In the campaign to vaccinate Americans against COVID-19, many wonder where religious communities stand. A critical number of religious leaders rallying against vaccination often dominate the narrative, while other voices receive less attention.

A new study from University of Notre Dame sociologist Kraig Beyerlein has found that the relationship between religion and reluctance or acceptance of the vaccine is more complicated than it looks.

Beyerlein, associate professor and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, found that 30% of followers of major Christian traditions in the United States had only heard encouraging messages about vaccination from religious leaders or colleagues. Another third heard both encouraging and discouraging messages, and 32% heard no messages.

Notably, only 5 percent of American worshipers have received only discouraging messages about vaccination from their faith communities.

Even more surprisingly, Beyerlein said, the percentage of American worshipers hearing only discouraging messages was equally low among Democrats, Republicans and Independents – and was by far the lowest proportion in any major religious tradition. Only 6 percent of evangelical Protestants, as well as 5 percent of Republicans in congregations, have heard only discouraging messages.

“Given the political polarization of much of American society, I expected to see very high rates of uniform congregation-based immunization messages, but we found that to be not the case.” , Beyerlein said. “And when uniform messages on COVID-19 vaccination were communicated within circles of congregations, the vast majority of them encouraged it. I did not expect such a low exclusive rate of discouragement.

At the end of May, Beyerlein and her co-authors Jason Klocek, former postdoctoral researcher at CSRS and assistant professor at the University of Nottingham, and Grace Scartz, undergraduate research assistant at CSRS, conducted a representative survey of 2,500 adults. Americans on how religion beliefs and behaviors relate to views on mask wearing and vaccination.

While political parties generally did not single out worshipers who heard disheartening messages about vaccination, there were patterns in the data that confirmed the popular perception of conservative and progressive divisions about the COVID vaccination. -19.

About 70 percent of Democrats in congregations have heard some level of encouragement to get vaccinated from their religious leaders or fellow members, while not even half of Republicans and Independents have heard a message. similar. Mainline and black Protestants were also much more likely to receive exclusively encouraging vaccination messages from their ties to the congregation, compared to evangelical Protestants.

These findings are particularly important, Beyerlein said, because faith communities across the United States have a huge collective pool of participants – and the potential to tip the scales in favor of immunization.

Of the 30 percent of worshipers who only heard messages promoting COVID-19 vaccination in their faith community, nearly 90 percent were or wanted to be vaccinated at the time of the survey. In contrast, 40 percent of adults who heard no messages and 49 percent of adults who received discouraging messages exclusively refused to be vaccinated.

While some of these findings may be explained by the choice of worshipers from communities with similar religious and political views, they also underline the potential power of the types of messages communicated in networks of congregations, Beyerlein said.

“Almost 80 million American adults attend church services in congregations each week. No other type of volunteer organization in the United States has the capacity to have such a significant impact on vaccine uptake, ”he said. “If more of these networks offered uniformly encouraging messages, we would likely see a dramatic increase in immunization rates across the country.

“Given the nature of COVID-19, this would benefit people inside and outside congregations. The messages communicated in faith communities are of concern to all of us.