Revelation 13:17 and Anti-Vaccination Culture

Abstract

The text of the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation has provided a template for the development of many radical, political identities over the course of many centuries. The text describes an idolatrous majority, beholden to the power of a tyrannical and pseudo-theocratic ruler. It also describes an embattled minority, who are given an ‘insight’ which allows them to resist the thrall of this ruler. In more recent times, these images have captured the imaginations of participants in conspiracy cultures. In particular, those who resist the use of vaccinations by public health authorities see prophetic significance in the concept of the ‘mark of the beast.’ For the entire history of the use of vaccination, anti-vaccination campaigners have seen prophetic significance in the topos of ‘the mark of the Beast.’ This article traces the themes which link the apocalyptic language used by anti-vaccination campaigners in the nineteenth century with the apocalyptic language used by anti-vaccination campaigners in the twenty-first.

Keywords

Revelation Vaccination Journalism Apocalypse

For over a century, activist opponents of public vaccination have described their struggle in terms which echo the language of the book of Revelation and, in particular, of Revelation 13. In more recent times, those engaged in this form of activism have been associated with a broader culture of conspiracism. During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians, pundits, scientists, and scholars alike have expressed alarm at the growing prevalence of conspiracy theories. Throughout 2020 and 2021, internet forums and social media platforms were replete with claims that the virus itself was not real, that governments were using fear of the virus in order to demolish norms of personal liberty and that the Covid vaccine itself contained a microchip which would be used to monitor behaviour. Many commentators feared that these narratives would discourage citizens from observing lockdown restrictions, use personal-protective equipment and – most importantly, perhaps – getting vaccinated. In describing the systems of social-identity formation which exist within the so-called ‘conspiracist’ milieu, several scholars have noted the prevalence of ‘elected deviance’ as a theme (Tose-land, 221; Asprem and Dyrendal, 223). This term denotes individuals who critique institutions of epistemic authority and who actively embrace the status of the outsider or the pariah. This tendency appears to be particularly prevalent among those who are identified with anti-vaccination resistance. Within such communities, solidarity and commitment appear to be reinforced by an ‘ethos of shared seekership,’ a ‘basic… belief that truth (or enlightenment) is an esoteric commodity only to be attained after suitable preparation and a quest’ (Campbell, 122; Asprem and Dyrendal, 209). Members often see themselves as an enlightened enclave within an otherwise ruinously conformist herd.

The use of tropes harvested from the book of Revelation is an equally well-known habit of some counter-cultural, minority political groups. The images found in the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation appear to be particularly potent for members of the anti-vaxx subculture. For the entire history of vaccination, campaigners have associated vaccination with the beast of the land and his mark. By extension, campaigners have often associated themselves with the enlightened minority – ‘those who have insight’ – referred to in Revelation 13: 18.As sobering as these numbers are, they speak about a world before the COVID-19 pandemic. The reporting by the UK Mental Health Foundation suffices to show how lockdowns, shielding, and the unfortunate terminology of social distancing has aggravated our loneliness: whereas in March 2020, just 10% of UK adults reported being lonely, by November that number rose to 25%. Two decades into the 21st–century, the Western world is in the grip of an unprecedented social and cultural phenomenon which, as we will see shortly, poses no less a threat to our lives than the rising water levels around the globe.

The Mythology of Revelation 13

In the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, readers are warned of the coming of the beast from the sea, a being part leopard, part bear, part lion. In Revelation 13:11, readers learn of the beast from the land, who has the horns of a lamb but the voice of a dragon. The beast from the land appears to be a parody of Christ (in that it has the horns of a lamb) of the prophets (in its ability to perform signs and wonders). The beast from the land forces all people ‘great and small’ to bow down in worship before an image of the beast from the sea and to take a mark upon their right hand or their foreheads. Anyone without a mark on their forehead or their right hand is thereafter forbidden from participating in commerce.

Many scholars during the twentieth century described apocalyptic literature as an anesthetic, which offered beleaguered or marginalized groups an ‘other-worldly orientation’ thereby preventing them from squarely facing and addressing the issue of their own oppression in the ‘real world’ (Hobsbawm, 59; Hanson, 262, 408). In the later twentieth century, scholarly attitudes towards apocalyptic literature shifted. This shift was in large part the result of the long-lasting influence of the scholarship of Norman Cohn. Cohn’s work emphasized the important role which millenarianism has played in the construction and maintenance of political cultures (Cohn). Today, many scholars recognize the ways in which apocalyptic literature has been created and mobilized as a cultural strategy for maintaining attitudes of resistance to power and for rallying political movements. In England, the medieval period saw frequent surges in socially disruptive millenarianism. The image of the ‘fifth monarch’ in Daniel 7 was mobilized by seventeenth century radicals, in particular the Fifth Monarchists (Capp). The nineteenth century saw a confluence of socialist and millenarian thought in England (Lockley). Meanwhile right-wing demagogues from Ian Paisley to Donald Trump have often invoked millenarian rhetoric in the interests of galvanizing their respective political movements in the past century (Mitchel; Kaplan, 168-197).

