Tag: white evangelicals
Poll: Atheists More Likely To Get Vaccinated Than White Evangelicals

Poll: Atheists More Likely To Get Vaccinated Than White Evangelicals

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Although some anti-vaxxers identify as liberal or progressive, the vast majority of people who have been angrily railing against COVID-19 vaccines in the United States have been far-right white evangelical fundamentalists, Christian nationalists and MAGA Republicans. And recent Pew Research polling has found that atheists have some of the United States’ highest COVID-19 vaccination rates.

According to Pew, 90 percent of atheists in the U.S. have been vaccinated for COVID-19 compared to only 57 percent of white fundamentalist evangelicals. Among the overall adult population in the U.S., 73 percent have been vaccinated.

None of that is to say that all people of faith are anti-vaxxers or that everyone who is religious in the U.S. is far-right politically. Some African-American AME churches, for example, have done an excellent job helping people in the African-American community get vaccinated for COVID-19. And there are plenty of people of faith who hold liberal/progressive views and don’t care for the right-wing white evangelical movement.

But strident anti-vaxxers in the U.S., in many cases, do tend to follow a certain pattern: white, far-right politically, open to conspiracy theories, stridently supportive of former President Donald Trump.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation cites the Pew Research poll as evidence that “atheists are among the best neighbors an American could wish for.”In a press release, FFRF Co-President Dan Barker is quoted as saying, “Atheists believe in this life, not an afterlife, and we don’t need a god to threaten us with hell to do the right thing. We’re good for goodness sake.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of FFRF, is quoted as saying, “This is one of the great moral issues of today — and religion is simply failing. Religious folks are often suspicious of a tiny little shot to prevent the spread of a lethal contagion that has killed 1 in every 500 Americans and has completely overwhelmed and overworked our heroes on the health care frontlines. It takes religion to make the immoral seem moral.”

Gaylor notes that Catholics, according to Pew, fare better than white evangelicals when it comes to getting vaccinated for COVID-19.

The FFRF co-president is quoted as saying, “It seems like a rare instance of American Catholics listening to their pope — and the pope having the correct message. Now, if he would only apply himself to the scourge of rape and abuse within his church.”

Since it was first reported in Wuhan, China two years ago in December 2019, COVID-19 has, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers in Baltimore, killed more than 5.3 million people worldwide. COVID-19 vaccines, however, offer considerable protection against the dangerous coronavirus — and President Joe Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top medical expert in the white House, have been encouraging Americans to receive widely available booster shots.

Poll: Most Americans Reject Religious Exemption From Vaccine Mandates

Poll: Most Americans Reject Religious Exemption From Vaccine Mandates

Majorities of Americans across all major religious denominations believe there is no legitimate religious basis to object to getting vaccinated against COVID-19, new public opinion research shows, yet religious objections to vaccine mandates remain a popular and effective way for vaccine-hesitant individuals to avoid the shots.

Just over one in ten Americans say getting a COVID-19 vaccine would violate their religious beliefs, according to a Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core survey released in December, while 60 percent agree that there are "no valid religious reasons to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine."

Meanwhile, 59 percent of Americans told the pollster they thought too many people were using religion as an excuse to avoid COVID vaccines, and just under half (47 percent) of respondents went so far as to endorse eliminating all requests for COVID vaccine exemptions on religious grounds.

As with most matters pertaining to the pandemic, however, Americans' opinions were split along partisan lines. A total of 20 percent of Republicans indicated that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 went against their personal religious beliefs, compared to just seven percent of Democrats. Among those who said they got their news primarily from far-right outlets like OAN and Newsmax, known for amplifying anti-vaccine content, the number with religious objections jumped to 41 percent.

Unsurprisingly, those who've refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 expressed the strongest opinions in support of religious exemptions: 52 percent in that group indicated the COVID shots violated their personal religious beliefs, and just over three in ten said they have already asked or planned to request a religious exemption to a vaccine requirement.

As the American Independent Foundation was among the first to report, religious exemptions stand as one of the few legal avenues for vaccine objectors to avoid vaccine mandates. When more employers and government entities began requiring vaccines, some vaccine skeptics turned to online marketplaces to purchase such exemption request letters, the investigation showed.

In October, the Biden administration moved to tighten the rules relating to religious vaccine exemptions, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission formally noting that employers could reject exemption requests if granting unvaccinated employees' accommodations would place an "undue burden" on their workplace.

Yet in recent weeks, several Republican-led states have enacted new policies making it easier for religious objectors to avoid vaccination. In Kansas, lawmakers approved a measure that requires employers to grant any request for a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate so long as the request was submitted in writing. In Utah, lawmakers went even further, enabling objectors to dodge vaccine mandates based on any "sincerely held personal beliefs," even if those beliefs aren't tied to a specific religious identity.

Yet the issue of religious exemptions is hardly settled law. On Monday, for example, the Supreme Court declined to block a vaccine mandate for New York health care workers even though the policy didn't allow for religious exemptions.

No major religious denomination or sect directs its members to resist COVID vaccines, and in fact, many spiritual leaders have been among the most vocal advocates encouraging vaccination. Pope Francis has called getting vaccinated against COVID-19 an "act of love," while several Catholic leaders across the U.S. have formally instructed priests not to grant religious exemption requests.

But the practice remains popular, with growing numbers of U.S. service members, health care workers, city staff, and private employees seeking exemptions as a means of bypassing mandates.

