A Conversation with Dr. Jamie Aten

PROF CHANG: Hello, I'm Curtis Chang. I'm a theologian and former pastor, and we here at Redeeming Babel have produced a series of videos to help Christians think about the vaccine, and one of the ways that God helps Christians think is through trusted leaders in our faith community, and one such leader is Dr. Jamie Aten. Dr. Aten is the Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute located in Wheaton College, and teaches on the subject of disaster relief at Wheaton. Dr. Aten, thank you so much for joining us here.

DR. ATEN: Thank you so much for having me.

PROF CHANG: Well, we ask all of our guests this first question, which is, have you been vaccinated?

DR. ATEN: Yes, I have, and I feel so grateful and thankful and relieved to have been able to get both of my shots and to actually be over that threshold of time and to be able to attend my church in person again.

PROF CHANG: So how has your expertise in disasters shaped your perspective on vaccination?

DR. ATEN: You know, one of the questions that I often get as a disaster researcher and trainer, is what keeps you up at night? You know, I spend most of my days thinking about worst case scenarios and, you know, I sometimes joke that I do the science of really bad things in some ways, and, but the thing that's always really kept me up has been the idea of what if there was a global pandemic? It wasn't necessarily the natural disasters that I've been concerned with, or even terrorist attacks, but what if this happened? And so actually back in 2013, our team started developing resources to try to help churches get ready for a public health emergency, because of the experiences that we'd had, where maybe it was on the ground in Haiti after the earthquake and seeing malaria start to spread. So, you know, we've seen some of these things in the past, and so going through this disaster work, when we saw what was initially happening, we actually released our very first resources the same day that it was declared a global pandemic.

PROF CHANG: That's great, how prescient of a work yours is. And then also, there's a personal connection, right, because you have a personal health disaster in your life with cancer, which also puts you at a potentially higher risk category with COVID. So how did your personal story shape how you process the vaccine decision?

DR. ATEN: You know, for me, the personal side of it was just as important as the professional side of what I've been doing. You know, that's why I think the conversations you're having are so important, about bringing our faith and our science together. The way I first got into doing disasters was that I went through hurricane Katrina after moving to south Mississippi just six days before it struck, and then about seven years later, was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, which I'm grateful now to have no evidence of disease, but that experience really shaped the way I've thought about the vaccine, that I've went through a year of being largely isolated from others, that I couldn't go out or see friends during that treatment period because of my blood count and from the treatment. And so I knew how difficult of a process that was, and so with COVID-19, I wanted to make sure that as a person who was high risk, that I was also doing my part to take care of my neighbors, who might also be at high risk, you know. So going through cancer learned that getting treatments and being aware of our health is another way that we can help others, especially the most vulnerable.

PROF CHANG: And so maybe that leads to my next question is, if you were to make the case for why it's vital for Christians to participate in the vaccination program, what kind of arguments or persuasion maybe would you make?

DR. ATEN: You know, for me, I think it really comes down to the commandment of loving our neighbors, and doing disaster work for the last 15 years, I've seen how these things end up devastating not just everyone, but especially the most vulnerable, that they're the ones that tend to suffer the most. And so the same has been true with COVID-19. So if I wanna love my neighbor and to seek out justice, then I need to get to vaccinated.

PROF CHANG: Dr. Aten, some Christians are planning to take the vaccine or have already taken the vaccine themselves, but they're related to or friends with people who are hesitant. How would you advise them to engage with their neighbors in that regard?

DR. ATEN: You know, one of the things that I've found both in our research and then also in my personal life, again has been thinking about, how do we use humility to help our conversations? We actually did this study where we got people together in a lab, and we gave them a hot button topic of, that we knew naturally would lead to religious disagreement. So, and people were on the opposite sides, and then we more or less said, okay, have a conversation, and stepped out of the room. And as you can imagine, some of them got quite heated, and there was a lot of debate, but what we found were the individuals that were perceived as being more humble were viewed, even by the person that disagreed with them, as being more trustworthy, and that they were actually more likely to change their mind if the person talking with them came with a posture of humility. So I think at the end of the day, this whole conversation comes down to Micah 6:8, that we need to love others and to walk humbly, love our God, act justly, and to do so with humility.

PROF CHANG: Those are great words. Dr. Aten, thank you so much for joining with us today.

DR. ATEN: Oh, well thanks for having me.