Why Christians can keep faith in vaccines
The Trump administration just had the opportunity to dramatically curtail childhood vaccinations — and it didn't.
The recent CDC announcement reorganizing the immunization schedule moves some vaccines to optional categories but removes nothing entirely — all remain available and covered by insurance — while keeping vaccines for measles, chickenpox, polio, and other serious diseases recommended for all children.
That's good news, and Christians should see it that way. Vaccines save lives.
I still remember the pink calamine lotion covering my skin, the unbearable itching, and my mother’s constant refrain: “Don’t scratch!” When chickenpox swept through my South Carolina elementary school, infection seemed inevitable — and it was. As a devout Christian kid, I was convinced I’d contracted leprosy!
Getting chicken pox was a traumatizing experience for millions of children every single year, while causing thousands to be hospitalized, and some kids died. All that changed about 30 years ago when a miracle of modern medicine reduced the annual cases by 97%, also saving tens-of-billions of dollars in healthcare costs for families.
What was that miracle? It was a vaccine.
Before 1980, measles, whooping cough, polio, and other infections killed thousands of U.S. children each year. Since the early 1990s, vaccinations have wiped out many of these conditions, preventing more than 32 million hospitalizations and saving more than a million American lives (saving generations).
This success story, however, has been complicated by institutional failures that eroded trust.
The erosion of trust didn’t happen overnight. Questions about vaccine safety, rising chronic disease rates, and healthcare costs were perceived too often as being met with dismissal rather than dialogue. Meanwhile, many of our universities discouraged viewpoint diversity and sometimes became overtly political.
The pandemic should have been a unifying moment — the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed was a genuine achievement. Instead, demands for compliance without transparency deepened the divide, and heavy-handed restrictions on religious communities left lasting wounds.
Persistent questions deserve answers. Drug makers deserve appreciation and accountability. Religious Americans are entitled to religious freedom. Everything doesn’t have to be political.
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has criticized the hubris of the expert class and the institutions they lead — sometimes fairly, sometimes recklessly, and often in ways that have contributed to public confusion. But today, on one crucial point, he emphatically agrees with the medical establishment he challenges: vaccines work. Take measles, where in April he has said plainly, “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”
That fact, however, would be a surprise to some Americans whose views of vaccines as a whole are unnecessarily and dangerously declining.
Measles is not a harmless childhood inconvenience. Measles is a disease where approximately 1 in 1000 children die if they contract it. In some rare cases, a child can seem to recover and fall ill years later, having also contracted a rare and fatal complication called SSPE. Yet declines in measles vaccination are one reason why the United States is on the brink of losing its “measles free” designation for the first time in over 25 years. Outbreaks in many states have spread, with concentrations in South Carolina, Utah, and Arizona. In addition to human lives, each outbreak costs the economy meaningfully, with each case costing between $16,000 and $43,000 for treatment and response. Measles vaccination rates are below targets presently in 39 states.
Childhood vaccines have not only saved lives and improved lives, but they also resulted in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion dollars since 1994.
This level of healthcare skepticism is not normal for Christians, historically.
Christians established the first hospitals in the Byzantine Empire, Catholic orders created vast hospital networks across Europe and America, Protestant missionaries built medical infrastructure throughout Africa, the Middle East, and in Asia. These innovations emerged from theological commitments to healing and serving the vulnerable — commitments that extended even to controversial medical interventions. Notably, Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister in colonial Boston, championed smallpox inoculation in the 1720s despite fierce opposition at the time, eventually saving countless lives.
A Christian perspective on vaccination holds two truths: there’s no general doctrinal objection, and individual religious exemptions should be respected without being superimposed on others.
My grandmother contracted polio as a child in rural western North Carolina. She and my grandfather — a country pastor — had little but faith in God and love for America. Life was hard, made harder when they lost a 9-year-old son to diabetes. Because of polio and that loss, they were always grateful for modern medicine.
When I visited, I saw polio’s legacy: Grandma hopped on one good leg throughout their mobile home, wearing cheap flat shoes sewn with extra-long laces tied up her calf — tied so tight they left permanent impressions in her leg.
She never complained or asked for help, but I’m sure she wished she’d been born when a simple treatment could have prevented her disability.
Such was the terrifying reality for many Americans until a few generations ago. I think my grandma would offer us some old-fashioned advice today: thank God you have the choice to be vaccinated at all, thank God for modern medicine’s brilliance, and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Or to quote the Bible’s paragon of wisdom, King Solomon, “It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other — whoever fears God will avoid all extremes” (Ecclesiastes 7:18).
Reverend Johnnie Moore, PhD is a SNF Agora Institute fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a vice chancellor at Pepperdine University.
