Corps strength
CODY HOWARD IS STANDING at a makeshift pulpit under an overpass preaching about the COVID-19 vaccine. The pastor of a congregation he calls Church Under the Bridge, which serves the homeless of Texarkana, Texas, Howard delivers a crucial message: he got the shot. He admits that science and the authorities aren’t yet 100% sure about “the long-term effects of this thing,” and emphasizes that every person can make up their own mind. But he says his own decision to get vaccinated was a response to a question posed by a core tenet of Christianity: “Will it help my neighbor?”
Plenty of the three dozen or so attendees on this rainy June morning are skeptical. “When [COVID-19] first started spreading, they said it’s like a high-powered flu or pneumonia,” says Tony Wood, referring to comments like those made by former President Donald Trump, “and I’ve had pneumonia.” Others appear supportive, but none act on the pastor’s sermon. Howard, undeterred, gestures to a mobile vaccine bus parked nearby from the Christus St. Michael Health System, a local hospital group, his long hair, lanky build and red T-shirt evoking a casual Christ-like figure leading his flock.
What Howard’s listeners don’t know is that he is carrying a message from a less divine source: the federal government,