Of all apocalyptic texts in the Biblical canon, the book of Revelation is perhaps the most frequently and fervently mined for meaning by political and social activists. According to social historians of the early Church, Revelation itself was, at its inception, a disruptive text (Koester). Revelation 13 is of special note as it is identified by many scholars as an expression of defiant resistance to power. Often these scholars refer to the mythological character of the text. Wendy Doniger defines myth as ‘a narrative in which a group finds, over an extended period of time, a shared meaning in certain questions about human life’ (Doniger, 109). Mythology, as such, can provide powerful tools for those engaged in the task of resistance. For Steven Friesen, the text of Revelation is itself a funhouse mirror image of the mythological texts, social institutions and practices which made up the imperial cult for the purpose of establishing and maintaining the power of the institutions of the Roman Empire. Friesen demonstrates that imperial mythologies were used in a ritual setting and thereby served to consolidate support for the imperial cult. The texts of Revelation were also used in ritual settings. But while the mythologies of the imperial cult were ‘deployed to support the status quo,’ the mythologies of the early Christian communities were intended for ‘disruptive ends.’ By combining mythological elements from fringe areas of the Empire, and by problematizing conventions of imperial mythology, the author of Revelation and his readership made a ‘dangerous deployment in defense of a minority perspective’ (Friesen, 312). These texts – as myths – have proven to have relevance and utility beyond the immediate context in which they were produced. Bruce Lincoln identifies ‘suppleness’ and ‘versatility’ as defining characteristics of mythology (Lincoln, 175). Myths – unlike other forms of history – can be used and adapted by different groups at different times. As we shall see, the mythology of ‘the beast’ and its ‘mark’ have especially provided fodder for successive generations of political as well as religious thinkers (Crossley).

Five key themes emerge from this brief passage which have held mythological significance for its readers throughout the centuries which have succeeded its production. In the first instance, the figure of the beast represents idolatry. The beast is a creature masquerading as a deity. There are clear resonances, therefore, between the beast of Revelation 13 and the idols of Daniel 3 and Exodus 32. The followers of the beast venerate an inanimate object just as the apostates of the past had worshipped inanimate objects. The people who worship the beast – like those of previous times who worshipped images of gold – are guilty of treating the creature with the dignity properly afforded to God. This is clearly expressed in the reverential phrases used by the followers of the beast. ‘Who is like the beast?’ they ask. This phrasing clearly echoes the language of adoration found in Deuteronomy 33, Psalm 113, Isaiah 40 and in many other places in scripture.

Secondly, the story is about tyranny. The people, according to John’s prophecy, will be controlled by the beast. The people will be forbidden to ‘buy and sell,’ save that they have the mark of the beast upon them. Once again, commentators agree that the text is reflective of contemporary concerns regarding the control exercised by the imperial government. Just as slaves were branded by their masters, the people are here branded with the name of the beast. Moreover, the word used here to refer to the ‘mark’ – χάραγμα – was used to refer to the imperial stamp used to mark coins or documents. The followers of the beast, therefore, are associated with enslavement to imperial power (Kraybill, 137-140).

Third, this text is concerned with the theme of incongruity (Koester). Both facets of the story inform a wider concern with incongruity. Many aspects of the story present parodic reflections of Christian imagery. The beast has the horns of a lamb but the voice of a dragon and – as such – appears as a grotesque parody of the figure of Christ. The followers of the beast are marked on their forehead: a parody of the ‘seal’ placed ‘on the foreheads of the people of God’ (Revelation 7:3-8). A sense of the uncanny is therefore created with the impression that the beast is a hybrid of the holy and the profane: an incongruity which lies at the heart of idolatry. The text was written, according to Steven Friesen, to create a ‘pastiche.’ The ‘beast of the sea’ of Revelation 13 is, according to this analysis, a compression of ‘the four beasts of Daniel 7 and the Leviathan imagery.’ By employing this eclectic array of images, the author re-fashions the myth in a ‘disjunctive’ fashion, unsuitable for the maintenance of ‘social hierarchy’ (Friesen). The actions of the beast, according to Koester, are also incongruous. The beast of the land is a ‘political functionary,’ a ‘false prophet,’ and a ‘controller of commerce.’ As such, the ‘beast of the land,’ is presented as a symbol of an earthly power which is both ubiquitous and chime-rical (Koester, 336). Clearly in the context of Revelation 13, this description of the beast as a figure of incongruity is intended to be satirical. However, as Koester demonstrates, the incongruities which the beast represents also serve as a ‘warning’ about ‘about the insidious connections between political authority, commerce, and loyalty to God’ (Koester).

Fourth, several scholars have noted the various ways in which inversion is used in this text as a rhetorical strategy of resistance. The author inverts the concept of a Roman imperial cornucopia, for example, which could feed the citizens of the empire. Instead, Revelation 13:17 accuses the empire of constricting citizens’ natural ability to traffic, engage in commerce and to enjoy the goods of the earth (Friesen, 310). In the same way, status is inverted within the context of the story. The status symbolism of the imperial cult – whereby powerful families were elevated in dignity as a result of their devotion to the emperor – is turned upside down. In the mythological system described in Revelation 13, those who conform to the value system of the imperial cult are marked as slaves of the beast. In the meantime, humiliation, suffering, and even death (by martyrdom) are reconfigured as marks of glory. As Richard Bauckham writes:

The sheer political and military power of the beast seems divine, and this earthly view of the power situation was surely one which Christians themselves were tempted to share. They were a tiny minority of powerless people confronted with the apparently irresistible might of the Roman state and the overwhelming pressure of pagan society. To refuse to compromise was simply to become even more helpless victims. The apocalyptic visions, however, reveal that from a heavenly perspective things look quite different. From this perspective the martyrs are the real victors. To be faithful in bearing the witness of Jesus even to the point of death is not to become a helpless victim of the beast, but to take the field against him and win (Bauckham, 235).

