Religious Exemptions | Posts | The Komorebi Effect

On Vaccine Mandates and Religious Exemptions

I came across the DD FORM 3177 posted at the bottom of this page. This is the form the U.S. military is using to process religious exemptions to the mandatory COVID-19 vaccines. I thought it might be interesting to have a go at filling this out. Now, I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice. If anyone wants to borrow language from this you are welcome to it, but there’s no telling how this argument will be received.

My intent here is really just to point out the absurdity of having to justify one’s religious belief to some bureaucrat. If the roles were reversed it’s hard to imagine the secular state ever even attempting to justify its underlying religious precepts. I presume that whoever devised this form expects most religious objections to be almost exclusively related to the use of fetal cells in the development and testing of these vaccines. They will then smugly point out that loads of common household products were developed the same way in order to demonstrate a perceived contradiction. I tried to come up with a more fundamental religious objection that’s also a little unexpected. Below is what I came up with:

Blocks 1 through 7: Asking for personal identifying information

Block 8: Please describe the religious belief, practice, or observance that is the basis for your request for a religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccination requirement.

My beliefs align with orthodox Christian teaching. Specifically, that God, the Absolute Being, spoke the world into existence and declared it good. Good implies fit for a purpose. In other words, the universe has one origin and one aim. All of Creation can be seen as iconography, as a sign, or collection of signs, pointing us to God. And God made man in His image. But something transpired that corrupted everything. It was not so much a transgression of rules, but rather above all it was the deviation of man’s love for God that resulted in his alienation. This ‘Fall’ explains the naturalness of human malevolence. But God did not leave man in this state of exile and confused longing. Man took the one thing that wasn’t offered as a gift and the Giver of all gifts responded with yet another gift, mercy. The author of the universe put on humanity and entered into the Story. The Word, or Logos, became Flesh to set things right. Just as life issues from death in other realms, e.g. seedtime and harvest, and morning and evening, through Christ life triumphs over death. Through Christ man returned to God. He has returned to God because he has loved him and found in him the only true object of love and life.

Block 9: Please describe when and how you came to hold the religious belief or observe the religious practice.

As a know-nothing teenager I determined that God was nothing but a delusion poisoning the weak-minded. I saw the Bible as a tool for coercion. I had in mind that religion was nothing but a crutch for the weak minded. I put aside childish fantasies of God for what I thought were more practical endeavors.

Later, as a young adult, I came to realize that the subversive message of Jesus was feared by despots all over the world, even by those within the institutional church, making the gospel an unlikely instrument for crowd control. I also realized that, far from being anti-intellectual, the scriptures were among the most critically examined texts of all time. Not only that, but they contained hundreds of objectively verifiable predictions about a distant future that ultimately played out just as they said.¹ My cynicism began to thaw. Was God calling His shots? I found not proof, but plausibility. And I was haunted by several thoughts… What if we are prefigured, known, and even loved by creator God? Doubts remained, but I found myself revisiting scripture and considering the claims of Christ.

I started to cede authority over my life and eventually, with empty hands, I accepted His terms for grace one January evening sitting alone on a stone ledge overlooking the soccer pitch on campus. Prior to that moment I lived as if I were the autonomous ruler of myself, able to define right and wrong according to whatever I considered just. Now I accepted that I was created and sustained by a holy and just God who declares on matters of right and wrong. I would come to learn that faith isn’t a once-done act. Spiritual growth isn’t marked by steady ascent. Instead it comes in a series of advances and retreats. Nonetheless, in Him the life I had lost was restored. The Life that was returned to me is now offered again as sacrament and communion to illuminate meaning and mission in the world.

Block 10: Please describe how you have demonstrated the religious belief or observed the religious practices in the past.

Life is a gift. No one writes the terms for their own existence. We are all participants in a life that was given to us. God gifted the world and all that is in it to us. We were made to be gift givers in his image. And so I bear God’s image through cultivation and creative expression. My existence, and my salvation, is for the life of the world. Recognizing my true nature as a gift giver, I orient myself outward towards others. Recognizing that I was made for another, I orient myself towards a spouse. Together we dare to love, giving ourselves up for the other as Christ gave Himself up for each of us. And in biological unity, we orient ourselves outward toward children. As a family, we orient ourselves outward toward our community. Through family our character is formed and then offered to the world. And in doing this we are tending the soil that is the foundation of all society. We’re saying ‘Yes’ to the Creator of the world.

