Bartholomew's Notes

From British Christian magazine Woman Alive, last month:

Former midwife Laura Brett says she has been called an ‘anti-vaxxer’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Here she explains how asking questions led to her personal conviction that no one should have been pressured into taking the Covid-19 vaccine.

Brett alleges that Covid vaccination is “one of the biggest medical frauds in history”, and she writes that in October 2023

we gathered 100 church leaders, heads of charities and other prominent people in the Houses of Parliament to worship, pray and provide evidence-based information about the truth concerning Covid-19 and the vaccination programme

The “hook” for the article was AstraZeneca’s admission in court documents that their vaccine can in rare cases cause blood clots. Although this has been widely known now for several years, the acknowledgement had been presented sensationally in the media as a new development.

Brett is the author of a book called Losing Liberty, Finding Freedom, and as well as being a “former midwife” she describes herself as “an evangelist, a qualified midwife, international speaker, mentor and activist… positioned at the frontline of Christian ministry”. The book came out last last year, and the back cover features a blurb from none other than Covid conspiracist Michael Yeadon praising the work as “a loud bright celebration of the power and greatness of God!” The book was launched first in Williamsburg, VA, but then also in London in January this year: attendees (H/T @PozzyWozzy) included Andrew Bridgen MP, as well as Lara Fawcett, a PR agent known primarily to the public as Bear Grylls’ sister. Bridgen has posted some photos, including one in which he and Fawcett pose in front of a hanging t-shirt bearing the words “conspiracy theorist”.

The front cover of the book, meanwhile, comes with blurb from “Rev Richard Fothergill, Founder and CEO of the Filling Station Trust”. Fothergill was in the news a year ago, after he was “de-banked” after writing to the Yorkshire Building Society “to complain about their public messaging during Pride month”, particular as regards “gender ideology”. The “Filling Station Trust” organises “celebration meetings” around the country, meaning worship sessions along evangelical/Charismatic lines. This is Brett’s own affiliation, and Fothergill is on board with her anti-Covid vaccination alarmism. Writing a comment on the Premier Christian Radio Facebook page, he recently expressed the view that

The eminent Proff [unidentified] got it very wrong. The Vax was never suggested as being ‘experimental’. It was forced on us as a necessity. ‘Don’t kill granny’ remember? We were lied to and now those who did this hope to brush it all under the carpet. Evil days 2020-2022.

In the same thread, Brett adds:

We are happy to pray for anyone who is vax injured or worried they might be and we pray deliverance of all the spike proteins etc. We do this all the time at Harrogate Filling Station. Just get in touch via email and we can do that via zoom. The Lord heals!

Alongside running the Filling Station network, Fothergill is also “Trustee & Relational Covering” of a Christian coffee shop project in Yeovil called “Bread”, run by an evangelist named Dominic Muir. Muir’s other projects include “the Wesley Academy”, where he is listed as “Minister” alongside Rev Dr Joseph Boot, Virginia Logan, Sam Kyung-Min Lee and Joseph Buthee, described as “Bread Church coffee shop manager”. However, Buthee has more recently been active in London, and he recently led the Lord’s Prayer at the recent Tommy Robinson rally in London. Robinson has himself joined the Covid antivax bandwagon, and in September last year he was photographed with Bridgen at a conference in Denmark.

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From the Evening Standard:

Thousands of people gathered in Parliament Square on Saturday for a protest organised by Tommy Robinson.

Speeches were given by Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Reclaim leader Laurence Fox and political commentator Carl Benjamin.

The focus of the protest was meant to be “two-tier policing” although Robinson had a broader list of grievances that were set out in a pre-recorded message broadcast to the crowd from a big screen above the man himself:

They shut down the country. They took away our rights and our freedoms. They flirted with compelling medical treatment, they caused the inflation we suffer from by printing money, continually printing money. And don’t ask questions about excess deaths – miscarriages, stillbirths, cancers, heart disease and vaccine efficacy and [such?]. The failure to reject net zero, the Marxist anti-capitalist dogma that will drive millions into poverty and hardship. They embrace unilateral economic disarmament. They can’t stop the tide, they can’t stop an earthquake, a hurricane, or even a strong breeze, yet they want us to believe that if they tax us more they’ll be able to stop the climate from changing… there’s over a hundred genders, because we say there are. And what will come next? Sex with little children is just another form of sexual expression? It will not be long before denouncing paedophilia is demonized.

Pre-recorded messages were also provided from June Slater of UK Politics Uncovered and from Katie Hopkins, among others – Hopkins was unable to be there in person because she was speaking at the Weekend Truth Festival in Cumbria (covered by Sky News here). Fox used the platform to rail against Pride Month, which (as usual) he described as a “child mutilation cult”.

So far so predictable, but there was an unexpected turn to religion at the end, when an unnamed speaker started talking about a “spiritual battle”, unfurled a banner declaring “Jesus is King” and led the crowd in saying the Lord’s Prayer – although pointedly he skipped over the line “As we forgive those who tresspass against us”. The speaker urged the crowd to “pray with me like you did in Sunday School”, an implicit acknowledgement that this was primarily an appeal to populist nostalgia, drawing on half-remembered phrases in communal memory.

The speaker also had a banner declaring “Jesus is King”, written in the same block capital font that was seen at last week’s “Disciples of Christ” protest outside the Azerbaijan Embassy. That event was led by someone who calls himself “Bob of Speakers Corner”, and Robinson also invited him onto the stage. Bob got the crowd to chant “Christ is King”, although I suspect for most participants this was just another supremacist slogan rather than an affirmation of faith, with no deeper meaning than the chant of “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” that was heard from some of the crowd during the march from Victoria Station.

The Mail wrote up the protest as “London Protest Chaos”, an assessment which one person who watched the whole thing with a critical eye described as “ridiculous”. The framing, though, is useful for creating the impression that protests in general are problematic and need a firmer hand.

(H/T @Nullen80 for various clips)

UPDATE: The person who led the Lord’s Prayer was one Joseph Buthee, and he says that the missing part was just a mistake.

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