Recent data from a rigorous survey that IFYC conducted with PRRI indicates that this type of engagement is precisely what’s needed now. Some 26% of all vaccine hesitant Americans say that faith-based approaches, such as attending an information session held in a church or hearing that a fellow congregant received the vaccine, would motivate them to consider receiving it themselves.
That number jumps to 33% for vaccine hesitant African American and Hispanic Protestants, and to nearly 50% for vaccine hesitant white evangelicals who attend church regularly.
This is the type of relational engagement that IFYC and all of our partners and ambassadors will be doing as part of the White House’s Month of Action. But for us the work will go beyond this coming month. We will continue until the end of the summer, when we hope we have reached a point where the people in our country, especially the most vulnerable, are protected against the virus that has caused such profound sorrow and loss.
In moments of great adversity, our country can come together. People of all different religious traditions and worldviews can work across our differences for the common good. Please consider this your invitation to join us and the wider Month of Action.
Here are four things you can do this month, no matter what faith or no faith tradition you are a part of:
At the conclusion of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1893, Charles Bonney proclaimed, “From now on, the great religions of the world will make war no longer on each other, and instead on the giant ills that afflict humankind.” The Biden-Harris Month of Action is an opportunity for people of all faiths to come together and stand up against the great ill that has afflicted our nation for the past 18 months.
As Biden said in his launch speech, “We know it for a fact — Americans can do anything when we do it together.”
(Eboo Patel is president of Interfaith Youth Core. Mary Ellen Giess is IFYC’s vice president for strategic initiatives, and Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is senior adviser for public affairs. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
This article originally appeared here.
