“I haven’t broken any rules. I haven’t broken any laws. I did what I was told I had to do.”
That’s how Kristen Grant assessed her actions when asked by USA Today about her decision to become an ordained minister for the sole purpose of giving parents religious exemptions from the Valley View School District’s mask mandate.
Grant accomplished her goal by using the Universal Life Church’s online ordination process, which only takes minutes to click through in order to become an ordained minister.
Grant, 37, went through the online ordination on September 3, one day after the mask mandate was implemented in the school district that includes her hometown of Germantown, Ohio, and in doing so, was as fully-qualified as the state required her to be to sign off on religious exemptions for any family that asked for one: 169 students so far.
While she labels herself a “Constitutional Christian,” Grant’s willingness to help families skirt public health regulations sets her apart from most actual religious leaders.
In a video released in August, Pope Francis advocated for even more proliferation of the COVID vaccines, which “bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another,” he said.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints also reiterated that its followers should get vaccinated and wear masks, and while the famously medicine-averse Christian Science Church stopped short of recommending vaccination, it did ask that its congregation show “respect for public health authorities and conscientious obedience to the laws of the land, including those requiring vaccination.”
Grant though is not swayed by these other faith leaders or by the hard numbers concerning how the unvaccinated population fares against COVID compared the vaccinated population. COVID numbers, Grant says, are a way for doctors and hospitals to game the system and get reimbursed by blaming COVID for everything.
Nor is she swayed by those who don’t agree with her decision to help families avoid the mandated public health regulations.
“People were saying that I should be arrested,” Grant said of the outrage spurred online towards her after the Dayton Daily News spotlighted her efforts. “One of them said something about me being responsible for other people’s deaths. Let’s hope my child doesn’t get COVID and die. That I was a horrible parent. Attacking my parenting, attacking my religious beliefs, attacking pretty much everything you can attack when it comes to another human being.”
Related
