Faith, Freedom, Fear: Rural America's COVID Vaccine Skeptics

Rev. Guy Richardson leads a Sunday service at the Old Fashion Gospel House in Bulls Gap, Tenn., April 11, 2021. The question, a friendly greeting to Betty Smith, the pastor’s wife, lingered in the air as the four church women sat down for their regular Tuesday coffee and conversation at Ingles Market.

Communities like Greeneville and its surroundings — rural, overwhelmingly Republican, deeply Christian, 95% white — are on the radar of President Joe Biden and American health officials as efforts to vaccinate most of the U.S. population enters a critical phase. These are the places where polls show resistance to the vaccine is most entrenched.

COVID smacked the region hard this winter. Eleven people in Jim and Rita Fletcher’s extended circle died from it.What is the point, they ask? The government still wants you to wear a mask indoors. “I just don’t see any benefits,” said Rita Fletcher, as the couple waited to see their family doctor. Before going to the doctor, many people phone Cross. Or after the doctor’s medicines do not seem to be working.

“That doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “Trump brought the vaccine in.” If this was about political affiliation, he continued, “you’d jump and take it!” Instead, he said, people think the vaccine is too entwined with politics. That view is bolstered by a religious, near-joyous fatalism. People say that if they have not caught COVID a year into the pandemic, they will take their chances. True, they might get COVID and die. But either way, a win-win: longer life on Earth or, for the faithful, eternal life in Heaven.

“A lot of times I have to temper my opinions in order to fit in,” Hayes said, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m walking a line between people refusing to socialize with me or not.” Daniel Shrader, who leads a small Baptist congregation, is all-in on the vaccine. He wants church to be safe for the older, hard-of-hearing ladies to whom he has been preaching during the pandemic by shouting from their porch steps.The pastors’ perspectives run the gamut. Smucker, the Mennonite pastor, believes that natural herd immunity — let the disease run its course — is a better path than vaccination. But he will not preach about it.

Lewis, 43, remained hospitalized for more than a month. He was so gravely ill that he recorded farewell messages for his five children.

The only thing I see yahoo news is making sure Trump is elected again, The only thing is only about young Blacks being killed or arrest Yahoo have very little to promote people of color, so I know who is writing these stories, and it not people that look like me

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