It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection

There is no religious liberty interest in refusing the COVID vaccine.

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As the coronavirus’s Delta variant rips through (mainly) the Southeastern United States, two things are becoming clear at once. First, amidst the dark clouds of continued disease, there is the silver lining of an increased number of vaccines. After hitting a weekly low in early July, the pace has picked up to an average of almost 900,000 vaccinations a day. Through persuasion and mandates, America is chipping away at vaccine reluctance.

At the same time, however, the remaining vaccine holdouts are growing more extreme, and significant parts of the Christian Right are enabling, excusing, and validating Evangelical behavior that is gravely wrong and dangerous to the lives and health of their fellow citizens. 

For example, there is a scramble by Christian Americans to seek “religious exemptions” from employer vaccine mandates. I’ve received correspondence from Christian religious liberty ministries who report a sharp rise in requests for legal assistance to secure religious exemptions. One ministry indicated in an email to affiliated attorneys that it had been “inundated by requests” for help. A pastor in a large church in California has promised to hand out “religious exemption forms” to anyone who attends the church and asks. 

On Friday the National Religious Broadcasters, an umbrella association of roughly 1,100 member associations, abruptly fired its senior vice president of communications, my friend Daniel Darling, because Darling appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to discuss why he got vaccinated and to try to allay Christian fears about the vaccine. He lost his job even though he was remarkably gracious in his comments. He defended Evangelical distrust of institutions and merely urged Christians “to talk to their doctor and really consider [the vaccine], just because we just don’t want to see anyone else unnecessarily die of this lethal virus.”

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  1. Agfairfield

    https://evolutionnews.org/2021/10/the-appalling-moral-failure-of-francis-collins/ I am posting this to you, David, since John West (Discovery Institute) mentions you by name. I completely agree with West. I hope you will read/reflect on his brief counterpoint essay.

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  2. Peter Hong

    I just joined the Dispatch since it gives a center right perspective. I enjoyed listening to David’s interviews before. I am not too convinced by this article though. It basically portrays those who are not vaccinated to be selfish and unreasonable. The following are the facts that I know. When Trump first announced that vaccine will be ready by December, almost every media article cited scientists and doctors and experts that were saying that it is nearly impossible. Highly respected virologist in Korea said it normally takes ten years or more to make a vaccine. Fastest ever was Ebola vaccine in few years. When the vaccine was ready, the government agency I work for posted posters saying that the trials have proven the safety of vaccines, pressuring everyone to take it even though the pharmacy companies cannot be sued. The posters claimed that only mild side effects were experienced by the trial participants. Now we know some of the brave people and teenagers who volunteered for the trial have been severely damaged. Some even died. I watched video interviews of these people crying and regretting their participation in the trial. But their biggest pain is the fact that they are censored and silenced by the social media and the mainstream media from sharing their experiences. When people hear this story, they literally don’t care and say oh well, too bad for them. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t think most of the unvaccinated people are simply dumb and selfish. If they die or get disabled, no one will care. Several people at my work are having heart attack or seizure. Many nurses are reporting that they saw way too many negative reactions. There is a real problem out there and it is not fair to dismiss these reports. To me, it feels like those who look down at the unvaccinated people have not considered all the facts, but simply conclude that the vaccine is the solution and therefore all Christians should uphold the common good.

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  3. Mr Risk

    I have lost interest in this fight. I figure at this point those who choose not to get vaccinated have thought about it and are not going to be talked out of it. One thing that has been horrific as been the way "science" is portrayed as "clear" and then it changes on masks, vaccines ect. This erodes confidence in medical professionals and thier advice. Finally, I would make this rebutal to French using his own argument. Why not ban driving cars? They kill 38,000 Americans a year. It is not a Covid or seasonal flu number, but would not we all be better off if we did not drive cars? Okay it is silly, but it seems to fit with the French argument advanced in this piece.

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    Doug Herbert

    "Even those statutes protecting religious employees from discrimination and requiring workplace accommodations of religious practices do not require such accommodations when they impose an 'undue hardship' on employers."

    David, I think it is important to note that "undue hardship" is only technically the standard in cases of religious accommodation, at least under current Supreme Court precedent.

    Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does require employers to accommodate sincerely held religious beliefs, but in TWA v. Hardison (1977), the Supreme Court held in a 7-2 vote that due to the prohibition against the establishment of religion in the First Amendment, employers are not required to incur any more than a "de minimis" burden in order to accommodate religious beliefs.

    In April of this year, the employee in Small v. Memphis Light Gas and Water petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to review whether its decision in TWA v. Hardison was still good law. The Supreme Court denied cert, over a blistering dissent by Justice Gorsuch, which was joined only Justice Alito. Presumably, Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas voted to deny cert, so it appears that TWA v. Hardison remains alive and well as binding precedent.

