by Maggie Thorp JD and Jim Thorp MD, America Outloud:
What if I told you powerful U.S. government officials – such as former NIH Director Francis Collins and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy – used religion in an attempt to convince faith leaders around the country to push the COVID-19 injections? A deep dive into the organization Faiths4Vaccines – a founding member of the HHS’ vaccine-propaganda machine COVID-19 Community Corps1 – has revealed just that.
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That the HHS was tapping faith leaders in the spring of 2021 to push the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines was not a surprise. We uncovered this in our previous article that we broke on the COVID-19 Community Corps at the end of 2022.2 But what did surprise us as we dug deeper for this article was the extent to which faith leaders were pursued to push the COVID-19 vaccines and the inappropriate – if not unconstitutional – manner in which government officials persuaded these faith leaders to push the shots.
With 86 founding members, the “faith leaders” category of the COVID-19 Community Corps was the most numerous.3 These founding members included both individual faith leaders and faith organizations from a variety of religions – including the American Baptist Church, Catholic Charities USA, the Episcopal Church, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and the New York Jewish Agenda, just to name a few.4
Not surprisingly, many faith organizations received federal money during the pandemic. For example, an entity called “American Baptist Churches in the USA” reportedly received $1.5 million in COVID-19 relief bailout money – in the form of two forgivable “loans” that spanned 2020 and 2021.5 In their defense, the country was shut down for much of 2020, which left faith organizations, some of whom rely on member donations to pay day-to-day costs, facing financial disaster.
Faith Leaders’ Positions of “Trust” Exploited
In our opinion, however, it wasn’t financial incentives that ultimately convinced faith leaders to push the COVID-19 vaccines on their members. Instead, it was a strategy that baselessly appealed to faith leaders’ deeply held moral and religious beliefs – targeting their virtues instead of their vices – and which shamelessly relied on religious doctrine and a pro-vaccine “theological” interpretation to support pushing the shots.
For example, at a May 2021 national summit for faith leaders, NIH Director Francis Collins – referred to as “Reverend-Doctor” – would address hundreds of faith leaders across the nation, claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines were God’s literal “answer to prayer” and urging faith leaders to believe that pushing the shots was a “love your neighbor moment.”6 In what was a sermon-like address tailored to appeal to these faith leaders, Collins admonished them not to believe “conspiracy theories” about “possible side effects” – which Collins falsely said were untrue.7
In the spring of 2021, when COVID-19 vaccine uptake had leveled off, faith leaders seemed to be the Biden administration’s answer to getting hesitant Americans vaccinated. The reason? Faith leaders had vast untapped potential to convince vaccine-hesitant Americans to take the shots – particularly if they could be persuaded that COVID-19 vaccination was a moral obligation owed to others. Like healthcare providers (which we recently wrote about),8 faith leaders were “trusted” – but arguably much more so than one’s doctor. Faith leaders were associated with the divine. They were often connected to deeply personal, intimate, and even sacred moments in Americans’ lives – spiritual moments that involved life and death, great joy, and deep sorrow – such as baptisms, christenings, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals. As noted in one peer-reviewed article about the role faith leaders played in creating vaccine confidence, faith organizations were able to penetrate people’s vaccine hesitation in “hyperlocal” ways.9 Moreover, religion in the U.S. is widespread – Wikipedia reports that “An overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power, engage in spiritual practices, and consider themselves religious or spiritual.”10 Consider that the American Baptist Churches USA alone claims 1.3 million members and approximately 5,000 congregations, with 42 million Baptists globally.11
Faiths4Vaccines – A Disturbing Partnership with the Biden Administration
Looking back, it appears that governments began to tap faith leaders to push COVID-19 vaccinations as early as February 2021. That month, Washington’s Mayor announced a pilot initiative which was disturbingly called “Faith in the Vaccine” – a program in which DC Health would partner with Washington’s faith communities to try to get people vaccinated.”12 The government’s initiative to partner with faith organizations would eventually be pursued on a national level.
Meet Faiths4Vaccines – a founding member of the HHS COVID-19 Community Corps.13 On its website, Faiths4Vaccines describes itself as a “multi-faith group of local and national religious leaders” seeking “to increase opportunities for faith-based institutions, particularly houses of worship, to engage and support the United States government in its efforts to increase vaccination rates” and combat “vaccine hesitancy.”14 Faiths4Vaccines’ top shared goal is shocking – it strives to “Demonstrate religious communities’ trust in the vaccine.”15
According to a peer-reviewed study that assessed the impact of faith organizations on COVID-19 vaccination uptake, Faiths4Vaccines includes over 1000 faith leaders across the U.S.16 This study found that Faiths4Vaccines held 13 “bi-weekly roundtables” led by faith leaders who used their houses of worship as vaccination sites and had regular engagement with the White House, including the White House COVID-19 Task Force, as well as the CDC and HHS, as part of these bi-weekly calls.17 A spin-off initiative of Faiths4Vaccines – called Youth4Vaccines – pushed the COVID-19 vaccine among America’s youth18 and also held a roundtable “showcasing how youths of faith are leading in their communities within the COVID-19 vaccination efforts.”19
Faiths4Vaccines Holds a National Summit to Pressure Faith Leaders to Push COVID-19 Vaccines
The Faiths4Vaccines National Summit, which took place on May 26, 2021, was the largest religious summit of its kind to be held in the U.S. The summit included some 800 registered faith leaders, and also included public health and U.S. government officials.20 Its purpose? To increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake, reduce vaccine hesitancy, and foster utilizing “houses of worship” as vaccination sites.”21
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