A lesson from history the shows faith need not be at loggerheads with medical science

Before looking at the question of whether religion is pro- or anti-vaccine let’s step back, what are the arguments in favour of vaccination? First to protect yourself, there is an abundance of evidence that the likelihood of hospitalisation or death become much higher if you are unvaccinated. Second, to help others. Vaccination reduces the likelihood that you will spread the virus to other people.

Some Christians have argued that the development of the vaccines involved testing on material taken from aborted babies. For such believers opposition to the vaccine therefore follows from their opposition to abortion. In fact, for most of the vaccines there is no connection to foetal material.

Admittedly, the AstraZeneca was tested on cell-line which derives ultimately from a baby aborted in 1973. Even in that case, the medical ethicist Dr John Wyatt argues the gap between the abortion and the recent research is sufficiently large that, given that we live in an imperfect world, an opponent of abortion could still in good conscience take the vaccine.

My main point is that we have been here before, there are good lessons which can be learnt from history in terms of faith and vaccines. Three hundred years ago there was the beginnings of inoculation against smallpox in America and Britain. There was much opposition to such inoculation which involved taking some smallpox scab and rubbing it into a wound, but one of the leading campaigners in favour of inoculation was the cleric Cotton Mather, who lived from 1663 to 1728.

Mather was a complex figure. Sadly, if he is remembered at all today it is often only for his supposed role in provoking the frenzy which led to the Salem witch trials. He was a clergyman in Boston Massachusetts, a Congregationalist and indeed a Puritan. He believed the Bible was the utterly inspired and totally reliable Word of God.

Eighteenth century Boston was afflicted by repeated outbreaks of smallpox. In 1721-22 there were 6,000 cases in the city out of a population of 11,000 and 850 died.

Mather had learned about inoculation through his household slave Onesimus (this would be consistent with the evidence that inoculation was practiced in other parts of the world long before it came to the West). He took his enthusiasm for inoculation so far that he began to collect figures to show how many people died from smallpox either with and without inoculation. The death rates were 2% and 14.9% respectively. This may have been one of the first medical trials in history.

Three hundred years ago, as today, there was widespread resistance to the medical intervention.

Ironically, some of the fiercest opposition came from some (though not all) of the doctors living in Boston. Such opposition may have derived from a perception that the relatively new procedure of inoculation was risky and, to be fair, it did have risks (another great American preacher Jonathan Edwards would die shortly after taking the smallpox inoculation in 1758 although it is unclear if the inoculation itself killed him).

The young Benjamin Franklin published pamphlets against inoculation. In later life he would change his opinion. And some of the opposition was religious, with inoculation being deemed as contrary to the will of God. Mather may not have suffered vilification in social media, but at one point a bomb was thrown into his house. The following note was attached: “Cotton Mather, you dog, damn you! I’ll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you”.

What lessons then can we learn from Mather?

First, inoculation (and hence vaccination to an even greater extent) works: Mather’s own data and later figures confirmed that smallpox death rates fell progressively in Boston during 1700-1800. Second, strong opposition is to be expected. Third, whilst some of that opposition derived from people of faith, Mather demonstrates there is no necessary conflict between faith and good medical practice or, ultimately, between science and Christianity.

Dr Esmond Birnie is senior economist at Ulster University