GetReligion
Monday, April 14, 2025

vaccines

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When talking about vaccines, shame isn't going to change minds in many pews

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When talking about vaccines, shame isn't going to change minds in many pews

Donald Trump had to know it was coming, even if – to use a Bible Belt expression – he was preaching to his choir.

"You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms," he said, at a rally in Cullman, Ala. "You got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it – it's good."

Videos of this August 21 event make it clear that quite a few people booed this request by the former president.

Truth is, the longer a health crisis lasts, the more pollsters will find that anti-vaccine citizens have "turned into true believers" who are rock-solid in their convictions, said political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University. He is co-founder of the Religion in Public website and a contributor to the GetReligion.org weblog I have led since 2004.

"At this point, the holdouts are the only people that (pollsters) have to talk to. … They've heard everything, and nothing is moving the needle for them," he said. "In fact, it seems like whatever you say to try to change their minds only makes it worse. These hardcore folks are digging in their heels all the more."

When exploring the most recent Data for Progress poll numbers, it's hard to nail down a religion factor in this drama. As summer began, 70% of non-evangelical Protestants had received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine – but so had 62% of both evangelical Protestants and Catholics. As the author of a book entitled "The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going," Burge found it significant that only 47% of the religiously unaffiliated reported receiving at least one shot.

"Religion may be a factor, for some people, but it's not the main thing" causing Americans to be reluctant, he said. "Age is clearly the No. 1 factor, even when you factor in politics. Young Republicans and independents are the same. …


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Thinking about the practical impact of shaming messages aimed at vaccine-resistant believers

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Thinking about the practical impact of shaming messages aimed at vaccine-resistant believers

During my decades in religion-beat work, I have heard many an evangelical leader make the following sardonic observation.

Wait, I’ve also heard traditional Catholics offer variations on this theme. And there may be partisan political versions of this, as well. But that’s not my turf.

OK, here is the message: The quickest way for an evangelical to receive glowing elite press coverage and commentary (add social-media praise, after about 2000+) is to attack other evangelicals.

Now, that is not what this think piece is about. I say that, even though some vaccine-resistant religious leaders may have thought that’s what Daniel Darling, senior vice president for Communications at the NRB (think National Religious Broadcasters) was doing in his recent USA Today op-ed entitled, “Why, as a Christian and an American, I got the COVID vaccine.”

But careful readers could see that his message was way more complicated than that. If you weren’t sure about his intent, check out the lengthy interview with Darling that followed on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program (click here or see the YouTube at the top of the full copy of this post). The veteran evangelical leader — former head of communications for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission — was clearly sending two messages.

Yes, one was to religious leaders who have doubts about the COVID-19 vaccines. But he also had sobering words for their critics, whose attacks have caused anger and conflict, instead of changing minds.

Thus, what we have here is a piece of op-ed work, and the MSNBC appearance that followed, that people on both sides of this warfare need to parse carefully. This includes journalists who are covering this story — which is so not over yet.


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When pinning wild COVID-19 quotes on a cardinal, it helps to be precise about fine details

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When pinning wild COVID-19 quotes on a cardinal, it helps to be precise about fine details

If you’re the kind of person who likes to explore the wretched underbelly of Twitter, then you need to pay close attention to the waves of snarky messages that follow announcements that famous vaccine skeptics have been hospitalized with COVID-19.

Some of these skeptics are politicians, of course. Others are religious leaders.

That brings us to the Associated Press coverage of a prominent conservative Catholic who, for journalists, is best known as a frequent critic of liberal Catholic politicians and also of some — not all — actions taken by Pope Francis. Here is the overture on one of these updates:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the Catholic Church’s most outspoken conservatives and a vaccine skeptic, said he has COVID-19 and his staff said he is breathing through a ventilator.

Burke tweeted Aug. 10 that he had caught the virus, was resting comfortably and was receiving excellent medical care.

“Please pray for me as I begin my recovery,” the 73-year-old Burke said in the tweet. “Let us trust in Divine Providence. God bless you.”

As you would expect, the AP report — in addition to offering a litany of examples of Burke criticizing liberal Catholics — eventually provided some information about the cardinal’s views on the coronavirus pandemic. Here are the crucial paragraphs:

Burke … has criticized how governments have handled the pandemic, referring to the virus in a homily last December as the “Wuhan virus,” a derogatory term used by former President Donald Trump to describe the coronavirus and warning people that governments were manipulating them. In May 2020, he spoke out against mandatory vaccinations, saying some in society want to implant microchips in people.

He said in March 2020 that the best weapon for battling “the evil of the coronavirus” is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The most inflammatory material, of course, is the reference to implanting “microchips.” It would really help to know more about what Burke is alleged to have said and where and when he said it.


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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

Want to be smart?

Then avoid simple narratives in news coverage. That’s especially true on the still-timely subject of religion and debates about the COVID-19 vaccines.

For evidence, check out these recent stories:

• “As vaccine mandates become a reality, politicians, pastors and even the pope are speaking out against faith-based exemptions,” the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas reports.

