Declaration 2020-001

II. Our Objection Stated Plainly

As a matter of religious conviction, this body objects to:

1. Any medical procedure administered without the free, informed, and voluntary consent of the person receiving it — including injections, tests, and any procedure entering the body.
2. Mandates that condition employment, education, travel, or participation in public life upon submission to such a procedure.
3. The withholding of livelihood, schooling, or access as a penalty for declining.
4. Administration without full disclosure of a product's contents, risks, benefits, and alternatives.
5. Medical products developed, tested, or manufactured using cell lines derived from aborted fetal tissue — including the lines known as HEK-293, WI-38, MRC-5 and PER.C6. We hold that human life is sacred from conception, and that the use of such lines in the making or testing of a medical product implicates the one who receives it in the destruction of that life. This objection stands regardless of how remote the derivation is said to be.
6. The use of substances we regard as pharmakeia — the reliance on chemical agency in place of the healing given by the Creator, against which Scripture warns us.

We hold these convictions whether or not any authority agrees with them, and whether or not any court has ruled upon them.

IV. Our Indigenous Inheritance

We declare that health care and spiritual care are equal and vital functions of this church. They are not separable, and the state's division between them is not our division.

"Indigenous Peoples have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and minerals. Indigenous individuals also have the right to access, without discrimination, to all social and health services." — United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), Article 24

Our traditional medicine is not a preference. It is the inherited practice of this people, and the maintenance of it is a religious obligation.

V. Where the Law Recognises What We Believe

We record the following not as the ground of our belief — our belief needs no such ground — but so that those who receive this Declaration understand that it does not stand alone.

A person need not belong to any church to hold a protected religious belief. The Supreme Court has held that a religious conviction need not be tied to membership in any organised sect, nor conform to the doctrine of any denomination, to receive the protection of the Free Exercise Clause. Frazee v. Illinois Department of Employment Security, 489 U.S. 829 (1989). No member of this body is required to prove attendance, tenure, or orthodoxy to hold their own belief.

Products authorised for emergency use carry a statutory right of refusal. Where a medical product is authorised for emergency use rather than fully licensed, federal law requires that individuals be informed

"of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available." — 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III)

That condition may be waived only by the President, in writing, upon a determination that compliance is not in the interests of national security.

Those who make and administer such products are broadly shielded from liability. Under the PREP Act, 42 U.S.C. § 247d-6d, manufacturers and administrators of covered countermeasures receive broad immunity, and claims are directed to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program rather than to the ordinary courts. We hold that where a person is pressed to accept a product, and those who supply it are shielded from answering for harm, the case for free and informed consent is greater, not smaller.

Further protections we rely upon:

• First Amendment, Free Exercise Clause
• American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), 42 U.S.C. § 1996
• Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc
• Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb — RFRA governs federal government action; it was held not to apply to the states in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Many states have enacted their own equivalents.
• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — religious discrimination in employment, and the duty of reasonable accommodation
• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf