Regarding Religious Exemptions for COVID Vaccines

From the Office of the General Counsel:

“Over the last couple of days I've dived deeper into this ethical issue of whether Christians should receive COVID-19 vaccines. The underlying concern is that some of the available and developing vaccines were derived from cell lines of aborted fetuses.

As you might expect, the Christian community is somewhat split with a definite lean by ethical experts to take the vaccine. For example, both the pro-life Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and the Catholic Church consider taking the vaccines morally permissible, even if fetal cell lines were used in production.

The good news is that the two most common vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer, do not use fetal cell lines in production. Both have used the cell lines in the testing process. The Lozier Institute provides a chart with updated information about available vaccines. I found this Christianity Today article to be the most helpful source to understand the issues.

The C&MA has not taken a position on this issue.

For those who wish to claim a religious exemption, my recommendation is to rely on the C&MA Statement on Sanctity of Human Life.”