But here’s the twist: “In many cases, those who claim a religious exemption are part of a denomination that doesn’t share their concerns, although many faith leaders do support making exemptions available.”

• “Does respect for human life mean vaccine mandates?” asks a story by the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein.

The answer? It’s complicated.

“In recent days, with a handful of organizations from Facebook and Google to the University of Virginia announcing vaccine mandates, religious leaders and organizations have considered their own teachings and values on the question of how to show respect for life,” Boorstein writes. “And their conclusions vary widely.”

• This news, via USA Today, jumps out at you: “Florida church vaccinates hundreds after 6 members die from COVID-19 in 10 days.”

"It's just been ripping our hearts apart,” the senior pastor says in the story by Marina Pitofsky.

It’s probably no surprise that social media pounced on the church for waiting until members died to promote vaccinations.

Except, as anyone reading the entire report learns, it didn’t: “The church vaccinated about 800 people in March at a similar event as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the U.S.”

While not religion related per se, Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column this week makes some excellent points.


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Thinking about white evangelicals, COVID-19 vaccines and VERY popular headlines

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Thinking about white evangelicals, COVID-19 vaccines and VERY popular headlines

As the Delta Variant has caused COVID-19 to surge again in the United States, there’s been a flurry of attention paid to the share of Americans who have chosen to forgo the vaccine against the coronavirus. Trying to understand the causal factors that would lead to one not getting the inoculation seems to be the first task when it comes to finding ways to reduce vaccine hesitancy coast to coast.

One of the primary dimensions that news outlets seem to be focusing on is religion. One kind of headline is especially popular and examples are published nearly weekly — stating that evangelical Christians are the ones who are the most reluctant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet, when I review the data from a survey that was conducted on May 11 that was administered by Data for Progress, I don’t find a lot of evidence that evangelicals are the ones lagging behind. In fact, I find that those without any religious affiliation were the least likely to have received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine.

The Data for Progress poll has been in the field for a total of 57 weeks. Dating back to the earliest days of the pandemic and beginning in January, respondents were asked if they had received a COVID vaccination. Obviously, in those early days when vaccine supply was an issue, small fractions of the population had gotten a shot. But that quickly ramped up as larger shares of the population became vaccine eligible.

By May, 70% of non-evangelical Protestants had gotten at least one dose. Sixty-two percent of both evangelical Protestants and Catholics reported the same. However, it was the “nones” (no religious affiliation) who were lagging farther behind.

By May 11, only 47% of nones had reported receiving at least one dose. However, what complicates data surrounding vaccination is that not everyone was eligible to get the shot at the same time. In all states, the oldest residents were eligible first and then the criteria widened as demand waned. However, by May 1, every American who was at least 16 years old was eligible to receive the vaccine.


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First Baptist in Dallas works to promote COVID-19 vaccines: Was this a big news story?

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First Baptist in Dallas works to promote COVID-19 vaccines: Was this a big news story?

If you have followed news coverage of debates about COVID-19 vaccines, you know that the leaders of churches and major religious denominations — Black and White — have been walking a tightrope on this issue.

Once this subject became politicized — like everything else in American life — there was almost no way to tackle it without causing more tension in their flocks.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of major religious leaders have been doing everything they can to make it possible for more people to safely return to the pews. These efforts have received quite a bit coverage at the local level.

Take, for example, this recent headline in The Dallas Morning News: “Robert Jeffress hopes to combat vaccine fears with First Baptist Dallas’ COVID-19 vaccination effort.” Here is the overture:

To combat vaccine hesitancy among Christian evangelicals, First Baptist Church in Dallas will have a COVID-19 vaccination clinic. …

Senior pastor Robert Jeffress said he hopes the move will encourage people to get shots so more of his 14,000 congregants can come and worship in person.

“Our church will never be what it needs to be until you’re back. The greater risk is the spiritual danger of staying isolated,” Jeffress said in a recent sermon. “I’m not forcing anybody to get the vaccine. That’s your choice. But what I am saying is if you are not back yet, and would like to come back, one option is to take the vaccine, and therefore you don’t have to worry about what other people do or don’t do here in the church.”

Like I said, this was a totally normal local story on this issue.

However, stop and think about this question: Would this have been a bigger story — attracting coverage from TV networks and elite newsrooms such as The New York Times — if Jeffress had taken a stance against the vaccines?

You know it would have been a national story, in part because of this preacher’s past support for former President Donald Trump.


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Thinking about evangelicals and COVID-19 vaccines: Wait! The numbers show WHAT?!?!

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Thinking about evangelicals and COVID-19 vaccines: Wait! The numbers show WHAT?!?!

The last 14 months have given the world a series of public health challenges that it has never had to grapple with before.

Will people willingly disrupt their lives in order to contain the spread of a potentially lethal virus? Can drug manufacturers develop and test a vaccine in a very short period of time that is effective against COVID-19? Will those same pharmaceutical companies be able to ramp up manufacturing capabilities quickly enough to satisfy the demand for those vaccines?