This leads to our fifth theme: esoteric knowledge. Clearly, the ability to discern and thence upend the contingency of worldly norms of value – whereby wealth and power become bad, death and penury good – is linked with a revelatory form of knowledge. As much is indicated in the eighteenth verse of the chapter: ‘This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast.’ The figure of the ‘person who has insight,’ according to Beale, recalls the topos of the maskilim, derived from the book of Daniel and referred to elsewhere in Revelation 11 and 12. According to Beale, these figures represent those ‘living in the midst of apostatizers [who] must be careful to discern false from true worship’ (Beale, 166). It is only, it seems, through access to esoteric knowledge, that these individuals are able to see the world so differently from the majority of people. Their chosenness, therefore, goes hand-in-hand with their pariah status. This image of an embattled yet enlightened minority continues to be one of the most inspiring topoi for readers of the thirteenth chapter of revelation.

The book of Revelation had provided a framework for innumerable religious and secular movements over the course of twenty centuries. It has been treated as an ‘oracular source that signaled supernatural change on earth,’ as an analogical account of church history, as a clarion for social change and as a promise of the coming rapture (Chilton; Boxall). The image of the beast and its mark has proven to have perhaps the most enduring appeal. The five themes identified above – idolatry, tyranny, incongruity, inversion, and esoteric knowledge – have each played a role in the use of this text as a source of resistance mythology throughout the Christian era. Figures as diverse as Gerrard Winstanley, Sister Mary Galmond, Ian Paisley and David Icke have all made use of the language and imagery of Revelation 13. References to the phrases and images of Revelation – in the past century alone – can be found in the literature of anarchists, socialists, centrists, conservatives, and fascists (Crossley). Revelation 13:17 has especially been used by Christian writers in order to ‘warn readers about the insidious connection between political authority, commerce, and loyalty to God’ (Koester, 22). In the past century, in particular, those within the conspiracist milieu have become particularly associated with the language of Revelation 13. Conspiracist writing commonly presupposes a tripartite division of humanity: the good minority, the bad minority, and the duped majority (Robertson, 239). A mirror of this trope can be found in the description of humanity in Revelation 13.

Many contemporary conspiracist millenarians self-consciously associate themselves with the image of an embattled, enlightened minority which we find in Revelation 13:18. This self-perception is reinforced from without. Partly due to the broad influence of Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of Millenium, and partly due to a more general secularization of liberal democratic discourse, the very use of apocalyptic literature within the political realm has become an indicator of outsider status and – more specifically – of ‘fanaticism.’ Thus the use of texts which propose a stark distinction between good and evil has itself become a marker of the distinction between good and evil (perpetuated by the words and actions of both the so-called extremists and the so-called mainstream). In what follows, two examples of this dynamic will be described. The first is the campaign against compulsory smallpox vaccination in the late-nineteenth century. The second is the campaign against Covid vaccination in the twenty-first century.

The Mark of the Beast and the Smallpox Vaccination

Inoculation – in the form of variolation – was practiced outside of Europe for several centuries before the discovery of vaccination. In the early eighteenth century, Mary Wortley Montagu had her children variolated after encountering the practice in the Ottoman empire. Over the proceeding decades, variolation came into widespread use in Britain. In 1798, Edward Jenner published his Inquiry into the Variolae Vaccinae Known as the Cow Pox. In Britain, Jenner’s vaccination soon became more popular than variolation as a method of inoculation and in 1840 the latter was banned. The Vaccination Act which banned the method of variolation also ensured that all citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would have free access to the vaccination. Thirteen years later, a second Vaccination Act required that all parents should have their children vaccinated against smallpox. A third act, passed in 1867, threatened imprisonment for any parents who failed to have their children vaccinated and to pay subsequent fines (Brunton).

The decades following the passing of the third Vaccination Act were marked by successive popular and political campaigns against compulsion. Resistance organizations sprang up across Britain. The heartlands of the movement were found in the industrial towns and cities: London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and – particularly – Leicester (Durbach; Swales; Wolfe and Sharp). The majority of those who took to the streets to condemn the Vaccination Acts were members of the working class. Many of the protestors belonged to the dissenting Churches. Many were Secular-ists. Many were members of new religious and vitalist movements: Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism and Mesmerism (Porter and Porter, 240). These different groups came together to protest throughout the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The movement also had its representatives in the House of Commons. Successive attempts to repeal the compulsory clauses of the Vaccination Acts were made by Peter Alfred Taylor, Charles Henry Hopwood and Jacob Bright amongst others. James Picton, MP for Leicester, told parliament in 1888 that the ‘disease did not respect vaccination,’ and that ‘notwithstanding all the fuss made about it, vaccination was not an effectual safeguard against small-pox’ (Hansard, vol. 326, c. 930).

