The National Council of Churches has produced a fact sheet: A Christian Approach to Vaccine Hesitancy to aid church and faith leaders in having courageous conversations about being vaccinated. The fact sheet also provides a Christian scriptural basis for a compassionate response to vaccine hesitancy and provides responses to Biblical misinformation around vaccination. This resource will be most useful to Christian congregations. 

https://nationalcouncilofchurches.us/fact-sheet-christian-approach-to-vaccine-hesitancy/

 

The National Council of Churches also has a variety of other COVID-19 Resources specifically designed for faith communities. Some are Christian-specific, but many would be appropriate for any faith community :

https://nationalcouncilofchurches.us/resources-on-covid-19-for-churches/

 

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We Do Not Get Herd Immunity Without Addressing Religious Identity.” 

 

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The 2021 PRRI-IFYC Religious Diversity and Vaccine Survey offers a deep dive into religious identity and how it relates to vaccine acceptance, hesitancy, and refusal. Religious leaders will find this VERY HELPFUL as it includes in-depth understanding of which groups are most resistant and why along with ideas of how religious leaders and religious communities can respond. 

 

• In case you missed the event, or if you would like to forward it to a friend, here is a link to the full report. 

• You may access a replay of the webinar via YouTube [here].

• You may also download a PDF of the presentation slides [here].

 

Key takeaways: 

 

Faith leaders and faith communities have a huge amount of power in shaping people's opinions about getting vaccinated. 

 

Broad messaging has gone as far as it can – now is the time for congregation by congregation, person to person conversations.  People's concerns are varied from worries about missing work to worries about vaccine safety -- the most effective messages will respond directly to each person's exact concern. 

 

Some things that have proven effective that houses of faith can do to address vaccine hesitancy:
 

• Holding a forum on vaccine safety

• Faith leader(s) publicly getting a vaccine

• Fellow members publicly getting a vaccine

• Holding vaccine clinics at your congregation

• Helping members to get vaccine appointments 

• Addressing vaccines in worship