12 April 2021 — 1008 mdt
Religious exemptions to vaccination
are neither necessary nor wise
After the Covid 19 pandemic began, Jehovah’s Witness’ prosthelytizers stopped knocking on my door. Instead, they mailed me brief handwritten notes promising salvation, and pamphlets they would have offered in person. With the pandemic apparently on the wan (but definitely still with us), the JWs will return to knocking on door; perhaps this summer, perhaps sooner.
If, when, they knock on my door aga, they damn well better be fully vaccinated. And according to researchers at Vanderbilt University, they can be:
This denomination originally denounced vaccination, but revised this doctrine in 1952. An article in a recent issue of the church’s newsletter promotes vaccination to avoid infectious diseases.
Most Christian sects, and most major religions, reports Vanderbilt, allow — indeed, encourage — vaccination. Even the Christian Science church, known for its believe that prayer is more powerful than modern medicine, makes an exception for required vaccinations:
One of the basic teachings of this denomination is that disease can be cured or prevented by focused prayer and members will often request exemptions when available. However, there are not strict rules against vaccination and members can receive required vaccinations. [Vanderbilt]
If Christian Scientists can receive required vaccinations, they can be rescued from their beliefs by a government mandate to be vaccinated for Covid-19 unless there is a bonafide medical reason not to receive a particular vaccine.
The same should hold true for faith healing and other sects that consider vaccinations an affront to the Almighty and a failure of faith. They are willing to abide by the other laws of the land, such as driving on the right side of the road, and (usually) not shooting their neighbors, so why would they not abide by a mandatory vaccination law provided it allowed medical exemptions?
This is so straightforward that it should not be a major issue. In fact, it should not be an issue at all. Members of a religion can believe whatever they want to believe, but they cannot practice human sacrifice or commit other acts that comply with their beliefs but are harmful to the society of which they are a part.
Yet somehow it has become a major issue in Montana’s legislature, where Republican legislators, evidently influenced by streetcorner preachers for whom the label fringe is a courteous understatement, have been promoting religious exemptions from vaccination with a zeal and righteousness that Billy Sunday would have found uncouth and frightening.
These legislators’determination to protect religion is undoubtedly sincere, but it’s also undoubtedly antithetical to their constitutional responsibly to act in the public interest. The SARS Cov2 virus can be neutralized by vaccine generated antibodies, but not by prayer. Laws that allow prayer to substitute for vaccines aid and abet the spread of Covid-19. Laws mandating Covid-19 vaccinations for all without a bonafide medical reason not to be vaccinated help slow the spread of the virus, speed the return to the normalcy we all seek, and allow the religious to keep on praying.