In terms of vaccine creation and distribution, there’s no doubt that it’s been an unqualified success. Every estimate indicates that the United States will be awash in vaccines by May. However, the question that is looming on the very near horizon is the most important and difficult to answer: will the United States be able to vaccinate enough of the population to get to a state of herd immunity and finally put an end to this year long nightmare?

It’s not the hard sciences that are under the microscope, it’s the social sciences. To reach herd immunity, most experts believe that a country needs to get at least 75% of the population fully vaccinated as a minimum threshold. Will that even be possible? Are societal factors like religion actually making the goal of herd immunity even more difficult?

The organization Data for Progress has been putting a poll into the field since the very beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020 as a way to get a sense of what percentage of the public is engaging in risky behaviors and how they feel the government is handling the crisis. Since January they have begun to ask respondents questions about their receptiveness to the vaccine. What these results indicate is that there are some reasons for hope, but there is also ample evidence that getting shots into arms may prove to be a lot more difficult in the very near future.

The survey asked respondents if they had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. As can be quickly inferred, those shots were in short supply in January. Just about 6% of the entire sample indicated that they had gotten the vaccine at that point. However, things improved rapidly from there and the share of Americans who had been inoculated essentially doubled every month from January through early April, when 44% of the population had gotten a dose of the vaccine.

However, when the sample is broken down into the three of the largest religious groups: White evangelicals, White Catholics and the religiously unaffiliated, some disparities begin to emerge.


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New podcast: Religious wars over vaccines? They're more complex than those headlines

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New podcast: Religious wars over vaccines? They're more complex than those headlines

Once again, it’s time for some time travel on the religion beat — as we ponder the current state of news coverage about the COVID-19 mask-and-vaccine wars.

Think back to Easter a year ago. Church leaders were wrestling with the real possibility that they would not be able to worship during Holy Week and on the holiest day on the Christian calendar. This was got lots of ink from the press, with good cause. There appeared to be two camps: (1) Crazy right-wingers (many journalists saw Donald Trump looming in the background) who wanted face-to-face worship at any cost and then (2) sensible, sane clergy willing to move to online worship and leave it at that.

The reality was more complex, especially since some (not all) government leaders seemed to think that worship was more dangerous than other forms of public life. During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), host Todd Wilken and I discussed how it’s easy to see the same patterns in news reports on bitter battles over COVID-19 vaccines. For some on the left — see this fascinating Emma Green piece at The Atlantic — super-strict coronavirus rules have evolved into faith-based dogma.

Now for that early COVID-19 flashback. In a post and podcast a year ago, I argued that this wasn’t really a simplistic story about two groups (good churches vs. bad churches), but one in which there were at least five camps to cover:

Those five camps? They are (1) the 99% of religious leaders who cooperated and took worship online, (2) some religious leaders who (think drive-in worship or drive-thru confessions) who tried to create activities that followed [government] social-distancing standards, (3) a few preachers who rebelled, period, (4) lots of government leaders who established logical laws and tried to be consistent with sacred and secular activities and (5) some politicians who seemed to think drive-in religious events were more dangerous than their secular counterparts.

Say what? … Why were drive-in worship services — with, oh, 100 cars containing people in a big space — more dangerous than businesses and food pantry efforts that produced, well, several hundred cars in a parking lot?

These five camps still exist and we can see them in the vaccine wars.


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Plug-In: COVID-19 vaccines are still creating buzz on religion beat -- pro and con

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Plug-In: COVID-19 vaccines are still creating buzz on religion beat -- pro and con

After sticking close to home for over a year, I’ve returned to in-person worship at my church in Oklahoma.

I’ve joined my sons and 2-year-old grandson in watching a game at my beloved Texas Rangers’ splashy new ballpark.

I’ve boarded an airplane and — for the first time since the pandemic hit — made a reporting trip (to Minneapolis this past weekend after Derek Chauvin’s conviction in George Floyd’s murder).

For millions, the COVID-19 vaccines have brought joy and hope, and I count myself among them after receiving my two Moderna shots.

Weekend Plug-in has covered various angles related to the vaccines and religion — from whether the shots are “morally compromised” to efforts to overcome skepticism among wary African Americans.

Still, the topic remains timely and important, as evidenced by interesting stories published just this past week:

• COVID-19 has hit the Amish community hard. Still, vaccines are a tough sell (by Anna Huntsman, NPR)

• Francis Collins urges evangelicals: ‘Love your neighbor,’ get COVID-19 vaccine (by Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service)

• At Orange County mosques, they come for the halal tacos and stay for the vaccination (by Alejandra Molina, RNS)

• Churches, Christian universities hosting COVID-19 vaccine clinics (by Chellie Ison, Christian Chronicle)

• For evangelical leader Jamie Aten, advocating for vaccines led to a death threat (by Bob Smietana, RNS)

Also, in case you missed it last week, Ryan Burge offers fascinating analysis here at ReligionUnplugged on data showing White evangelicals and Catholics are more likely to get the vaccine than religious “nones” and the general public. Yes, you read that right.


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