In Washington, D.C., more than 400 fire and emergency medical workers applied for religious exemptions to the city's vaccine mandate. The AP is solely responsible for this content.More and more employers are ordering workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 without the option of getting tested instead. _Īssociated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The move for such exemptions is “a danger ultimately to the long-term cause of religious liberty,” he said, because employers and courts may discount the sincerity of employees when they face genuine situations where their faith needs to be accommodated. “I’m encouraging pastors not to give in to that.” He knows of pastors who favor vaccines but are pressured by congregants to give them letters justifying their vaccine refusal on religious grounds. “There is no genuine religious reason for seeking an exemption, especially from employer mandates.” Seeking religious exemptions for many “is a hijacking of religion to justify political or cultural stances, and that’s very dangerous,” Chang said. The relatively low vaccination rate among white evangelicals frustrates Curtis Chang, a theologian whose Redeeming Babel organization launched a Christians and the Vaccine project with evangelical and health-care groups, promoting the COVID-19 vaccines on biblical principles. He said the Vatican has provided detailed moral guidance on the vaccines’ acceptability - considering such things as the lack of alternative vaccines and the benefits of corralling a deadly pandemic. “There is no distinctively Catholic objection to receiving any of the COVID-19 vaccines available,” said Michael Deem, assistant professor of bioethics and human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. The claiming of religious exemptions frustrates some who suspect there are non-religious motivations. “Conscience exemptions to vaccine mandates need to be liberally available not only to Catholics but to all individuals.” “Such decisions properly belong in the hands of the individual patient, who can assess his or her on-the-ground situation more meaningfully than any federal agency, politician or employer,” he said. The church “strongly encourages the safeguarding of conscience rights” he said in a statement, criticizing a “one size fits all” approach to employer mandates. None of those vaccines contain fetal cells. Laboratory-grown cell lines descended from fetuses that were aborted decades ago were used to test the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and to grow viruses used to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. While reasons for seeking religious exemptions vary, many Christians have cited the COVID-19 vaccines’ remote connection to past abortions. military services, have granted very few. Ledewitz said he would advise a client wanting a religious exemption to say simply, “I have prayed about this, and I have come to the conclusion that God does not want me to take this vaccine.”Įmployers have adopted widely varying approaches to such arguments – some granting many exemptions while others, including the U.S. However, someone from a denomination that encourages vaccines can still seek an exemption based on individual conscience, said Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. “The Executive Council recognizes no claim of theological or religious exemption from vaccination for our members,” the resolution said. She noted that previous ELCA documents opposed broad religious exemptions and viewed medicine as “a gift of God for the good of the community.”Įven before the pandemic, the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council made clear its stance – adopting a resolution in June 2019 calling for stronger government vaccination mandates. Joseph Parish in Hoboken.Ĭandice Buchbinder, a spokesperson for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said the denomination is currently studying the question of religious exemptions. Alexander Santora, pastor of Our Lady of Grace & St. “I have been asked about six times and have declined,” said the Rev. It’s different in New Jersey’s Archdiocese of Newark, which has advised its priests not to support religious exemptions for their parishioners. “If a Catholic comes to an informed and sure judgment in conscience that he or she should not receive a vaccine, then the Catholic Church acknowledges that the person … has the right to refuse the vaccine.” “Vaccination is not a universal obligation and a person must obey the judgment of his or her own informed and certain God-given conscience,” says one of the letters provided by Stec.
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