#167
Vaccine Hesitancy and Religious Action; New Tensions and Conflicts

News sources are saturated with reports and commentary about vaccination campaigns and various forms of vaccine delays, hesitancy, and resistance, much colored by evidence about the new impact of the delta variant. South African Sunday Guardian observed in a headline: “If vaccine refusniks win, forget about beating COVID-19.” Religious aspects (positive and negative) appear in many though certainly not all reports. “Hard” evidence from a recent survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Interfaith Youth Core (IYC) attracted considerable attention, focused on both positive evidence of Black pastor impact on increased vaccination rates and far less positive findings on White evangelical communities, still leaders among the resisters. Deseret News reported on “vaccine missionaries,” Latter-day Saints and others, pounding pavements to persuade the doubters. The tone of commentary on vaccine resistance and resistors shows rising anger and resentment as fears mount about the COVID-19 variants and especially the Delta strain. The reports are still quite dominated by a focus on the United States, but as vaccinations pick up steam in different regions so do analyses of resistance and its impact. 
 
Indignant commentary on vaccine inequity continues, the ethical aspects often linked to religious teachings and expressed in prophetic terms. The ecumenical ACT Alliance put out a brief urging equity in access to “put people first.” This comes as religious festivals are again attracting attention (notably Eid celebrations last week) and, from Saudi Arabia, various reports on the “pared down hajj.”
 
Religious observation of safety procedures attracted political and other criticism, for instance in Malaysia: “It is insufficient for religious elites to tell people that they must pray and be patient in times of difficulty, especially when there are elites who alienate themselves from people’s struggles by violating protocols and jeopardising others’ safety.” The Fulcrum article argues that “religious narratives raise an important question on the adaptability of certain religious ideas amidst changing and difficult circumstances." More certainly needs to be done, and as renowned Malaysian intellectual Chandra Muzaffar put it, “what religious elites need to do is to understand the fundamental methodology and principles behind the interpretation of religion and to critically apply that methodology to changing contexts.” 
 
The dramatic July 20 Lancet and CDC article and report on “The Hidden Pandemic,” suggesting that there are some two million new COVID orphans, continued to attract considerable attention, echoing intensive religious concern on an eerily similar tragedy during the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And flaring violence and tensions in different world regions point to a new pattern of social tensions and active protests linked in different ways to resistance to COVID-19 lockdowns and the ways they are handled by governments. Religious dimensions are rarely mentioned explicitly but are often linked, albeit in complex ways.

News commentary is being supplemented by more scholarly research. An example is the publication by Georgetown University scholar Dr. Ayman Shabana, “From the Plague to the Coronavirus: Islamic Ethics and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” in the Journal of Islamic Ethics.