Religious Exemptions?
Over the last week, I’ve had the privilege of hearing about people’s spiritual opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The law requires that reviewers judge the sincerity of a person’s beliefs without judging the validity of the belief itself. Many of the people we interviewed who were applying for a religious exemption were, or had been, Christian. I am Christian and my faith was never in opposition to the vaccine. The vaccine protected me and my community. My foundational beliefs formed by the Hebrew Scriptures relating to caring for the stranger, the widow and the orphan prompted me to get vaccinated for the good of all. Phrases like “love your neighbor as yourself” and “love is patient and love is kind” from the Christian Testament resonate with me. God’s mercy trumps God’s judgment, so I strive to be slow to judge, even so, these conversations have tested me.
What surprised me the most was how few people wanted to talk about their spiritual beliefs with the group reviewing the requests. It made me wonder if talking about spirituality is frightening, risky, or something we don’t value or practice enough. Maybe, it’s simply that we don’t want our beliefs to be challenged. It’s much easier (and perhaps safer) to say that something is true simply because I believe it is so, then to defend it. After all, no one has a right to dispute my beliefs, do they? Truth is, Christianity in particular, has always valued the wisdom of the collective faithful. Our traditions and doctrine have been refined in the terrible crucible of communal dialogue (and fighting). The community is called to weigh the truth together and separate wheat from chaff. Challenge seems almost more important than affirmation in this faith journey.
As I read the testimony provided I was surprised to hear the voice of fear, over and above the voice of caring for others. Some believed that taking the vaccine had the potential to sincerely harm them or change them at a foundational level putting their relationship with God at risk. Sounds spiritual. Some had heard conflicting reports about the vaccine’s effectiveness, opposed stem cell research from aborted fetuses, read about potentially lethal side effects and were concerned about the absence of research on the long term effects of the new mRNA vaccines. These beliefs, even if sincerely held, felt more like disagreements over science than spirituality. We struggled to parse it out.
My faith gave me courage to take the vaccine. The folks applying for exemptions say their faith gives them courage to resist it. So how does one measure sincerity? I hate to say it, but it comes down to a feeling. We can feel another’s sincerity in our gut. Science and faith have long been bedfellows. If you don’t believe it, look no further than Copernicus and Galileo when they hypothesized a different ordering of the universe back in the 1600’s. Reason and science intersect in our spiritual worldviews. One often informs the other. These vaccine conversations have made me more sensitive to that fact, and to the continued suffering and anxiety this pandemic has inflicted on us as a society. Let’s be gentle with one another in the coming weeks and months as this is all sorted out, and may your faith - whatever that means to you - be enough.
