Op-Ed: NRB was Right to Fire Dan Darling for his Sinful Pro-Vaccination Comments
Yellow sticky note on a laptop keyboard with 'You are Fired!' on it.
Update. Please see this post with updated information, including a letter from NRB CEO disputing the RNS story.
As the evangelical intelligentsia and our blue-check spiritual overlords gnash their teeth and rend their garments over the fact that Dan Darling, Senior Vice President of Communications for the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) was fired today for making pro-vaccine comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Show, we have a different take.
We believe that Darling sinned with his comments and that NRB was right to fire him and terminate his employment.
We reported on the story this morning and our headline did not sufficiently make clear that he wasn’t fired for making pro-vaccine statements in a vacuum, but rather because he was openly defying the strictures of his contract, and then refusing to recant and repent of his sin in doing so.
In short, he was canned for being in violation of a contractual agreement to be neutral and not push them one way or another. RNS explained:
Earlier this week, leaders at NRB, an international association of Christian communicators with 1,100 member organizations, told Darling his statements violated the organizationโs policy of remaining neutral about COVID-19 vaccines. According to the source, Darling was given two options โ recant or sign a statement admitting he had been insubordinate. When he refused, Darling was fired and given no severance.
This is absolutely key.
In many ways, rather than saying he was fired for making pro-vaccine comments, as our initial headline read, better headlines would have been:
Dan Darling fired for knowingly breaking written agreement about vaccine neutrality.
Dan Darling fired for not honoring his word about abusing platform to push vaccines.
Dan Darling fired for refusing to apologize for purposefully breaking his word on pushing propaganda.
The fact is that the organization has a policy that insists on neutrality on a certain subject matter. If Darling could not abide by that, he should have done the honorable thing and quit. Rather, he flouted the rules, broke his word, sinned before God, and forced the hand of his employers.
We would have fired him too.
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If he was contractually obligated to be neutral concerning vaccinations, he apparently made the decision to defy it – to his own peril, it seems.
When
Evangelicals pursue the โfreedomโ to make their neighbors sick, they violate the social compact and undermine their moral standing in politics, law, and culture. Christian libertinism thus becomes a long-term threat to religious liberty itself:
https://mobile.twitter.com/davidafrench/status/1432067199997460485
Thing, you have no ground to stand on in writing about moral standing. You have shown the evil and hate that you stand upon again and again.