Today, in the United States, all Americans 12 years old or older are eligible to get a covid-19 vaccine.  A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) published on May 6, 2021, reveals that the pace of vaccine uptake may be reaching a plateau.  The following trends are shown by the data from the report:

• The share of adults who say they’ve gotten at least one dose of a vaccine or intend to do so as soon as possible inched up from 61% in March to 64% in April.
• The share of adults who want to “wait and see” before getting vaccinated – a group that had been steadily decreasing in size since over several months – remained about the same in April (15%) compared to March (17%).
• Among Republicans, a group that has been slower to embrace the vaccine, over half now say they’ve gotten at least one dose or will do so as soon as they can.
• The share of Republicans who say they will “definitely not” get vaccinated decreased from 29% in March to 20% in April but remains substantially larger than the share among Democrats or independents.

This information suggests that vaccine hesitancy tends to be higher among Republicans.  Survey results published by Public Religious Research Institute (PRRI) produced the chart below, which compares vaccine acceptance, hesitancy and refusal for Republicans, Independents and Democrats.  Also shown is the impact of the news sources Republican voters tend to rely on.

The same survey also produced the chart below, which shows vaccine acceptance, hesitancy and refusal for various religious affiliations.  White evangelical Protestants, who tend to embrace the Republican party, have the highest percentage of vaccine refusers (26%).

In addition, PRRI provided a chart that shows the influence, for the various religious affiliations, of attending religious services.  Interestingly, church service attendance has the effect of reducing vaccine hesitancy and refusal among black Protestants, while it increases hesitancy among white evangelicals.  This is an indication that black Protestants are more receptive than white evangelicals to attempts by their leaders and clergy to encourage them to get vaccinated.

In a Religious News Service article published on March 5, 2021, Yonat Shimron writes:

“Since before the COVID-19 vaccines hit the market, it has been predicted that Black Americans would choose to be vaccinated at dramatically lower rates than white Americans due to a historic mistrust of the health system. Media stories defined the causes for ‘vaccine hesitancy’ while physicians worried about how to overcome it.

Scores of health systems, churches and religious coalitions responded by offering up houses of worship as sites for mobile vaccine distribution.”

He then reports that recent data from a survey published by Pew Research on February 10 suggest that the vaccination campaigns in Black churches may have been somewhat successful: the percentage of black Protestants who “definitely or probably” plan to get vaccinated increased from 40% to 64% from November to February.  By comparison, 54% of white evangelicals “definitely or probably” planned to get vaccinated in February.

Shimron communicates another interesting finding of the survey:

“As troubling, white evangelicals are the least likely to say they should consider the health effects on their community when making a decision to be vaccinated. Only 48% of white evangelicals said they would consider the community health effects “a lot” when deciding to be vaccinated. That compares with 70% of Black Protestants, 65% of Catholics and 68% of unaffiliated Americans.”

An article by Kate Shellnutt, published on May 10, 2021 in Christianity Today, explains that white evangelical pastors are in a difficult position as they consider their role in the vaccination campaign.  Referring to the KFF poll, she notes that white evangelicals, overall, are as likely (55%) as the rest of the population (57%) to get vaccinated.  However, among the unvaccinated, they are half as likely as Americans overall to say they plan to get the shot ASAP, and 20 percent say they definitely won’t be getting the shot, 7 percentage points lower than the rest of the country.

The vaccination issue, like the mask mandate issue, causes sharp divisions in white evangelical churches, and is so politicized that many pastors are hesitant to address it one way or another, as they fear the reactions of their members.

The survey results showing the impact of news sources are an indication that many Christians ingest news and stories that can be misleading and driven by political objectives.  It is well known that the issue of wearing a mask has been highly politicized, as some people interpret mask mandates as attacks against personal freedoms rather than means of protecting self and others against a highly contagious and harmful disease.

Some news sources are also likely to propagate conspiracy theories.  For example, one of the theories associates vaccines with the so-called “mark of the beast.”  Those who promote such theories do not feel obligated to provide evidence to support their claims.  It is enough for them to raised doubt among their listeners.

However, in many cases, Christians who oppose vaccinations simply believe that it is a personal decision they have to make without interference from anybody.  There are also devout Christians who reject vaccines on moral grounds because of their views on abortion.  As explained by Rebecca Randall in an article published in Christianity Today on April 26, 2019,

“For certain Christians, the decision of whether to vaccinate comes down to the origins of the vaccines themselves. Some pro-life parents cite a moral disgust and a deep lament over the use of 58-year-old aborted fetal cell lines in development for several recommended immunizations, including MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) and chickenpox.”

This is a reference to the development of the original vaccines against diseases such as the measles.  Fetal cells from an aborted fetus were grown in a lab, where they divided into subsequent generations, and were frozen for storage.  The corresponding cell lines are still used today to produce vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox.  Matthew Loftus, a Christian physician, summarizes the concern expressed by opponents of vaccines as follows:

“Some Christians in particular are concerned that vaccines are made using cell lines taken from unborn babies aborted decades ago. The cell lines are manipulated in a lab to divide indefinitely, providing a medium in which to grow a weakened virus. These Christians worry that getting vaccines amounts to cooperating with evil, especially given that research on aborted fetuses continues today. (For example, neuroscientists have transplanted cells from aborted fetuses into the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease.)”