From the 1860s onwards, the anti-vaccination movement was organized into various Leagues and Societies during this period. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was established by Richard Gibbs in 1866 and by 1870 it could boast 10,000 members and its own journal: The Anti-Vaccinator. On the death of Gibbs, the baton for leadership of the movement was passed to Mary Hume-Rothery who – along with her husband William – established the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League (NACVL) in 1873. This group was rivalled by the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination and Self Protection Society, led by William Young. In 1880, Young joined forces with William Tebb and William White to found the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination (LSACV). Together, they published The Vaccination Inquirer. At the turn of the twentieth century, the LSACV dissolved and reconstituted as the National Anti-Vaccination League. The National Anti-Vaccination League was disbanded in 1971, only to be revived by activists in 2020 (National Anti-Vaccination League History).

It is important to note that the qualms held by anti-compulsion campaigners in the latter decades of the nineteenth century were not unfounded. During this period, vaccination was administered with a degree of sanitary caution which today would be considered far less than adequate (Smith, 163). Public health officials were forced to acknowledge that some deaths had resulted from ‘vaccinal syphilis’ (BMJ). Moreover, the statistical basis for the arguments used by advocates of vaccination was not always reliable. Those charged with collecting the requisite data openly conceded that it was almost impossible to be certain whether those who had died of smallpox in hospitals had been vaccinated or not (Royal Commission on Vaccination, 179). It should also be said, however, that many who argued against vaccination were not prepared to admit that any statistical evidence would alter their a priori belief in the inherent evil of the procedure (Hume-Rothery, 1882).

The mythology of Revelation 13 provided a helpful framework for Christian anti-vaccinationists. Many commentators described the practice of vaccination as ‘beastly’ and identified the vaccinated with the followers of the beast. In 1869, one Thomas Orton, a member of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Committee, distributed a handbill at Sheffield, bearing the title: ‘The Mark of the beast!’ The handbill reminded Sheffielders that they were descended from Wat Tyler and encouraged them not to ‘submit to be dragooned into poisoning their childrens’ blood’ (Sheffield Independent, 11). On 9 May 1889, a shoemaker from 15 Crossburn Street in Glasgow was arraigned for failing to allow his infant sons to be vaccinated and – in his own defence – he declared that he could ‘show from his Bible that vaccination was the mark of the beast’ (Glasgow Evening Citizen).

As we have already seen, this trope is multivalent. In the first place, for readers of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation, the mark of the beast was a sign of enslavement to a tyrannical ruler. Moreover, the nature of the power exercised by the beast was pseudo-theocratic: the beast of the land uses the power of the image of the beast of the sea in order to coerce the population. Compliance could therefore be characterized as idolatry. A comparison between the power of the beast and the power of vaccinators was presented in the literature of the anti-vaccinationists during the 1870s and 1880s. Many presented the medical authorities as a corrupt and anti-Christian priesthood determined to keep the population in a state of ignorant quiescence. Smallpox, they claimed, was:

a lie palmed off upon the public to keep them by fear in just such subjection to medical authority as that in which the laity were kept of old by the ecclesiastical powers from a similar wholesome dread inspired by their perversions of the doctrine of purgatory and such like (Hume-Rothery, 1879).

The association of medical men with clergy was relatively commonplace during this period of increased medical professionalization (The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter). Indeed, the analogy continues to provide metaphorical meaning for historians of the period writing today (Peterson, 285). For Victorians, this comparison, which drew upon traditional (and particularly nonconformist) Protestant objections to sacerdotalism, was not intended to be a flattering one. The medical priesthood, like the beast of the land, demanded the obedience of the people of God under threat of violence and pauperization. The noted and infamous herb-alist Thomas Allinson, in a letter of 1892 to the English Lakes Visitor, denounced compulsory vaccination in the following terms:

The sooner this disease-producing, life wasting and death-dealing operation is done away with the better…. Medical men arrogate to themselves the position of high priests and would excommunicate and ruin all who dare to differ from their dogmas, and refuse to aid in the worship of the Golden Calf that they have set up. The spirit of the Inquisition of Spain was never more intolerant (English Lakes Visitor, 5).

A connection between inoculation – more broadly – and idolatry can be traced to the fact that it originated in the East. As early as 1801, the German physician Johann Christian Ehrmann called Jennerite inoculation ‘anti-Christian’ (The Medico-Chirugical Review, 510). The apparently Ottoman provenance of the practice was sufficient to arouse suspicions about its compatibility with Christian doctrine for decades afterwards. ‘Inoculation seems to have come like a fetish from the East,’ Charles Henry Hopwood told parliament, ‘as something which is to be worshipped here and the people of England fall down on their knees and worship it’ (Hansard, vol. 280, c. 1004). The link between vaccination – more specifically – and idolatry may stem from the rather literal association of the cowpox infection and the Golden calf story. The semiotic association of the cowpox vaccine with the Golden Calf of Exodus 32 was a prevalent feature of anti-vaccination rhetoric throughout the nineteenth century. James Gilray’s famous 1802 cartoon, unfavorably depicting ‘The Miraculous Effects of the New Inoculation,’ prominently features a painting of the Golden Calf hanging on the wall of Jenner’s surgery. At the end of the century, a correspondent to the Courier and Argus, rehearsed this metaphorical association, trading in antisemitic tropes thereby to ridicule those who submitted to vaccination:

