Enlist More Religious Leaders as Persuaders on Vaccinations - Horowitz

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

While the combination of increased mandates, persistent and targeted persuasion efforts, and the spread of the Delta variant have contributed to increasing the vaccination rate to more than 7-out-of-10 American adults, nearly 70 million Americans who are eligible to be vaccinated remain unvaccinated.

Continuing to lower the number of Americans currently eligible for the vaccine who remain unvaccinated and getting a high percentage of the 28 million children between age 5 and 11 vaccinated, once vaccines are approved for that age range, is essential to further curbing the virus and narrowing the odds of new and stronger variants emerging. Toward that end, enlisting more religious leaders in making the case for vaccinations directly to their congregants could pay major dividends, according to a new Pew Research Group national survey.

Congregants -- defined as people who say they attend religious services at least monthly or who indicated they have attended religious services in the past month -- by and large trust the religious leader of their congregation to give good advice on whether or not to get the vaccine, Pew found. “Fully six-in-ten U.S. congregants (61%) say they have at least “a fair amount” of confidence in their religious leaders to provide reliable guidance about getting a vaccine,” wrote Pew Research Group in its summary of the poll results.  “This figure is virtually identical to the share who express confidence in public health officials, such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to give reliable guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations (60%).”

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In fact, congregants trust their clergy more on questions surrounding the vaccine than “state elected officials, local elected officials or news media,” reported Pew. Of the categories, Pew tested, only doctors were more trusted than religious leaders on this issue.

Further, by a 7-to-1 ratio,  for worshippers who have heard their member of the clergy provide a recommendation on the vaccine, it is to get vaccinated.  Fifty-four percent of congregants and 73% of evangelical churchgoers, however, “say their clergy have not said much about COVID-19 vaccinations either way.”   One group of clergy that is the exception to this pattern are pastors practicing in the historically Black Protestant tradition: 64% of their congregants “say their pastors have encouraged people to get a vaccine." This is one of the key reasons for the success in overcoming vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans, whose vaccination rates now match and may soon exceed Whites.

With more than 6-in-10 congregants now back to attending religious services in person and with that number likely to continue moving upward over the next several months, there is a ripe opportunity to enlist more religious leaders in actively encouraging their own congregants to get vaccinated.  A special effort should be made to recruit evangelical pastors.   Their congregants' vaccination rates significantly lag the rest of the nation.  And only about 1-in-5 evangelical congregants have been encouraged to take the vaccine by their pastor. 

Enlisting more clergy overall and re-doubling efforts to reach out to evangelical pastors can pay off in getting more of us vaccinated. This will curb the spread of COVID-19, saving lives, reducing hospitalizations, and keeping our return to normalcy on track.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

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