The intense effort to convince and compel Americans to take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots has been a dire threat to liberty. One of the manifestations of this effort has been mandates imposed by President Joe Biden requiring many millions of Americans to take the shots in order to keep their jobs or be hired for new jobs with either government or private employers. State and local governments, as well as government-funded educational institutions, have also pursued efforts, including shots or no job mandates, to push individuals to take the shots.
Exerting a religious exemption in many cases has been the only means employees can exercise to protect themselves against a shots mandate.
New poll results from the Pew Research Center regarding Americans’ views concerning people claiming religious objection to employers’ shots requirements provide reason for hope for liberty in America. The poll results show a comfortable majority support for such exemption requests being honored. Further, the poll results indicate that this supportive view is shared by even the majority of those polled individuals who tend to disbelieve people’s claims of religious objection. It takes a stronger conviction to support people’s liberty to take action upon which you look askance. And it is this stronger conviction that is needed to preserve or regain respect for liberty.
Sixty-seven percent of polled individuals expressed their agreement with the statement that “Most people with religious objections are just using religion as an excuse to avoid the vaccine.” This is over twice the percentage of people — 31 percent — who agreed with the alternative statement offered in the poll that “Most people with religious objections sincerely believe getting a COVID-19 vaccine is against their religion.”
Given those results, you might expect that polled individuals, by around the same percentage breakdown, would have sided in favor of employers with vaccine mandates rejecting religious exemptions asserted by employees seeking not to be fired. But, that did not happen. Instead, the numbers came out just about flipped. Only 32 percent of polled individuals answered that “Employers with vaccine requirements should require employees who have religious objections to get the vaccines just like other employees, if they want to keep their jobs.” Sixty-five percent of polled individuals instead chose the pro-liberty answer: “Employers should allow employees who have religious objections to keep their jobs even if they decline to get the vaccine.”
About nine out of ten individuals who said they believe most people asserting religious objection do so sincerely sided against employees asserting the objection being fired for refusal to take the shots. But that only delivers around 27 percent in favor of liberty. The remaining, and larger, portion of support comes from a substantial majority of the 67 percent of polled people who said most people asserting religious exemption are “just using religion as an excuse.”
You can read here a Thursday Pew Research Center report that addresses more details of the poll results, including the finding of only 29 percent support for employers requiring employees to take coronavirus shots.
