Overview

How vaccine hesitancy can be understood as religious expression Vaccine hesitancy in America didn't begin with the uproar over the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw resistance to a wide variety of vaccines. In Unvaccinated Under God, Kira Ganga Kieffer shows that debates over vaccine safety and mandatory vaccination were about more than diseases or injections. They have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality. Kieffer argues that vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression-not as the product of scientific misinformation. Through a series of historical case studies, which range from the ""mother warriors"" who claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism during the 1990s to opposition to masking and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kieffer frames vaccination controversies as contests over religious freedom and moral authority. These debates concerned bodily, spiritual, and sexual purity; the morality of state-mandated medical risk; the importance of children; and the authority of parents and doctors. Kieffer explains that diverse groups of Americans utilized religious ideals and practices to question or resist vaccination. With this new, illuminating perspective on vaccine hesitancy, Kieffer offers a novel and even-handed way to understand Americans' changing and increasingly divided attitudes toward biomedical knowledge and technology. Her account offers readers an accessible set of tools for how to ""think with religion"" when it comes to contemporary contests over medical authority.

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Reviews

""Although critics often dismiss dissenters as scientifically illiterate, she argues that vaccine hesitancy isn’t a lack of education—it’s a religious matter rooted in existential concerns about justice and morality. No major world religion prohibits vaccines, but claiming a religious exemption became nearly the only legal pathway for refusal. This trend was fueled by a deep-seated distrust of a racist and sexist medical establishment, consumer emancipation, and political polarization. Winning back trust requires listening, which Kieffer excels at. . . . Increasing public health officials’ religious literacy should help us see each other more clearly and completely. A deeply sensitive and nuanced probe."" * Kirkus Reviews *

Author Information

Kira Ganga Kieffer is visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Fairfield University.

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