The poll showed that majorities of Americans did endorse granting exemptions for those who have refused other vaccines in addition to COVID, those who belonged to a religious sect known to ban vaccination, and those who had a letter from their religious leader attesting to their beliefs against vaccines. Only 39 percent of Americans said anyone who simply says vaccines violate their beliefs should get one, though 57 percent of Republicans indicated they supported that view.

The PRRI-IYC poll was conducted online from October 18 through November 9, included responses from 5,721 Americans 18 and older across all 50 states, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Liberty University

Virus Outbreak Spurs Campus-Wide Quarantine At Liberty University

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

In the United States, far-right white evangelicals and Christian nationalists have often been the first to downplay the severity of COVID-19, oppose social distancing measures, and push bogus anti-mask and anti-vax conspiracy theories. But in Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University has enacted a temporary quarantine across the campus after being hit hard by a COVID-19 outbreak.

The Associated Press' Alicia Victoria Lozano reports, "The quarantine is scheduled to end September 10, the university said. There were 159 active COVID-19 cases among students and staff as of Saturday, (August 28), according to the school's coronavirus dashboard. The university has about 15,000 students and 5000 faculty or staff members on campus. The majority of infections, 124 cases, are among students."

According to Lozano, the current COVID-19 outbreak at Liberty University is even worse than the one it suffered in September 2020.

"Last week," Lozano observes, "40 students and staff members had tested positive for COVID. The current spike surpasses the previous high of 141 cases last September when nearly 1200 people connected with the campus were quarantined."

Liberty University doesn't have a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for either students or faculty, according to Lozano.

During the quarantine, classes at Liberty University will only be held online — not in person — and large indoor gatherings will be forbidden.

Liberty University was co-founded in 1971 by the late Jerry Falwell Sr., the former segregationist who also founded the Moral Majority and was one of the leaders of the Christian right movement during the 1980s and 1990s. His son, Jerry Falwell Jr., served as president of Liberty University before resigning in August 2020 because of a sex scandal.

Man with QAnon t-shirt

Poll Shows Devout Evangelicals More Likely To Join QAnon Cult

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Although QAnon isn't a religious movement per se, the far-right conspiracy theorists have enjoyed some of their strongest support from white evangelicals — who share their adoration of former President Donald Trump. And polling research from The Economist and YouGov shows that among those who are religious, White evangelicals are the most QAnon-friendly.

The Economist explains, "One prominent theory is that Americans who have no religious affiliation find themselves attracted to other causes, such as the Q craze. Another, posited by Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, is that modern strains of Christian evangelicalism which 'run on dopey apocalypse-mongering' do not entirely satisfy all worshippers — and so, they go on to find community and salvation in other groups, such as QAnon. Using The Economist's polling with YouGov, an online pollster, we can test both of these theories."

Sasse's willingness to call out "dopey apocalypse-mongering" among some white evangelicals shouldn't be taken as a criticism of religion in general. The conservative Nebraska Republican draws a distinction between extremists and non-extremists within Christianity. And the Economist/YouGov poll underscores the fact that among Christians, one finds a variety of opinions where QAnon is concerned.

"From July 10 to July 13, 2021, YouGov asked Americans their racial and religious affiliations, whether they thought of QAnon favorably or unfavorably and whether they believed in a variety of popular conspiracy theories," The Economist notes. "Those theories included old stand-bys, such as whether the moon landing in 1969 was faked."

The Economist continues: "According to YouGov's recent polling, which we combined with an earlier survey from March to obtain a larger sample size, Americans who attend church the least are also the least likely to have a favorable view of QAnon. Among those who say they 'never' go to church, just nine percent who have heard of the QAnon conspiracy view it favorably. Fully 92 percent of these respondents view it unfavorably — a net favorability of minus 83 percentage points."

According to The Economist, "The rating among people who attend church the most — once a month or more — is minus 52 points."

"We ran a statistical model to control for potential links between attitudes towards QAnon and other demographics — such as race, age, gender, education, party affiliation and vote choice in 2020," The Economist notes. "Our model confirmed that the relationship between church attendance and QAnon was not a statistical fluke: adults who attended church at least once a month were eight percentage points more likely than we predicted to rate QAnon favorably."

The Economist didn't find that QAnon is universally loved within Christianity by any means, but it did find that among Christians, white evangelicals are the most likely to be QAnon-friendly.

"White evangelicals, the most religiously devout group among those surveyed by YouGov, are particularly susceptible to supporting QAnon and believing other conspiracy theories," The Economist reports. "They also tend to attend church frequently. Twenty-two percent of evangelicals who know about QAnon view it favorably, according to YouGov's numbers — compared with 11 percent among the rest of the adult population. At the other end of the spectrum, 24 percent of evangelicals rate QAnon as 'very unfavorable,' compared with 58 percent among other people."

QAnon believes that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of child sex traffickers, pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was elected president in 2016 to fight the cabal. And as extreme as QAnon's beliefs are, some of their supporters are serving in Congress. Republican QAnon supporters who have been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — and Michael Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser under Trump in 2017, was a featured speaker at a QAnon event in Dallas.

Among white evangelicals, The Economist observes, a fondness for conspiracy theories isn't limited to those promoted by QAnon.

"White evangelicals are 34 percentage points more likely than other Americans to believe that 'millions of illegal votes' were cast in the 2020 election," according to The Economist. "These adults also tend to be more conservative, and vote for Republican politicians more often than non-whites and members of other religious groups do. Evangelicals are influenced by the official party line on issues of the day — even if they are conspiratorial. And adoption of one wild theory, perhaps made more persuasive by a politician's avowals, tends to lead to the adoption of others."