from the Aug. 27 Weekly Message email blast

“Do people ask you to provide a religious exemption from taking the Covid-19 vaccinations?” Then the person followed up: “What is the religious perspective on vaccination, anyway?” Here is my answer:

Religious traditions vary on many health issues, and leaders within the same tradition may disagree with one another. But all the Unitarian Universalist leaders I know do urge us to get vaccinated unless a medical condition would make it harmful to do so.

“But what about individual choice?” someone asks.

We UUs do affirm the right of individuals to make choices about their own health care. Yet a decision about a vaccine is not only about you, unless you live all alone in a remote area and you never come into contact with anyone else. Most of us don’t meet that description. We are inter-connected beings.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has shown how tied together we are with others, near and far.
Humans are part of a web of life, made up of other people and other forms of life. We are related to other people, even people we don’t know. For good or ill, we are dependent on the actions of others, and they are dependent on our actions.

Our choices affect the health, safety, and sometimes the very survival of others. The choice to raise your immunity and our shared immunity by a vaccine is a choice to fight the spread of an epidemic, to protect people who may be more vulnerable than you are.

We could also think about it as an expression of the ancient religious and ethical instruction: to love your neighbor as yourself.

The rapid development of the vaccines would not have happened without people who had devoted years of prior research on other Corona viruses. The rigorous drug approval process of the past year could not have happened without willing volunteers who allowed vaccines to be tested on them for safety and effectiveness. All of those efforts are examples of the “love of neighbor” in action.

In the case of the vaccines, it is not merely a choice about your own health preferences. It is a choice about extending care and healing to the larger community. It is a decision about protecting one another, for we are all in this together. So may it be.

Keep the faith and keep in touch–

Rev. Roger