Unfortunately, the lost scripture that explains influenza was not uncovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls and so it remains an impenetrable mystery to spiritual geniuses like Gloria Copeland.
Copeland, who serves on President Trump’s evangelical advisory board, is opposed to flu shots because Jesus never mentioned them. Or, if he did, it was left on the cutting room floor of all the extant gospels.
“Well, listen, partners, we don’t have a flu season,” Copeland said in a video clip posted online by Right Wing Watch. “And don’t receive it when somebody threatens you with, ‘Everybody’s getting the flu.’ We’ve already had our shot: He bore our sicknesses and carried our diseases. That’s what we stand on.”
She said the faithful who don’t have the flu can ward off the infection by repeatedly saying, “I’ll never have the flu. I’ll never have the flu.”
For those who are ― somehow ― sick anyway, she offered a prayer.
“Flu, I bind you off of the people in the name of Jesus,” she said, “Jesus himself gave us the flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of flu, and we receive it and we take it, and we are healed by his strifes, amen.”
Now, unfortunately, Donald Trump isn’t very familiar with the Bible outside of the two Corinthians he heard about a few times at weddings, so he doesn’t realize that there also two Timothys in the Bible and one of them says that high office holders can avoid being held to account for their crimes by intoning: “I’ll never be impeached. I’ll never be impeached.”
On the other hand, that prayer won’t work because it’s simply not true that Jesus gave us impeachment or that he redeemed us from the cure of impeachment. In fact, those two things don’t even make sense.
