Founder and CEO of Christian evangelical network Daystar dies of COVID after proselytizing against vaccines

Yet another prominent evangelical Christian who proselytized against vaccines has died after being hospitalized with COVID.

Marcus Lamb, founder and CEO of Daystar Television, was 64.

“This morning at 4 a.m. the president and founder of Daystar and the love of my life went to be with Jesus,” said his wife, Joni, during a Tuesday morning broadcast, reported Religion News Service. “I wanted you to hear from me that he’s with the Lord.”

Marcus Lamb is dead at 64. (Courtesy Daystar Television Network/)

She also said that Lamb had diabetes and went to the hospital after his oxygen levels dropped, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

The network he founded also announced his death.

“It’s with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning,” the network said on Twitter. “The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss. Please continue to lift them up in prayer.”

Daystar is the second-largest Christian TV station in the world and proved a formidable platform from which to warn people off coronavirus vaccines. And warn Lamb did, to the 2 billion people Daystar reached worldwide. As the pandemic descended, Lamb and the network preached about anti-vaccine conspiracies, hosting interview after interview with vaccine skeptics, and denigrating lockdowns designed to stem the spread of the illness.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” Jonathan Lamb said earlier this month about his father’s battle with COVID-19, reported Relevant magazine.

Last Tuesday saw the same son filling in for his dad on the broadcast and seeking prayers for his father’s recovery, NBC News reported.

The televangelist and prosperity gospel preacher promoted alternative, unproven treatments such as hydroxychloroquine rather than vaccination. Lamb himself tried some of those remedies but did not recover, his wife said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The network would not comment Tuesday on whether Lamb was vaccinated, The Washington Post noted.

Lamb joined several other prominent anti-vaccine Christian broadcasters and other conservative naysayers who died before him.

Right-wing radio host Dick Farrell, who famously called COVID-19 a “scam-demic,” died in August of the disease. Dickinson, Texas, city councilman and Texas state Republican Executive Committee member H. Scott Apley died in August just days after posting a Facebook meme questioning the vaccine. In July COVID vaccine skeptic Stephen Harmon, a member of the Hillsong megachurch in California, died of the virus after joking that he had “99 problems but a vax ain’t one.”

As first delta and now the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus sweep across the globe, health experts are reemphasizing the importance of getting vaccinated to avoid coming down with severe illness or dying.

Lamb launched Daystar in Dallas in 1997 and had been based in Bedford, Texas, since 2003. Today the network reaches more than 108 million households in the U.S. and more than 2 billion people around the world.