Vaccine Religious Exemption Letter

People, both here in the UK and abroad, are beginning to reach out to me for help to explain to their employers, university administrators, etc, why they as Christians cannot in good conscience receive abortion-tainted vaccines.

Here is a letter template that I hope will be helpful - please feel free to copy and paste as required. No need to cite me.

To whomever it may concern,

As director of Brephos, the Church project of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK, I am writing to confirm that the conscientious refusal of any medication that has made of use of fetal cell lines in its development and/or testing is a sincerely held Christian conviction that deserves to be respected by any nation or institution that wishes to be seen as tolerant or respectful of religious liberty.

To coerce or expel those who wish to conscientiously refuse is, in religious terms, comparable to pressurising Jews to eat pork or Sikhs to shave their hair.

By way of explanation, in the case of most of the globally available Covid-19 vaccines, the fetal cell line “HEK 293” has been used – “HEK” standing for “Human Embryonic Kidney”. The kidney in question belonged to a Dutch baby girl who was aborted in the 1970s. Her kidney was harvested and a cell line was cultured. This cell line was used to develop and/or test most of the available Covid-19 vaccines available around the world today.

Christian opposition to abortion is well known – life begins at conception (Psalm 51:5), and therefore abortion is prohibited under the Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13). Organ harvesting from babies (which continues around the world today, and often begins torturously whilst babies are still alive) is similarly abhorrent to the Christian conscience. To accept vaccines that depend on the fruit of organ harvesting from babies is to benefit from, normalise, encourage, and perpetuate the practice, and the culture of abortion on which it depends.

Many sincere Christians conclude therefore that they cannot receive a vaccine that has been produced in such an unethical way. They have strong grounds in Scripture for their conviction: there is ample biblical example and instruction against close contact with or benefit from things that are morally or spiritually compromised, or that treat lightly human life.

- King David refused (2 Samuel 23:15-17) to drink water that was acquired at reckless risk to the lives of his own men:

But he would not drink of it. He poured it out to the Lord and said, "Far be it from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went at the risk of their lives?"

- Daniel and his friends (Daniel 1:8-14) refused the Babylonian king’s food as it violated their religion, even though it put their own health and lives at risk and that of their steward.

- Ephesians 5:11 teaches much more than mere personal abstinence from direct acts of evil:

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.

- Leviticus 20:1-5 goes beyond mere prohibition of child sacrifice: actually preventing others from sacrificing children is commanded, laying down the principle of positive intervention to effectively oppose evil and prevent it. Tolerating evil is out of the question: how much more benefiting from it.

According to the highest authority within the Christian faith – the Bible – refusal of vaccines that have come to market with the help of organ harvesting from human babies is a serious and well-grounded Christian conviction. For the Christian believer, who is conscience-bound before God, such a conviction is not merely ancillary to their faith, but an integral part of it.

Yours faithfully,

Dave Brennan