Cook, a New York attorney, for the Deseret News. Previous rulings in religious freedom cases have made it clear that the government cannot assess the legitimacy of someone’s faith-based concerns, wrote Jared K. In other words, people with unusual or uncommon beliefs about vaccines can still succeed in their quest for religious exemptions. “The court doesn’t make someone prove why their religion doesn’t support vaccination,” said Robin Fretwell Wilson, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs for the University of Illinois System, to the Deseret News this summer. But, at least in lawsuits involving government-issued vaccine mandates, the sincerity - or sanity - of religious individuals is not the core issue. Do religious objectors have to prove they’re sincere?Ĭhang and others have described religious objectors’ concerns as insincere. in July (2020) - ‘Could vaccines be the mark of the beast?’ - speculated that mask mandates in stores and other (COVID-19) rules might signal the mark because they were the first step in preventing people from being able to buy and sell, which Revelations suggests will be prohibited in the End Time,” The Washington Post reported in February. Other times, they may express a desire to rely on their faith, rather than modern medicine, to keep them safe or claim that the vaccine is the work of the devil. In many cases, these believers point to the use of aborted fetal cells in some vaccine research as the source of their religious concerns. Just as there are Catholics who take birth control or support abortion rights despite their church’s teachings, there are people of faith who say getting vaccinated would harm their relationship with God. However, in the vaccine debate, as in other contexts, statements made by religious leaders are not the only factor influencing individual believers’ decisions. Opinion: Religious exemptions to the vaccine should be rare - but they should exist Why would someone need a religious exemption? “There is no actual religious basis for exemptions from vaccine mandates in any established stream of Christianity,” argued Curtis Chang, a former pastor, in a recent op-ed for The New York Times. Instead, “it counsels ‘respect for public health authorities and conscientious obedience to the laws of the land, including those requiring vaccination.’” 12 statement.Įven the Christian Science Church, which generally discourages its members from seeking medical treatment and advises reliance on prayer instead, has not rejected the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Kaiser Heath News. “We urge individuals to be vaccinated,” the church’s First Presidency said in an Aug. In recent months, the pope, prominent evangelical pastors and leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have all spoken in favor of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In fact, many religious leaders actively encourage church members to seek out vaccines, rather than refuse them. Requests for religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates are controversial for the same reason that requests for religious exemptions to any vaccine mandate are controversial: Almost no faith group formally opposes vaccination. Here’s what you need to know about those ongoing cases and the broader debate surrounding religious exemptions to vaccine mandates: What faith groups oppose vaccination? In recent months, a variety of states, schools and employers that have tried to limit or remove exemptions from vaccine mandates wound up in court. Still, it’s unlikely that religious exemptions will disappear anytime soon in part because of the way courts apply the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections. adults (26%) sided with religious objectors in a recent survey that laid out a hypothetical scenario involving an unvaccinated kid being denied enrollment at a public school. In general, Americans are skeptical of those who say vaccine mandates, like the one proposed this month by President Joe Biden that will affect private employers with more than 100 workers, violate their religious freedom. By June, that figure had dropped four percentage points to 52%, according to Public Religion Research Institute. adults favored offering exemptions to religious objectors. As the COVID-19 crisis deepens and communities across the country struggle with a shortage of hospital beds, support is falling for religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.
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