A year ago, Daniel Darling was eagerly following reports on the development of vaccines against the coronavirus. Her family had all had Covid-19 themselves, and her children had lost their beloved piano teacher, an otherwise healthy 50-year-old woman, to the virus. The pandemic was personal.
Eventually, the vaccination also became personal for Mr. Darling. In August, approval of the clichés from an evangelical perspective cost him his post as spokesperson for the National Religious Broadcasters, a largely conservative group of some 1,000 members employed in the Christian media. The news exploded not only in evangelical circles but also in the mainstream media, giving Mr Darling a turning point in the polarized cycle of information he had previously observed from the sidelines.
“God put me in the center of the storm,” Mr. Darling recalls, thinking to himself in the moment. He was determined not to respond to the vitriol. “Can I be forgiven?” He wondered. “Can I make an appeal for Christian unity? “
Now Mr. Darling has an answer, or at least the beginning of one. He was appointed director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, an appointment that was announced Monday. The center was established in 2007 but has been inactive since 2019. The Southern Baptist Seminary hopes that, under Mr. Darling, the center will help shape evangelical conversations on a wide range of political and cultural issues, from fundamental evangelical issues such as the abortion and religious freedom, to technology, to race and to immigration.
Almost as important to Mr. Darling is the tone in which he approaches these discussions. “I think you can have both courage and civility,” he said. “This relentless urge to fight and tear people down for sport is really unhealthy.”
The vaccine debacle caught Mr. Darling off guard. In his conservative circles at work and in the Baptist Church in a suburb of Nashville where he serves as an elder, the Covid vaccines – developed under President Donald J. Trump – were mostly uncontroversial. in the beginning.
Leading members of his lobby group, including Pastor Robert Jeffress and evangelist Franklin Graham, had publicly endorsed the vaccines. In the spring, Mr Darling’s boss even emailed supporters of the organization celebrating the vaccines as “incredibly effective,” as part of a message assuring them that the group’s annual conference in Grapevine, Texas, would be “a safe and rewarding experience.” For its thousands of participants.
By this time, however, the subject of immunization was growing increasingly heavy in many conservative circles, including on talk radio, a mainstay of his employer’s membership base.
On August 1, Mr. Darling wrote a column for USA Today, where he contributes, about his own decision to get the shot, although he acknowledged and even validated widespread mistrust of gunfire. “There aren’t many things in the world today that are worth our trust, but I sincerely believe the Covid-19 vaccine is one of them,” he wrote. “As a Christian and an American, I was proud to get it.”
At work, the column ruffled a few feathers. During a panel discussion, a colleague wondered why the spokesperson for the nonprofit was supporting the vaccination. Troy Miller, the group’s chief executive, responded in a way Mr. Darling considered flippant, writing that “from now on NRB remains neutral.”
On August 18, Mr. Darling appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss the column. At the end of the month, he was unemployed. Mr. Miller – another elder of Mr. Darling’s church – said Mr. Darling was offered another position and decided to leave instead. Mr Darling calls it a dismissal and said he should have signed a statement admitting willful insubordination in exchange for the lesser role. Mr. Miller declined to answer questions on Monday morning.
The news divided evangelicals along lines that were then predictable. Mr Darling’s institutional colleagues, most of whom had approved the vaccines themselves, rushed to his defense. Populists and ultraconservatives called him a “pawn” of “Christians in name only” who wanted to bring down his employer, and accused him of defending “left-wing causes”.
The layoff came as many secular employers across the country enacted vaccine requirements that would eventually result in the sacking of workers who refused to be vaccinated. Dismissals for pro-vaccine advocacy are rarer. In July, the state of Tennessee fired its chief vaccine officer, which she described as a backlash to her pressure for teens in the state to be vaccinated.
Being fired from his job in an evangelical organization was a particularly delicate position for someone who sees himself as a bridge builder. Mr. Darling, who has led communications operations for several large evangelical organizations, may seem almost allergic to expressing a negative opinion. He once wrote a book encouraging Christians to speak up more civilly online.
When discussing his own dismissal, he prefers to highlight the overwhelming support of his church after his sudden unemployment, and his commitment to a personal reconciliation with Mr. Miller. “I still have great faith in the evangelical movement,” he said.
Mr. Darling arrives at Southern Baptist Seminary at a particularly difficult time for the largest Protestant denomination in the country, whose membership has been declining for years. A forceful right flank narrowly failed to place its presidential candidate at the group’s annual convention this summer, and in recent years the denomination has been rocked by controversial internal debates over how to respond to cases of sexual abuse in its churches and seminaries.
“There will be people who will criticize Dan and call him a fundamentalist,” said Adam Greenway, chair of the seminar since 2019. “And there will be people who call Dan awake and liberal because he doesn’t see the vaccine as the mark of the beast. If you take a bit of shrapnel from the left fringe and the far right, that’s not a bad thing.
Mr. Greenway compared the Land Center to the eight central lanes of a 10-lane highway. “In these eight central lanes, there can be a diversity of perspectives,” he said.