The ancient and superstitious calf-worshippers we read about in the Old Testament have their prototype in our present day calf vaccinator. But the present day fashion does obeisance to the diseased calf while in olden times it was the golden calf which led the Jews to pervert themselves. Verily we are a set of calves to suppose that God, in creating us, miscalculated the balance of our constitution by putting too little calf matter into our system. We are without doubt a superstitious people when we submit to this readjusting of God’s handiwork and delude ourselves with the foolish notion that the avenging demon of smallpox will pass us by because we have the mark of the beast upon us (Dundee Courier, 4).

In other ways, the practice of vaccination was equated with hybridity and contrasted with purity. This attitude was expressed by public intellectuals and thought leaders throughout the history of the smallpox vacci-nation crisis. The corruption of the blood, which the vaccination process threatened, appalled many commentators. After all, the process of vaccination during this period involved arm-to-arm transfer. Archdeacon Colley warned that the taints of ‘scrofula… insanity… and drunkenness,’ would be disseminated throughout the population via the conduit of vaccination:

We infuse into the life blood of our little ones, the moral pestilences of those whom we would not permit to enter within our doors or shake hands with in the street… Vaccination… is breaking down the divine law that keeps evils separate, and that imprisons them in families. It mingles, in a hideous communion of blood, all the diseases and taints of the community. Every hereditary sewer is made to open up in the nursery (Colley, 5).

A further anxiety was created by the notion that direct vaccination (in which the vaccine was drawn directly from a cow) would lead to the mixing of human and animal blood. Particularly in the early years of vaccination, this was considered by many to be truly ‘beastly.’ William Cobbett, in his Advice to Young Men, declared that he was ‘always opposed to the cow-pox scheme,’ on the basis that ‘there are some things, surely, more hideous than death,’ and that – within this category – he would include ‘the blood… of a beast [being] put into the veins of human beings’ (Cobbett, 260). The suggestion that vaccination was inherently ‘beastly’ was enough to deter many. A dispirited Benjamin Waterhouse wrote to Jenner from Philadelphia on 24 April 1801, complaining that ‘the leading physician here pronounces [vacci-nation] too beastly and indelicate for polished society’ (Baron, 442). Many came to believe that the smallpox vaccination could lead to the putrefaction of the body in a more visible sense. In an edition of the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League Occasional Circular, one Dr. Bakewell recounted the story of a child who have been vaccinated in Trinidad, only to be transformed into a ‘pie-bald’ (National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League Occasional Circular, 11). This story clearly speaks to anxieties founded on nineteenth-century concepts of racial purity, blood and miscegenation. With the dawn of popular science-fiction writing, authors traded on anxieties about the inherently incongruous nature of vaccination, constructing horror stories about futuristic, chimerical beasts. The most famous by far of these is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau. In the novel Moreau explains his experiments to the shipwrecked scientist Edward Prendick as a natural and logical extension of the vaccination project. ‘The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature,’ Moreau points out ‘may be made to go through enduring modification of which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or dead matter are examples’ (Wells, 130).

In refusing to participate in the vaccination program and in expressing arguments against vaccination in the face of the epistemic authority of the day, the anti-vaccinators were able to present themselves as an enlightened but embattled minority. This identity was crafted through a careful inversion of the norms of status and authority. One example of this can be found in an editorial for The National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter in 1878. The author described – accredited and respected – advocates of compulsory vaccination as self-deluding and benighted when compared to the enlightened anti-vaccinationists:

The lie has bound them in its adamantine chains and enmeshed them with its web of bewildering sophisms forcing them to love darkness rather than light because the deeds they have bound themselves to defend are evil (The National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter, 167).

Moreover, anti-vaccinationists drew on the implied taxonomy of Revelation 13, describing humanity as tripartite: divided between the good, the bad and the gullible. Mary Hume-Rothery, leading figure in the NACVL, agreed that the medical establishment was responsible for maintaining ignorance amongst the masses, leaving a handful of the enlightened to warn them of the dangers:

Among the ignorant poor – ignorant happily of the sophistications by which those who worship the beast, the materialists of our day pervert and blind their God-given intellects – common sense, natural feeling and bitter experience, are slowly but surely spreading enlightenment and disclosing the true character and the fearful folly of this worship of the beast which has been established amongst us (The National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter, vol. 3, no. 1, 6).

This taxonomy – associating an enlightened minority with anti-vaccination sentiment, and an ovine majority with acquiescence to the idolatrous vaccination laws – had clear resonances with the taxonomy described in Revelation 13. This allowed anti-compulsion campaigners to use the text of Revelation 13 to bolster the salience of their claims. This usage also provided a template for later opponents of vaccination, including during the recent Covid pandemic, to use in their own campaigns.

