#174
Places of Worship as Vaccination Sites and Religious Exemptions

As COVID-19 is still spreading, some faith actors are directly supporting vaccination campaigns by allowing the use of places of worship as vaccination sites and sharing strong positive messages, but misinformation and some promoting of religious exemptions from vaccine mandates still cause concern.
 
The virus continues to cause death and illness across the globe. At the beginning of September, five nuns from the same convent in Brazil died in just six days. In rural villages in Siaya, Kenya, the spread of the delta variant is having a particularly negative impact on widows, who often do not have access to digital technologies. Many who were involved in the death-care industry, now replaced by online funerals, lost their source of income. Roseline Orwa, widow champion and founder and director of the Rona Foundation, calls for greater commitment to digital education and health care services for rural widows and for religious and traditional leaders to step up their efforts to distribute vaccines among this group and fight vaccine-related misinformation and rumors.
 
Reports highlight ways in which faith actors are involved in vaccination campaigns in South Africa. In particular, places of worship in the Gauteng district are being used as pop-up vaccination sites in an effort to immunize as many as possible before a possible fourth wave arrives. The Greek Orthodox Church is also supporting vaccination campaigns, as the government has started to offer vaccine shots outside churches in Crete and in several cities around the country. On the other hand, a report describes faith as a factor contributing to a spike in COVID-19 cases in rural communities in the United States, where mistrust of the government is high and religious leaders are reportedly not countering misinformation, but rather fueling vaccine hesitancy.

Debates on religious exemptions from vaccine mandates are continuing in the United States. The air carrier United Airlines required all their staff to be fully vaccinated but considered granting some exemptions. However, the company has now decided to put on unpaid leave those who were exempted from mandatory vaccination for religious or belief reasons, while exemptions for medical reasons will lead to temporary medical leave. Employees who requested and were denied an exemption on religious grounds now have five weeks to receive their first shot, or they will lose their jobs. In a New York Times guest essay, former pastor Curtis Chang expressed his concern over religious exemptions from employer vaccine mandates. In his view, “there is no actual religious basis for exemptions from vaccine mandates in any established stream of Christianity,” and anti-vax arguments should not be tied to religion. The former pastor advocates for a nationwide ban on religious exemptions from vaccine mandates for Christians and urges Christian religious leaders to reject requests for letters justifying exemptions.