#169
Religious Gatherings; Vaccine Mandates

After 18 months of monitoring religious responses to COVID-19, some similar trends around the world are emerging quite clearly. Patterns of challenges to government authority to regulate religious communities and active debates around the topic are a prominent example. A church in Kampala and a representative from the Muslim community have started legal action to challenge the Ugandan government’s ban on public worship after revised national lockdown measures allowed malls, arcades, and business centers to open and yet prohibited gathering in places of worship. This mirrors trends in the United States, South Africa, and elsewhere, where freedom of religion concerns were sharpened by their contrast to easing of restrictions for secular industries. “As a woman of faith, it’s been difficult to see my community deprived of access to public worship at a time when we need it most. At this hard moment for our country, the government must remember that we don’t only have physical needs, but spiritual needs, too,” said Agnes Namaganda, a member of the Christian fellowship supporting the challenge.
 
Meanwhile, virtual religious gatherings have continued to fill the void left by restricted in-person gatherings. Recently, WCC member churches from across Indonesia gathered on Zoom to discuss the pandemic and spiritual life in the country. COVID-19 weighed heavily on those representing 27 traditions from a nation with more than 3.8 million cases reported. Rev. Abednego Adinugroho of the East Java Christian Church of Indonesia said, "the church has been a prophetic voice and a bridge-builder,” elaborating on how churches have helped the government urge people to stick to the protocols necessary to fight the pandemic and aided in the distribution of medical equipment and medicines. Among Muslim communities in Indonesia, many organizations and imams voiced support for government policies and recommended the use of digital platforms as a way to communicate with people and to continue religious practices. There was some controversy surrounding the online version of the Friday prayer because in Islamic law, this ritual is wajib (mandatory), while others are only mustahab (recommended). An article by Wahyudi Akmaliah and Ahmad Najib Burhani discusses this controversy and how Indonesian groups have implemented the concept of maqasid al-shari’a (objectives of sharia) in dealing with critical issues. As a result, they were able to relocate the sacredness of physical spaces to digital space. In the United States, Collin Hensen, editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, disagrees with the idea of the sacred in digital spaces. He argues that something important is lost through live-streamed church services and encourages churches “not to forsake the assembly” even if it means finding other creative ways to gather safely. 

As businesses, hospitals, universities, and governments weigh implementing vaccine mandates in countries where the COVID-19 vaccine is now widely available, many of those mandates would - at least on paper - offer religious exemptions. But what exactly those exemptions are, who gets to define them, and how to prove them, are complicated questions. “This is all such uncertain territory,” said Jenna Reinbold, a professor at Colgate University who studies the intersection of religion and law. Priests in the Archdiocese of New York have been advised not to get involved. "There is no basis for a priest to issue a religious exemption to the vaccine," said a memo sent to priests in the New York Archdiocese, and noted that if they did issue them they would be "acting in contradiction to the directives of the pope." Nevertheless, vaccine mandates open a new area of debate between proponents of public health policies and those who fear that a perceived disregard for religious protections will have dangerous consequences in the long run.