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Religious passages or leaders prohibiting vaccination
No major faith explicitly opposes vaccinations. On the contrary, all major faiths in the U.K. have urged their followers to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Nonetheless, several concerns about vaccinations have been identified that arise from religious considerations. These concerns can be divided into four groups.
Although religiosity is not consistently associated with higher vaccine hesitancy when conducting international comparisons, there is tentative evidence that vaccine hesitancy is greater among the religious in an American sample. Vaccination rates are also particularly low among some fundamentalist religious communities around the world.
This theme cites advice from religious scriptures or passages prohibiting vaccines, or a religious leader who advocates against vaccines. Vaccination is rejected on the basis of this advice, which is perceived to be the religious law.
This theme also captures other arguments where religion is invoked as the reason not to have a vaccine, without raising any of the specific rationales in the other religious themes.
People’s religious convictions must be respected and it is understandable to worry about the compatibility between vaccination and religion. We want our decisions to be consistent with our deepest beliefs and values, but it can be confusing when messages from religious leaders and other authorities may seem to be in conflict.
Dialogue between patients and healthcare professionals is most productive if it is guided by empathy, and an opportunity for the patient to affirm the reasons underlying their attitudes and to express understanding for that. That’s why it is important to understand the attitude roots behind people’s overt opinions. To affirm a person’s underlying attitude root does not mean we need to agree with the specifics of their argument. For example, we can acknowledge that:
People’s religious convictions must be respected and it is understandable to worry about the compatibility between vaccination and religion. We want our decisions to be consistent with our deepest beliefs and values, but it can be confusing when messages from religious leaders and other authorities may seem to be in conflict.
As medical professionals, we accept that main leaders of the world’s major religions stated that vaccination doesn’t go against their religious beliefs. Many of these faith leaders also publicly encouraged vaccination.
From a medical perspective, we find overwhelming evidence that vaccination has saved the lives of millions of children from diseases like measles and whopping cough. For example, vaccination successfully suppressed measles, a disease that used to cause more than 2.6 million deaths globally each year. Without vaccines, your community would be at greater risk from these diseases.
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