The Mark of the Beast and the COVID Vaccination

It is perhaps unsurprising that the recent health catastrophe has stimulated a new interest in the language and themes of apocalypticism. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created a global health crisis and triggered a vast effort to develop vaccines which would halt the advance of the virus. As the past eighteen months has seen the development and rapid distribution of such vaccines, it has also seen a popular backlash against vaccination measures. So-called anti-vaxx movements in the 2020s often make use of the typology of Revelation 13 in precisely the same ways that it was used by anti-vaccinationists in the nineteenth century. In the same way, vaccination is associated by campaigners with tyranny verging on idolatry. It is described as an attempt to create a monstrous kind of hybridity by introducing artificial, unnatural, and foreign substances into the otherwise ‘pure’ bodies of human beings. Lastly, those who militate against the advance of compulsory vaccination mutually identify as an enlightened minority immersed within the herd of a gullible, deluded, and ovine majority.

Just as the mid-nineteenth century advocates of vaccination were characterized as cabalists, conspirators and exploiters of the ‘ignorant poor’ (Hume-Rothery, 1880, 11), so too have the promoters of the COVID-19 vaccination in the 2020s. In the same ways, opponents of vaccination have identified vaccinators as the agents of the beast, and the of the ‘beast-system.’ Many critics of the vaccination system in 2021 leapt upon the suggestion, made by some legislators, that only those who had been vaccinated would be allowed to participate in the post-lockdown economy. So-called ‘vaccine passports’ have been used as a strategy for safely reopening businesses and borders in the latter stages of the pandemic. Anti-vaccination activists have noted the correspondence between this strategy and the prophecies of Revelation 13. Under the reign of the beast, according to the author of Revelation, only those marked by the beast would be permitted to participate in the economy. Anti-vaccination activists suggested that precisely this state of affairs was being precipitated at the behest of pharmaceutical companies and the politicians who do their bidding. The similarity was noted by prominent public figures in the United States including the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Taylor Greene responded to reports that the Biden administration was exploring the possibility of introducing ‘vaccine passports’ with a recorded statement in which she made the following comparison:

This would mandate your ability to be able to travel, your ability to be able to go to events, your ability to be able to buy and sell. And I asked the question earlier today, ‘Is this something like Biden’s mark of the beast?’ because that is really disturbing and not good (Ernst).

In the aftermath of Taylor Greene’s declaration, mentions of the ‘mark of the beast’ leapt from an average of one hundred per hour to nearly 3,500 per hour. Face-book saw 528,246 interactions with content relating to the connection between vaccination and the mark of the beast in the week following Taylor Greene’s speech (Koltai and Schafer). One Reddit-user summed up the litany of correspondences between the US government’s response to the Covid pandemic and the prophecies of Revelation 13, thus:

The beast is Chinese Virus. The right hand is where you get injected with the Vaccine. But in this case it’s the right shoulder. The Sword is the Vaccine. The image of the beast is the Vaccine Passport Bar Code. The beast Speaking is Dr. Fauchi [sic]. The religion is “Believe in Science”. And now we can’t travel and soon purchase products without the Mark of the beast 666. And everyone rich, poor, free and slave is marked by the beast (Xianb1).

In July 2020, a TikTok influencer named Tyler Lackey posted a video which asked ““Could vaccines be the mark of the beast?” and which noted the similarity between the mooted vaccine passport policy and the beast’s curtailment of commercial activity for the unmarked. The video was viewed over 10,000 times before being removed by moderators (Dwoskin). In the UK, Sacha Stone – the influential New Age influencer – has been more explicit in his claims regarding the connection between vaccination and idolatry. ‘Anyone who rolls their sleeve up for a vaccine – or an RFID nanochip,’ Stone declared in 2020, ‘is absolutely inviting the beast to take control of their soul’ (Hope Not Hate, 40). In this way, vaccination is characterized by its opponents as being a form of tyranny, whilst acquiescence by the public is characterized as a form of idolatry.

The function of the beast, as a mythological figure, according to some commentators, relates to the ‘incongruity’ for which it stands. The beast is a hybrid of seemingly benign and malign entities. For this reason, the typology of Revelation 13 was deemed particularly prescient for those who wished to represent the smallpox vaccination as ‘beastly.’ Vaccinationists were wolves in sheep’s clothing, were beasts with the horns of a lamb and the voice of a dragon. Moreover, those who received the vaccination became ‘beastly’ themselves, as bovine-human hybrids. During the late nineteenth century, the horror of this imagery was used by artists – like James Gilray – and authors – like H.G. Wells – to unsettle the consensus which surrounded the vaccination project. Precisely the same depiction of vaccination as an incongruity has emerged from the anti-vaxx mi-lieu in the 2020s. Whilst the anti-vaccination campaign of the nineteenth century presented vaccination as an unnatural corruption of human bodies with bovine matter, the anti-vaccination campaigns of the twenty-first century often present vaccination as an unnatural corruption of human bodies with technology. The most high-profile figure to make use of this imagery is Kanye West. In an interview with Forbes in July 2020, West declared his misgivings about the validity of the Covid vaccine program in the following terms:

When they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious. That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven. I’m sorry when I say they, the humans that have the Devil inside them (Lane).