My occupation is another expression of this. I conduct research. Research is fundamentally a search for truth. Truth seeking, in any form, is implicitly a search for God. The knowledge we gain translates into abundance. Knowledge helps us do more. But more importantly, it helps us be more. And that knowledge becomes wisdom when it recognizes the Creator.

Finally, the Church is the passageway through which we meet Christ and His Kingdom. Remembering that God is all and in all, worship must always, and only, be directed at glorifying God. We do this, in part, by participation in the liturgy and sacraments like the Eucharist. Further, I was baptized as an infant. I was confirmed into the church sometime in middle school. I’ve been involved in a network of house churches. I teach and write from a Christian perspective. And I have a history of tithing and supporting Christian missions.

Block 11: Please explain how the COVID-19 vaccines conflict with your religious belief, practice, or observance.

In the Christian tradition man is understood as having received an essential nature. That nature involves a unity of form and content. A person is body and spirit indivisible. It’s a whole from which the content cannot be subtracted from its form and be left with anything resembling what it was. We are not merely matter. Our body is animated and energized with something other than matter. Whatever we call this non-material thing, when it is subtracted we are left not with a person but with a corpse.

The human body (form) cloaks and reveals a human person (content). Entering without admittance, taking what wasn’t given, exposing what wasn’t revealed is both an assault on the body (form) and a desecration of the person (content). This is why Christians are not permitted to participate in rape under any circumstances. Rape is not wrong just because it’s illegal. We make it illegal because rape is incongruent with our given nature. Thanks to Christianity rape is no longer condoned as a military tactic. That was not the case for most of human history.

As with sex, informed consent is a bedrock principle in medicine according to the American Medical Association. The lessons from Nuremberg provide even more clarity to this. And we know from our sexual harassment training that consent cannot exist if it’s a condition for employment or advancement, or to prevent an adverse action (e.g., termination). Thus the vaccination requirement set forth in Executive Order 14043 eliminated the possibility of consenting to the COVID-19 vaccine through the explicit threat of an adverse employment action. Without consent, the penetration of my body is an assault not just on my body (form) but also a defiling of my person (content). This is the negation of human dignity under the guise of medical progress.

Block 12.a: Have you previously raised an objection to a vaccination, medical treatment, or medicine based on a religious belief or practice.

Block 12.b: If Yes, please provide a description of the circumstances, timing, and resolution of the matter.

Not applicable

Block 12.c: If No, please provide an explanation as to why your objection is limited to the particular COVID-19 vaccines.

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate represents the first instance in which consent was denied to me on matters related to my health. So naturally this is the first time I’ve felt the need to object. I am confident that my position is 100% consonant with my strenuous objection to anyone who violates another person. Rather, it is those who insist on consent in matters of sex but are willing to disregard consent in matters of medicine who are being inconsistent.

Block 13: Please provide any additional information that may be helpful in resolving your request for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccination requirement. You may submit additional documentation in support of this request to your supervisor along with this form.

Let it be known that I find this form objectionable and deeply flawed. There are a priori assumptions in this line of questioning that are rooted in a secular religion. Secularism is itself a religion. As the late Father Schmemann explained, secularism is a religion for those who are tired of having the world explained in terms of anther world, one which no one knows anything about. The only world the secularist knows is this world and the only life given to them is this life and so it is up to them to make life as meaningful, as rich, and as happy as possible. The core tenet of this faith is that “life ends with death.” It treats other religious beliefs as merely personal preferences instead of what they actually are; claims about the nature of reality. As such, belief is now seen as just one option among many and thus contestable. This is a rather odd and non-falsifiable eschatology that sees itself in sole possession of the truth and sees other religions, at best, as coping mechanisms. This is the same blind dogmatic faith that caused the American military to misjudge the sincerity and resolve of the Taliban leading directly to defeat and disgrace in Afghanistan.

In a profound sense, Christ brought an end to all religion. Religion is only necessary when there is a wall separating God and man. Christ, who is both God and man, dismantled this wall. The Church looks out and surveys the fallen world and is astonished by this strangely bifurcated world divided into the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material,’ the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane,’ the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular.’ It’s a world that is as incomprehensible as this vaccination policy.