… As usual, there are good reasons to think that religion is playing both sides, boosting a pro-social willingness to get vaccinated as well as fueling the resistance to this collective effort. For instance, culture warrior Franklin Graham based his pro-vaccine message on the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan and suggested that Jesus would be in favor of vaccinations, though he is apparently still taking heat for this position. The US Catholic Bishops allowed that vaccines were “morally permissible” as long as there are also “appropriate expressions of protest against the origins of these vaccines,” which apparently are remotely connected to stem cell lines they object to.
At the same time, various far-right groups and figures have been pushing anti-vax information. Right Wing Watch notes Lin Wood arguing that he trusts “God’s promise of protection,” and Marjorie Taylor Greene calling proposed vaccine passports “Biden’s Mark of the Beast.” Conservative Christianity is chock full of QAnon, far-right perspectives these days, so it is highly likely that we will find some here.
We’ve been collecting data through panel-provider Lucid for the last month with a sample size of 3,600. Results provided below have weights applied so that demographics of survey respondents approximate a national audience on gender, race, age, and education. CONTINUED
Paul A. Djupe (Denison), Jason M. Adkins (Montana State U. Billings) & Jake Neiheisel (SUNY Buffalo), Religion in Public
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