West’s claim that vaccinated people will have ‘chips inside them,’ is far from idiosyncratic. Numerous theories have emerged in recent months, identifying the Covid vaccination effort as an attempt to scale up state surveillance of citizens using nanotechnology and to expedite the rise of transhumanism. These theories emerged before the recent pandemic. In 2019, the blogger Ethan Huff claimed to have uncovered plans by the ‘ID2020 Alliance’ to ‘usher in this mark of the beast as a way to keep tabs on every human being living on Earth.’ The plan would involve ‘jabbing refugees with micro-chip vaccinations through two inaugural pilot programs known as iRespond and Everest.’ Huff concluded that ‘the Bible [was] right,’ and that:

A global identification system is in the works that will eventually be required for people to function in society, and ultimately survive. Without these microchips in their bodies, people won’t be able to work, let alone eat, and it’s all happening right before our very eyes (Huff, 2019).

In seeking to prove the link between the prophecies of Revelation 13 and the COVID-19 vaccination efforts, many internet-users have disseminated the claim that Bill Gates, Pfizer and Biontech have all patented products using patent numbers which are numerologically linked to the number of the beast. Many have pointed out that a patent for a ‘Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data,’ submitted by Microsoft in 2019, was given the patent number WO2020060606A1 (Erik-sen, 2020). Others have subsequently promoted the erroneous claim that this same number was granted as the patent number for the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine. These claims are regarded by some anti-vaccination activists as prophetically significant (Huff, 2020). One Reddit user, writing under the handle u/TheFlowerNurse, described the Microsoft patent as ‘Jesuit created and controlled,’ citing as evidence the fact that legal counsels working for Microsoft were educated at Jesuit universities (u/TheFlowerNurse, 2020). Other theories, circulating within internet forums, accentuated claims that vaccination is a form of monstrosity, a mass-scale scientific experiment designed to help develop technologies for the hybridization of human creatures. In 2021, Reddit users suggested that the vaccination research was part of a wider pursuit of gene-editing technology, and was designed to alter the DNA of recipients:

You will never be the same after taking it. It also contains nano-technology to connect humans to the Internet and control them. This is called “Neural Link” mind control, using A.I. (artificial intelligence) supercomputer technology. It will give them ultimate power over people. To kill them or to control them. This is why they are installing 5G towers around the world at a rapid rate. 5G speed is needed to successfully control millions of people. They will turn them on when more people are vaccinated… The vaccine also contains a chemical called luciferase which is taken from fireflies to make you scannable, so they can see who has taken the mark of the beast vaccine (Copypasta).

Just as Victorian commentators sought to present vaccination as a form of hybridization – and therefore a violation of the purity of human creatures – so contemporary anti-vaccination campaigners have sought to use the language of hybridization and (to use modern parlance) transhumanism. In both instances, the image of the hybrid beast provides a useful template for these claims.

Those who have identified the prophetic significance of the Covid vaccination effort regard themselves and their co-believers as members of an enlightened and embattled ‘deviant elect’ (Asprem and Dyrendal, 223). Often these self-descriptions can be used as an attempt to accrue epistemic capital. Spokespersons present themselves as the recipients of gnostic – that is special, unverifiable, and non-communicable – knowledge regarding the vaccine. They also marshal evidence from anecdotal – or ‘experiential’ – sources alongside the sources of revealed knowledge: most notably in this case the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation. These forms of evidence are then interspersed with the language of conventional science. This ‘strategic mobilization of the scientific strategy,’ is noted in the work of Jaron Harambam and Stef Aupers on the subject of conspiracy theory. These authors find that conspiracy theorists not only ‘mimic modern science in order to augment epistemic authority,’ but more significantly that they express the ‘wish to purify [science]’ (Harambam and Aupers, 2015). Egil Asprem has also recently discussed this ‘pick and mix’ approach to conventional science in the currents of esotericism and conspiracy theory. Asprem writes that esotericist entrepreneurs use a combination of empirical, gnostic and experiential modes of knowledge in order to blur the boundaries of epistemic authority (Asprem, 2016). Anti-vaccinationists do not typically deny the validity of the scientific method, but rather claim that scientific and medical authorities are engaged with perverting science. In doing so, they present themselves as the true defenders of the scientific tradition, the real truth-seekers.

Spokespersons present themselves as the recipients of gnostic – that is special, unverifiable, and non-communicable – knowledge regarding the vaccine.

A prime example of this technique can be found in the apocalyptic speeches made by Kate Shemirani, a spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement in the United Kingdom. Shemirani’s rhetoric combines references to apparent Biblical injunctions against vaccination with references to anecdotal evidence and to her own specialized knowledge, ostensibly drawn from her expertise in the field of nursing. In a speech made in November 2020, Shemirani declared that the Covid vaccination:

has got a lab made RNA… it’s going to invade your cells and it’s going to hijack the protein making machinery in your cell called your ribosome and that’s going to make… viral components that are going to train your immune system to attack the virus. This is your immune system that God [created] (Shemirani, 2020).

