Dan Darling, the former Vice President of Communications at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) recently took a new job as VP of Communications at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Network. Darling, who has been using his platforms for years to advance leftist causes, was fired yesterday after an appearance on MSNBC pushing the COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to twist the Scriptures to support his reasons for doing so.

Disclaimer: This publication has no official stance on any of the available vaccines, we believe it is your choice. That being said, we have a strong aversion to twisting the Scripture to turn vaccines into a “gospel issue” and make it about “loving your neighbor.”

According to a report at RNS, Darling was fired for breaching the NRB’s policy on taking a neutral stance on vaccinations. While we understand the sentiment, it appears to be misunderstood and, of course, RNS is lying and twisting the story at hand. The NRB’s policy doesn’t forbid Darling or anyone else from having an opinion or even expressing it; it does, however, prevent Darling from twisting Scripture making it appear as though the Christian faith (which the NRB is supposed to represent) requires Christians to submit to the vaccine.

This is exactly what Darling has done. And further, Darling went on a far-left liberal news network to do so. Darling, like all leftist Southern Baptist leaders, including the newly-elected president, Ed Litton, appear to have a fascination with MSNBC as a platform to advance their pet leftist causes. In June, Litton went on MSNBC to declare that the Bible calls Christians to be “woke.”

Conservative, Bible-believing Christians have little patience for those purported Christian leaders who prostitute themselves out to leftist, Pagan institutions to advance leftist causes in the name of Christ.

Darling’s infatuation with Roman Catholicism is also problematic. His appearance on MSNBC followed and affirmed guidance from the Pope that being vaccinated was “loving your neighbor,” a sentiment the Scriptures command Christians to do. Of course, we understand this in its proper context to be an affirmation of gospel witness–proclaiming the good news to the lost.

But this isn’t the first time Darling has echoed the sentiments of Catholicism. In 2019, Darling joined a far-left Roman Catholic animal rights activist, Charles Camosy–who refers to animals as “non-human animals”–by publishing a piece in Christianity Today promoting his animal rights activism. In that piece, he wrote in reference to Camosy’s animal rights activism:

Whatever our differences with Catholic social teaching, we should echo his opposition to “throwaway culture.”

Darling, like Camosy and others, including Southeastern Seminary’s Karen Swallow Prior, have compared animal rights to abortion and has insisted that the Church support the same kinds of protections for animals as they do humans, putting an end to meat production and factory farming. Darling has also joined the chorus of pro-life movement hijackers insisting that one cannot be pro-life unless they join far-left social justice causes to fight “oppression” and “white supremacy.”

Darling–along with the rest of these Scripture-twisting leftists–is doing nothing except to advance a culture of fear and dependence on government which is antithetical to what the Bible actually teaches.