scant evidence that these measures actually prevented transmission, were seen as wantonly tainting the community and were then scapegoated for broader ills.
Masking is particularly evocative of this concept: face and head coverings have a long history as religious symbols, often explicitly designed to protect a community’s innocence. When radical Muslims take over a given locale, one of their introductory policies is the imposition of female head coverings (the more radical require the face also to be covered). Christians too, have recognized symbolism in head coverings, though this was grounded less in protection from sin or stain than in the order of creation. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul called for wives to cover their heads while praying. Though the meaning of this has been debated, many churches throughout the ages have practiced various forms of such head covering.
In another parallel, the Old Testament had a litany of restrictions and obligations that touched diet, skin infection, the timing of sexual relations, and more. Christians have broadly understood those ostensibly health-driven requirements to be an aspect of Israel’s ceremonial law that passed away in the New Covenant. This underscores the difficulty of parsing a practice to distinguish health and ritual elements, and how the two can often be commingled.
Such a health-related pretext can be particularly insidious by making a ritual harder to recognize. Many people may accept masking as a medical precaution, with the purported health benefit serving as a rationalization to obscure the fundamentally religious impulse behind the practice. Mask wearers may even develop a false consciousness regarding the act, convincing themselves that their motives are health-related when their behavior has all the hallmarks of religious ritual.
How then do we know today when masking falls into this ritualistic category?
As Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”
The hallmarks of ritual protection and innocence signaling are obvious. Are masks conspicuously displayed as symbols of compliance with The Science? Are they worn even in environments where any perceived utility is obviously absurd, such as outdoors or alone in a car? Are they discussed with a moralistic tone? When such practices are common, it’s reasonable to assume that ritual masking is pervasive.
Obviously, any particular circumstance requires a degree of judgment. The line is not always clear. When masks are questioned in a given circumstance, many will immediately ask whether a valid health consideration exists.
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There is both purpose and tremendous benefits to being in God’s school of waiting. For waiting: Is a stark reminder that we are not in control of things. This is very positive. Trying to be master of your own life will prove to be exhausting. Calls for honesty. It involves facing up to, and confessing, the struggles, pain, and doubts of our own hearts.

I’m sitting at OR Tambo International Airport, waiting for my flight back home. And I’m thinking about my hatred of waiting. I think to what degree my actions are determined by my desire to do things as quickly as possible; avoiding as much fuss as possible. The airline is Safair, reputedly the least delayed airline in the world. We checked in online, to save time and bother. When queuing, I have carefully studied the four lines, figuring out which will be quickest. The lines must keep moving! Then we have booked seats right at the back of the aircraft. These are for a quick getaway after landing. And, of course, we only have hand-luggage. Who in their right mind wants to watch the stupid carousel going round and round?
I don’t want to wait. Waiting is pure agony.
I Have the Need for Speed
My issues with time seem to be typical of the Western world. Time is precious. Time is money, say the experts. Waiting is therefore a waste of time and money. “Quick and easy” are two words with enormous seductive, even magical, powers. How can we ‘do life,’ maximising it with the least fuss and bother? We have fast food, eating meals on the run or in our cars. We covet huge internet speeds. Every fix must be instant. The latest diet promises incredible results with minimal effort. The self-help bestselling book is subtitled: Discover Yourself in Less Than 30 Minutes.
‘Make life happen, don’t let it happen to you.’ The real thing is the next thing, we want to live from peak event to peak event. Eat dessert first! When life gets very tough, skip the unpleasantries and take instant gratification. Forget the potatoes, go straight for the ice cream. ‘Just do it!’ What are you waiting for? One life, live it! Carpe Diem. There is something appealing about these slogans. Yet there is also something potentially very misleading. 
As usual, the church follows the world. It simply rebrands the psychobabble: “Simple devotions for the busy Christian;” “Quick sermons for the over-worked pastor;” “Five keys to spiritual victory;” “Three Steps to Holiness.” But those titles are false. They’re dangerous! Robust faith can’t be microwaved!
Churches are filled up with people looking for rapid, painless paths to change and growth. Congregants are given formulaic answers and offered express spirituality; a trite, formulaic, and franchised faith. The world has McDonald’s. So the church offers McFaith. We want shortcuts, comfortable answers to vexing problems.
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Van der Kemp moved to South Africa in 1799, settling in Kaffraria, a British colony in the south-eastern portion of the country. By appointment, he was to minister to the Dutch who had been the original colonists. But he couldn’t ignore the local population – the Xhosa who had become, in practical terms, servants of the Dutch, and the Khoikhoi who had been displaced. He persisted in his efforts to evangelize these people in spite of slim success and of fierce opposition by the Dutch. In 1803 he founded Bethelsdorp, a mission station near Algoa Bay, where he focused on the spiritual and material wellbeing of the Khoikhoi.

The renowned historian Andrew Walls describes Johannes van der Kemp as an unconventional candidate for the London Missionary Society (LMS). At the time of his application, van der Kemp was in fact fifty years old and had both a higher education and a more complicated past than the average candidate. “While most LMS candidates lamented their early sins and misimproved talents and opportunities,” Walls writes, “this ex-dragoon officer really had been a sinner on a fairly spectacular scale. He had also been a deist and a rationalist author.”[1]
Sinner, Deist, and Rationalist
Born in 1847 at Rotterdam, Netherlands, van der Kemp had started his theological studies on the footsteps of his father, a Reformed pastor. After graduation, he instead joined the army, progressing through the ranks until he became a Captain of the Horse and Lieutenant of the Dragoon Guards (a branch of the cavalry).
It was while serving as an officer that he fathered a daughter, Johanna. Since the mother was married, he brought up the child by himself until 1779, when another woman, Christina Frank, agreed to marry him and take on the mother’s role.
Leaving the army, van der Kemp went to Scotland to study medicine, graduating in 1782 from the University of Edinburgh. He practiced medicine in Scotland for a while, earning a reputation as a caring physician, then moved back to Holland.
Throughout this time, he had no interest in religion if not to deride it. Christianity was, to him, “inconsistent with the dictates of reason” and “the Bible a collection of incoherent opinions, tales, and prejudices.” He initially admired Christ “as a man of sense and learning”[2] but lost his veneration when he realized that Christ called himself the Son of God.
He did feel the weight of his sins and prayed that God would prepare him, by punishing his sins, “for virtue and happiness.” Because of this, he interpreted every misfortune as a punishment aimed at making him a better man. When this didn’t happen, he realized that virtue and happiness were out of the reach of his reason. “I confessed then my impotence and blindness to God and owned myself to be like a blind man who had lost his way and who waited in hope that some benevolent person would pass by and shew him the right path.”[3]
Meeting Christ the Conqueror and Prophet
All this changed in 1791 when a boating accident led to the deaths of his wife and his daughter, who was still his only child.
“When the Lord Jesus first revealed himself to me, he did not reason with me about truth and error but attacked me like a warrior and felled me to the ground by the power of his arm. …”

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