A similar synthesis of scientific and revealed knowledge is used in the rhetoric of anti-vaccination spokes-person Mark Steele. Steele’s pronouncements often focus on the link between 5G technology and the Coronavirus pandemic. Like Shemirani Steele regularly refers to his own credentials as a ‘weapons expert,’ and a ‘chief technology officer.’ Speaking on the ‘Sons of Liberty Podcast,’ Steele claimed that the vaccine:

is contaminated with all sorts of nasties, but it is also contaminated with the mark of the beast… And once you tacitly agree to take that vaccine, when you get murdered (and you certainly will get murdered) your soul goes to hell.

In a telling section, Steele described the intertwinement of epistemology and soteriology in explicit terms:

Lack of knowledge is an affront to God and an affront to God’s law. So we’ve got lots of people who unfortunately have no knowledge about what’s going on. And unfortunately we can’t help them. We can only save those who want to be saved (Sons of Liberty, 2020).

Whilst anti-vaxx activists identify themselves as members of an enlightened minority, they simultaneously use dehumanizing language to refer to those who acquiesce – seemingly uncritically – to being vaccinated. Those who are vaccinated are referred to as ‘sheeple’ (The Eye is Watching). With the emergence of the concept of ‘herd immunity’ within common parlance, some noted the confluence of meaning which the term ‘herd’ implied. Pro-vaccination governments were ‘herding sheeple onto the vaccine treadmill,’ according to one commentator (Thakur, 2021). By presenting themselves as the enlightened few, within a herd of the acquiescent, anti-vaccinators semantically link their own struggle with the struggle of those explicitly chosen by God according to the prophetic literature of the New Testament.

Just like their Victorian antecedents, contemporary anti-vaccination campaigners portray vaccination as tyrannical, idolatrous, and incongruous. Just like their Victorian antecedents, they also portray themselves as the inheritors of a revealed truth, as the ‘ones who have insight.’ In each respect, the language of Revelation 13 is invoked by activists in order to accrue epistemic capital. By blending the language of modern science with the language of revelatory tradition, campaigners strategically problematize and blur the boundaries of epistemic authority. As such, this strategy should not properly be understood as a campaign against science. Rather it should be understood as a way of demonstrating that ancient authority is consummated by modern science. By extension, those who disobey ancient authority are classified as ‘bad scientists.’ For modern anti-vaccination campaigners, the appeal to history is bi-focal. In the first instance they appeal to ancient, Biblical texts. In the second, they appeal to the more recent history of the use of Revelation 13 as a recognizable cultural trope within the Anglosphere.

Conclusion

As we can see, similar themes pervade the literature of both the anti-smallpox vaccination campaign and the anti-Covid vaccination campaign. Readers are warned of a form of tyranny verging on idolatry. This idolatrous system is chimerical, appearing to be good whilst acting in malevolent ways. Vaccination, in both instances, is linked with hybridity and incongruity and is negatively contrasted with purity. Lastly, those who are able to see this pattern – and thereby to link it to the prophecies of Revelation – identify themselves as the recipients of esoteric knowledge. From this vantage point, the opprobrium of the majority can only serve to reinforce their sense of righteousness.

In Colin Campbell’s account of the ‘cultic milieu,’ he describes how the adoption of stigmatized knowledge becomes a tool for maintaining the exclusivity of esoteric groups (Campbell). As Crossley and others have shown, the use of apocalyptic themes by campaigners has – at least partly due to the influence of Norman Cohn – become stigmatized in conventional mainstream discourse. Using apocalyptic imagery marks campaigners out as crankish or deviant in many settings. As such, for anti-vaccination campaigners, the language of Revelation provides a template which is both exclusive and venerable. It is exclusive in that it is rejected or stigmatized by the mainstream (and is indeed considered a marker of danger). It is venerable not simply because of the sacrality of the original source but because of the use to which it has been put by successive generations of righteous activists and martyrs to the cause. There is a double helix of meaning here. The text itself advises that those who are righteous and who have access to esoteric knowledge must expect to experience opprobrium at the hands of the ovine majority and the quasi-theocratic authority. The history of Christianity is littered with examples of those who have invoked this typology and have been persecuted. Recent times have seen this pattern repeat specifically in relation to the vaccination debate. The very use of the text has itself now become a magnet for this kind of opprobrium: those who employ the language and imagery of Revelation are often immediately associated with eccentricity and fanaticism (Crossley). As each generation produces those who use the text of Revelation as a marker of their own outsiderliness, and those who associate apocalyptic language with crankishness, it is hard to see how this dynamic can’t help but persist.

This gulf creates a space into which people of faith and particularly those with a background in Biblical studies can step and can – in doing so – provide great service. The use of texts from the book of Revelation has become, itself, a wedge-issue, dividing those who believe the text to be valuable and truthful from those who believe that the use of the text denotes fanaticism. In his UNESCO sponsored work on ‘addressing conspiracy theories,’ Stephan Lewandowsky recommends that educators: avoid ridicule, affirm critical thinking, show empathy, and employ trusted messengers (Lewandowsky, 17). By acknowledging that Revelation is, for many, a deeply meaningful text, we will be better placed to help those with conspiracist beliefs to explore readings of the text, which will pose less hazard to their health and to their participation in civil society.

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