Jehovah witness vaccine mandate code#

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is president emerita and professor emerita of Chicago Theological Seminary. We do not get vaccinated just for ourselves, but for the sake of the neighbor whom we could also infect. Someone suddenly “getting religion” in order to avoid a vaccine mandate, however, would make me question how sincere those beliefs are.Ĭonsistency of practice, especially in regard to using other medications, can be an objective guide and that’s what employers need.įor me as a person of faith, however, the guiding religious principle in regard to COVID vaccination is “love of neighbor” (Mark 12:31). I have been a pastor and a professor of religion all my adult life, and there is literally no way to hold people accountable for the sincerity of their religious beliefs in an abstract way. This current drive to use “religious exemption” as a way to avoid vaccine mandates can thus be exposed as driven more by political than religious conviction if the person requesting the exemption has not been consistent in avoiding all medications that derive from these cell lines. He asked employees to attest to not be using any of those medicines.” “Before granting the religious exemptions, Troup sent the employees a list of 28 commonly used medicines that also used fetal cells in their research, testing or development - a list that includes Tylenol, Motrin, Tums, Ex-Lax and other medicine cabinet staples. In Conway, Ark., Matt Troup, CEO of Conway Regional Health System, received requests for religious exemptions based on the employees’ beliefs that vaccines that used fetal cells in research, testing or production should not be put in their bodies. The Vatican has said that it’s “morally acceptable” to receive a vaccination for COVID-19, even if the vaccine’s research or production involved using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, given the “grave danger” of the pandemic.Įmployers can reasonably look for consistency to see if it is religious belief and not politics that is driving the request for the exemption. Fetal cell lines developed years ago have been used in the research and development of the vaccines, but the vaccines themselves contain no fetal cells. The vaccines themselves do not contain any fetal cells. But, the consistency of this conviction can be tested in a very practical way. Many employees say they are claiming religious exemptions because they believe that fetal cells were used in research, testing or production. Of course, it can be difficult for employers to separate out a “sincerely held religious belief” from a political conviction.

Jehovah witness vaccine mandate code#

Your “religious conviction,” moreover, cannot just be what is under your own hat at any one time, and it cannot be just a code for “how I can advance my political convictions.” I do not believe religious conviction gives you the right to deny rights to other people. Today there is a strong drive to use religion and religious freedom as a way to subvert civil rights laws, a subject I and others tackled in a Vail Symposium in a debate on Aug.