*5.2. Identity-Constituting Religious Adherents and Derived Affirmations of Faith*

A second sort of religious justification proffered by ones who want to step outside of ethico-epistemic standards in pluralistic settings is more cultural than theological. Van Leeuwen distinguishes "epistemic confidence" from "identity centrality" (Van Leeuwen 2022, p. 2). *Epistemic confidence* refers to "[T]he degree to which someone feels a belief state approximates knowledge," while *identity centrality* refers to "{T}he degree to which someone experiences a belief state as part of their social identity" (ibid). Social identity is defined as a "cluster of psychological states and behavioral dispositions that constitute someone as a member of an actual or potential in-group, or that an individual uses to achieve a desired social position" (ibid). This view correlates with Grabenstein's aforementioned reference to religious culture, which signals the potential for variation in the expression of religious belief. Van Leeuwen posits that the majority of those who identify as religious understand this association in terms of the "identity-centrality" category. This observation is supported by documented incongruities between the professed theological or doctrinal religious beliefs and actual behavior in a given religious group. For example, recent empirical social science research has revealed that followers from well-known religions are more likely to act according to religious tenets when such behavior is cued by a likeminded community's expressions rather than by deeply held personal religious convictions. One concrete example that illustrates this is the "Sunday Effect": Christians are more likely to engage in altruistic behavior on Sundays than other days (Malhotra 2010).

How does recent research on vaccine acceptance or vaccine hesitancy or refusal among these sorts of individuals and communities support or undercut the theoretical claims regarding the identity-constituting paradigm advanced by Van Leeuwen? For example, if a particular religion's doctrine—or even culture—eschews vaccination, is it also the case that a member who might wish to vaccinate defer vaccination for fear of ostracism or some other social penalty? With some notable exceptions, few religious groups in the United States prohibit COVID-19 vaccination among their adherents as a matter of policy. However, research conducted among religious communities that do not explicitly reject vaccines for their members has revealed individual members of these communities who are vaccine hesitant and who may individually attribute a posture of vaccine rejection to specific theological or doctrinal beliefs of their community. Grabenstein notices that "[i]n multiple cases, ostensibly religious reasons to decline immunization actually reflected concerns about vaccine safety or personal beliefs among a social network of people organized around a faith community, rather than theologically based objections per se" (Grabenstein 2013, p. 2011). In such situations, "identity-centrality" drives behaviors that may not even correspond to beliefs about a specific matter (e.g., whether to vaccinate). Instead, larger commitment to faith belief and its social penalties inform these choices.

It is possible to appreciate this complicated mechanism better if we examine the context in the US in which it is seen most consistently to play out and which has been the subject of significant research over the course of the pandemic. A preponderance of White evangelical Christians in the United States has been resistant to COVID-19 vaccination. Recent studies suggest a premium on in-group values like purity and liberty, which reinforce vaccine hesitancy (Amin et al. 2017). A number of pastors and religious organizations such as Shane Vaughan—a Pentecostal minister in Mississippi—have created networks to spread form letters that they hope will be effective in securing vaccine exemptions (Hals 2021). The form letter aims to convince employment attorneys that the requesting employee embraces a "sincerely held" religious belief—a legal bar for exemptions at the federal level. Vaughn claimed in late 2021 that his form letter had been downloaded from his website more than 40,000 times. Clearly, the in-group pressure to establish recognized justifications for religious exemptions has fueled a grassroots movement that can undermine vaccination mandates and risk the health of the broader public by doing so.

However, a study that spanned fall 2020 and spring 2021 showed that a certain type of public health messaging was more effective than others in persuading evangelicals to vaccinate (Bokemper et al. 2021). It concluded that White evangelicals were most likely to vaccinate if they were presented with a public health message that highlighted community interest and emphasized reciprocity in addition to including a shaming component in cases where one chose to eschew vaccination. This mixture of a pro-social message with the expectation of reciprocity and a nudge to avoid the shame that would come if one were to infect a fellow group member led to a thirty percent increase in participants' intent to vaccinate over the placebo, including a thirty-eight percent increase in negative evaluations of a non-vaccinators (ibid). These findings seem supportive, in many ways, of the characteristics and thinking that one would be likely to find in identity-constituting belief systems. And though the outcome of the pro-social study may be considered a success (i.e., increased vaccination acceptance among members of a reticent group), it also points to the vulnerability of group pressures that can be equally effective in promoting anti-social behaviors.

It is clear that some evangelical Americans who are opposed to vaccination are under pressure to form or retain beliefs that originate in their group identity. Though they might have been moved to some degree to vaccinate for the sake of helping others in their group, they tend to be receptive to reasons appealing only to their in-group. Empirical data reveals their response to public health messaging about non-vaccinators threaten their identity. To the extent it informs their choices, it does so against, not in favor of, the interests of population health (Chu et al. 2021). In other words, their reasons are not only not universalizable, but epistemically outside of the kind of "refinement of knowledge" in response to revealed errors which we determined earlier was reflective of an intellectually virtuous approach to supporting justified belief. So, whether one is a religious absolutist with respect to belief in the divine, scripture, or doctrine, or an individual whose religious identity is constituted by belonging to a religious group, the potential to put others at risk does great harm to the majority outside their group. In any case, no proffered objective or inclusive reasons will be put forward to motivate such religious insiders to vaccinate.