    So when employers are considering whether they have to grant a purportedly religious-based request for exemption from a vaccine requirement, the legal test is not really whether allowed the unvaccinated employee in the workplace would impose an "undue burden," but whether this would impose more than a "de minimis" burden. Obviously, this test is very easily met by employers.

    (The test is very different for requests for accommodation of a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In those case the phrase "undue burden" actually means "undue burden.")

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    Bill McDavitt

    As a Christian, this breaks my heart:
    https://twitter.com/AndyOstroy/status/1432730279559450626
    Oh to see Mr. French's quote on display at this local board meeting "Believers should seek freedom to pursue virtue, not to indulge their desires or appease their fears."
    God Bless Mr. French.

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    Khal Spencer

    Spot on, David. I have nothing really to add philosophically. The blatant lies on the Internet and social media are bad but the inability of common folk to see through the snake oil is deeply disturbing.

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    The Stray Goose

    Those of us who have gotten the vaccine and recommend it to others have not been helped by the media who have lied consistently about all aspects of this pandemic. They have lied about the death rate and the risk. They’ve posted story after story that is clearly click bait. Our society is reaping what our media has sewn.

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  8. Randall Briggs

    The Christians who refuse to get vaccinated must be reading from a version of Bible that doesn't include the Golden Rule, that doesn't include the parable of the man with the log in his eye complaining about his brother with a speck of dust in his, that doesn't include the parable of the good Samaritan, and does not included Jesus' rebuttal to Satan: "It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord, your God."

    Conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist/charismatic Christian churches and their leaders are going to owe America a huge apology when/if this is all over. They have caused many tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of deaths that didn't have to be. When/if they recognize the wrongs they have committed, how will they atone so that they can be forgiven by their fellow citizens?

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    1. Sue Robinson

      I am glad you said this! My father was a pastor, and I know the Bible pretty well. I have been stunned by how self-centered the Christian anti-vaxxers have been. Do they not realize that the heart of Christianity is love for one’s neighbor? Do they not realize that their refusal to get the vaccine (or even wear a mask) is putting others at real risk of infection? Do they not remember that Jesus was a healer, and that we can be “healers,” too, just by getting a vaccine? It has been appalling to watch so many supposed Christians care for no one but themselves!

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    Ed

    Our society is addicted to drama. There is a stream of Evangelicalism that likes the image of itself as being threatened by Government and bravely standing up for Christ and the Church against Government. That has become the central drama of its world view and unfortunately there is enough disdain from the Left to lend some validity to the worldview. The whole pandemic-vaccine thing feeds into the anti-Government drama, and the anti-Government drama drives the reaction to the pandemic and the vaccine into a vicious cycle. The real problem though is the hyper-dramatic world view; and that is society wide. What is needed is for people of good will to encourage everyone else to lighten up. If you don't want the vaccine, don't get the vaccine, but it isn't the hill to die on. Treating it like it is is just self indulgent.

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      Kizedek

      Exactly. There's an element of many Christians believing it's the height of Christian duty to be some kind of doomsday prophet that calls out the sin of those around, and that is somehow the extent of Christian witness in the world. That's quite a proud, pharisaical position to take, however. Then, when the inevitable blowback is received, for being so obnoxious and tone-deaf, it's considered religious "persecution".

      In the Bible, I'm struck that the Prophets calling out sin were actually sent to God's own people -- people who should have known better. There were maybe a couple of cases of prophets being sent outside God's people: Jonah springs to mind. But, it's notable that he did *not want* to go to Nineveh -- NOT because he felt compassionate or something, or even because he felt he would be in danger... but because he knew it was God's intention to be merciful and to have Jonah call them to Him; and Jonah didn't think they deserved it!

      We are called to be channels of God's mercy and grace; peace-makers, "salt-and-light"; to be sensible, etc. We are NOT called to contribute to, let alone increase, the chaos, animosity, polarisation, hate, strife, ignorance, etc., etc.

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    Nathan

    Your point that the religious objections are pretense is a good one, but could you please find someone that disagrees with you a little bit to discuss the personal-liberty angle? I feel like you really strawmanned that argument and I suspect that most people at The Dispatch aren't giving pushback on it.

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      Pat @ Tavi Hall

      Personal liberty is a secular value and doesn't really fit in my view into the construction of a Christian ethical theology. No where that I can think of does the Bible tell us to stand up for our rights (Paul occasionally used his Roman rights as a citizen, but only at the moment most likely to advance the gospel, that's it as far as I can tell.) Hence David does not really focus on it. Sadly many in the church have made individual rights an idol.

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