Back in March, I wrote a column about the joy and hope the COVID-19 vaccines had brought my family after more than a year of pandemic disruption.

I prayed that those skeptical of the vaccines eventually would recognize the benefits of protecting themselves — and their loved ones — from potential serious illness and death.

Yet here we are six months later, with coronavirus infections and deaths at “levels not seen since last winter” and religion often at the center of the vaccine war.

Colleen Long and Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press report:

An estimated 2,600 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.

And in Arkansas, a hospital has been swamped with so many such requests from employees that it is apparently calling their bluff.

Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot.

And it is only likely to grow following President Joe Biden’s sweeping new vaccine mandates covering more than 100 million Americans, including executive branch employees and workers at businesses with more than 100 people on the payroll.

In a front-page report, New York Times religion writer Ruth Graham notes:

Major religious traditions, denominations and institutions are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19. But as more employers across the country begin requiring Covid vaccinations for workers, they are butting up against the nation’s sizable population of vaccine holdouts who nonetheless see their resistance in religious terms — or at least see an opportunity. Vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions to the requirements on religious grounds; others are submitting letters from far-flung religious authorities who have advertised their willingness to help.

Related headlines from this past week:

• Francis Collins ‘a bit’ frustrated with evangelicals amid COVID-19 vaccine push (by Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service)

• This pastor will sign a religious exemption for vaccines if you donate to his church (by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post)

• Policing religious exemptions to vaccines (by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed)

• New York governor vows to fight lawsuit over vaccine mandate (by Marina Villeneuve, Associated Press)

• As vaccine mandates multiply, so do requests for religious exemptions (by Jay Tokasz, Buffalo News)

• Some Episcopal cathedrals and churches begin requiring proof of vaccination to attend services (by David Paulsen, Episcopal News Service)

• Navy assistant coach Billy Ray Stutzmann fired after failing to receive exemption for COVID-19 vaccine (by Barrett Sallee, CBS Sports)

• What’s the law on vaccine exemptions? A religious liberty expert explains (by Douglas Laycock, The Conversation)

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Post-Trump, Christian nationalists preach a theology of vaccine resistance: With former President Donald Trump out of office, “hard-line Christian nationalists are increasingly fueling their movement with opposition to COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates, which they cast as threats to their religious and constitutional freedoms,” Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins reports.

According to RNS, this article is the first in a series on Christian nationalism (Jenkins previously delved deep into that subject here) supported by the Pulitzer Center.

2. What does it mean to live by ‘faith not fear’ during a pandemic?: “For many Christians, taking precautions to avoid catching and spreading COVID-19 is embracing not a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment,” Lifeway Research’s Aaron Earls writes. “Even if one does not agree with the effectiveness of such precautions, their adoption does not require being motivated from a place of fear.”

Meanwhile, a showdown over a mask mandate in the Atlanta area has pitted “faith” against “fear,” Heather Greene reports for Religion News Service.

3. The uproar over the ‘Ultimate American Bible’: Slate’s Molly Olmstead follows up on past reporting by ReligionUnplugged.com’s own Meagan Clark on controversy over the “God Bless the USA” Bible.

“The ensuing uproar,” Olmstead writes, “shows the challenges facing publishers in the lucrative Bible-printing business and the growing discomfort with Christian nationalism, the ideology that asserts the United States should be an explicitly Christian country.”

CONTINUE READING: “As COVID-19 Vaccine War Rages, Focus On Religious Exemptions Grows,” by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.