David French Says There’s No Basis For Religious Exemptions to Vaccines: ‘There is Not a Theological Opposition to Vaccination’

David French weighed in on opposition to the Covid-19 vaccines in a recent appearance on Mediaite podcast The Interview, telling our editor-in-chief Aidan McLaughlin that there was no basis for claiming a religious exemption to these vaccinations under “all of the major streams” of Christianity.

French, a constitutional law attorney and senior editor at The Dispatch, spent years representing clients in religious liberty and free speech cases, working with organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). His writing in recent years has frequently focused on issues facing evangelical Christians, such as how religious conservatives grapple with secular political activism — specifically the influence of former President Donald Trump, who still enjoys high popularity among evangelicals despite his, shall we say, exuberant noncompliance with large swaths of the Ten Commandments.

McLaughlin asked French what he thought was driving the “concerning trend” of evangelical opposition to the Covid-19 vaccines. French replied that the root of this went back “months and months,” and he noted that in one sense, “it doesn’t make much sense at all,” considering how Operation Warp Speed during the Trump administration had been a big part of getting the vaccines developed and approved “in lightning fast time.”

French lamented the quick expiration of the “rally around the flag” unity America experienced during crises like the pandemic. What ended up happening, he explained, was that “blue America began to overestimate the danger of the virus and red America began to underestimate the danger of the virus.” That led to some of the opposition to masking and social distancing requirements, and then later vaccine hesitancy and opposition in red America, and a corresponding overcautious reaction in blue America, with extended school closures and people continuing to wear masks outside long after it was known that the risk of Covid-19 transmission was very low outdoors.

Post-vaccine, French continued, there were some people whose risk assessment was that the virus really wasn’t a big deal and they were more afraid of the vaccine. This was a “fatal calculation for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Americans,” said French, “and one of the great unfolding tragedies of our time.”

Many of those who were opposing getting vaccinated, McLaughlin said, were claiming some sort of religious exemption, asking French if he thought there was a valid religious basis to exemptions from vaccine mandates.

“No, not at all,” French replied. He explained:

Now there might be some people who adhere to fringe sects that have a demonstrated, openly understood theology that shuns modern medicine. But if you’re talking about the Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church or the Episcopal Church or the Presbyterian Church, or all of the major streams of nondenominational Christianity, there is not a theological opposition to vaccination. It doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t exist.

Now, that does not mean that there are a lot of Christians who sincerely don’t want to take the vaccine, or that they sincerely sort of have created their own kind of private religious justification for not taking the vaccine. But what they’ve done, many of them quite sincerely, is they’ve kind of made up a subcategory or a sub-theology within the larger theology of their faith.

However, he continued, “the interesting thing about the Constitution, is the Constitution actually says you can do that.” A “sincerely held religious belief,” he explained, did not require you to show that your belief is consistent with what the Vatican says or what the broader Baptist Church, for example, teaches. The Constitution protects “an extremely wide category of religious expression,” so even though these people had “forsaken the traditional teachings on vaccines,” they might be able to claim an exemption.

Read McLaughlin’s writeup of his conversation with French here, download the episode here, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (the relevant section regarding religious opposition to vaccines begins around the 33 minute mark).