The case against vaccines has also been strengthened by individual anecdotes.  Indeed vaccines, like any other remedy, do not work perfectly and have risks that must be weighed against the benefits they offer.  An example of such risks is seen in the blood clots associated with the Johnson and Johnson and the AstraZeneca vaccines against Covid-19.  Even though such side effects are rare, they are real enough to generate anxiety among significant portions of the population.

The scientific case for vaccination is that the benefits offered by a vaccine far outweigh the risks associated with side effects and the consequences of not taking the vaccine.  Matthew Loftus explains the idea by using pneumonia as an example:

“If you have pneumonia or a blood infection, a doctor will prescribe an antibiotic as a treatment that carries side effects. But the risk of the infection is higher than the risk of the side effects. Therefore, the antibiotic is a wise medical intervention. By contrast, antibiotics do nothing to kill viruses that cause colds, and also introduce unnecessary risks. Many Westerners request antibiotics for these viruses because they want to relieve their symptoms. But in this case, an antibiotic is a poor medical intervention and should be avoided.”

He warns against reliance on individual anecdotes and explains that large studies provide better data for guidance:

“Similarly, if our decisions about vaccines are based on how healthy we feel right now and how infrequently we get vaccine-preventable diseases, we’ll miss the big picture of how dangerous these diseases can be and how powerful vaccines are. We can avoid this error by sifting through as much information about vaccines as we can and basing decisions on the studies with the largest numbers of participants, putting less weight on individual anecdotes.”

Using the measles as an example of a large study, he says:

“When it comes to the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, a combination of studies involving millions of subjects find that the chance of benefit is incredibly high. This has translated to ever-decreasing rates of measles, mumps, and rubella, along with decreased death and disability from these diseases, worldwide. Meanwhile, the risk of harm is demonstrably low. About one in six children have a low-grade fever or rash the day of the shot. Seizures resulting from a fever—which are scary but harmless—occur generally at rates of 1 or 2 per 1,000 vaccine doses.

More serious reactions occur less frequently. Even then, they are still less frequent than complications brought on by measles, mumps, or rubella. And when the risks of a vaccine outweigh the benefits—such as in the case of Rotashield, meant to treat diarrhea in young children—public health officials usually step in to pull the product.”

Regarding the moral aspects of vaccination, Rebecca Randall notes that various Christian organizations have been encouraging members to free themselves from guilt associated with vaccines that use the cell lines from the original fetal cells:

“Pro-life proponents of immunization point out that vaccines no longer rely on abortion to provide further fetal cells—and that the initial two abortions were not conducted to supply vaccine makers with fetal tissue in the first place. Such circumstances would be immoral—an argument on the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) blog.

The Catholic Church also concluded, in a 2005 statement, that those who receive vaccines are not culpable in the original abortions. Focus on the Family’s Physicians Resource Council, which last updated a statement in 2015, suggests that Christians have the moral freedom to receive vaccines, though it also respects those Christians who come to a different conclusion after consideration and prayer.”

It is important to note that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines do not make use of the cell lines at issue in the above considerations.  Indeed, as explained by Rebecca Randall in another article,

“The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines use a synthetic strand of mRNA, which tells human cells how to make the spike protein that sits on the surface of the novel coronavirus, activating an immune response. This is not DNA; it’s RNA, so it degrades easily and cannot insert itself into human genetic code.”

Hesitancy related to the mRNA-based vaccines, therefore, is not driven by considerations about abortion, but by concerns about side effects which, so far, have been shown to be minimal.

But while it is important to address the concerns of those who view abortion as the single most important Christian issue, the moral case for vaccines is perhaps best made by the imperative to save communities since nothing is more important to Christians than to love God and love their neighbor as themselves.  If the data clearly show the benefits of vaccination not only for personal safety, but for the protection of the community, then there is little doubt that Christians should act accordingly: they should get vaccinated not only for themselves, but to protect others and contribute to the desired herd immunity that makes the entire community, and especially the most vulnerable among us, safer.  As reported by Randall, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, puts it this way:

“There are third parties—people who cannot take the vaccine or do not yet have access to it that could still be infected by those who refuse to take the vaccine. The general principle of the common good comes down to benevolence, love, care for others, laying down personal priorities for the service of others. Christians thinking about the issue of the vaccine must weigh this key biblical principle as part of their thinking.”

To the above moral argument for getting vaccinated, J. Todd Billings adds another one based on all the biblical verses that celebrate God’s wonderful creation, a realm that invites exploration using our God-given mental abilities.  The wonderful scientific achievements that led to the covid-19 vaccines represent a vindication of what he calls “creational theology:”

“As evangelicals who affirm that this order and complexity are part of God’s design, that humans are created in God’s image to rejoice in and discover creation, we have all the more reason to cherish the past year’s scientific progress. The decision about whether to get the vaccines based on this research is not a question about whether we approve of the president, governor, or mayor. For followers of Jesus, it’s a question of whether we trust in the order and design of creation that makes scientific understanding possible, as scientists from around the globe have paid deep and close attention to the ‘theater of God’s glory’ in creation.”