Two-thirds of U.S. adults believe most people claiming religious objections to COVID-19 vaccines “are just using religion as an excuse to avoid the vaccine,” according to a new study released by Pew Research Center. While many employers have adopted vaccine requirements, it’s common to allow exceptions for those who claim the vaccine violates their religious convictions.

The public, broadly, seems to suspect this is being exploited as an easy rationale for opting out.

However, the majority who think religious objectors are just making an excuse also think these people should be allowed to keep their jobs. Among those who think people claiming a religious reason to skip the vaccine are sincere, only three percent think those opting out should lose their jobs anyway.

There appears to be a lot of skepticism and forgiveness on this particular front, a rare gray area during a pandemic where public attitude appears to be comfortable with moral ambiguity.

Last December, just as the Omicron variant was tightening its hold on the U.S., the Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Corps announced a notable public sentiment: one in ten Americans believed getting a COVID-19 vaccine conflicted with their religion. (At that point, 28 percent of unvaccinated Americans surveyed claimed a religious prohibition.)

This was on the heels of increasing vaccine mandates by the Biden administration, including through OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — which in turn would apply to millions of workers at healthcare facilities participating in those programs. Non-compliance could lead to termination. While the U.S. Supreme Court rejected much of the mandate, justices allowed the portion applying to healthcare workers at facilities receiving federal dollars to stand. Related cases pertaining to Naval personnel and federal workers, have been winding through appeals courts, with the former so far receiving a one-paragraph Supreme Court ruling that granted reinstatement of the Biden program as it applied to Navy SEALs.

With COVID rates having plummeted in the U.S. and mask mandates loosening, the question of religious exemption — or through many eyes, religious excuse-making — may seem a less urgent matter.

Still, within some sectors, mandates and exemptions are still a hot topic. As Fierce Healthcare, a healthcare industry news source, reports: a growing list of hospitals have suspended workers, fired some, and have seen resignations from others. Some smaller hospitals cited concerns that enforcing mandates would exacerbate existing staffing shortages.

Despite some outcry, however, most systems reported losing one percent or fewer of their employees over refusal to vaccinate.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been issuing periodic, if somewhat milquetoast guidance that notes employers must offer reasonable accommodations for employees who refuse to get vaccinated for medical reasons or sincerely-held religious beliefs. As the Society for Human Resource Management notes, the definition of “religion” is so broad that employers “should ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief.” If an employer is “aware of facts that provide an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or sincerity of a particular belief” or practice, they can request additional supporting information.

That’s not very firm ground and leaves a lot up to interpretation as to whether a religious belief is sincere — and what qualifies as religion.

Perceived sincerity seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

The recent Pew study did show that respondents’ own religious convictions greatly colored their willingness to believe another person was sincere in claiming a religious objection to COVID vaccines. Religiously unaffiliated people (atheists, agnostics, religious ‘nones’) were most likely not to buy religious excuses, a figure that matched the fraction of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents (77 percent) who likewise saw the claim as an excuse.

White evangelicals were the most likely to believe religious objections are sincere, (and even then, the majority of white evangelicals still thought these claims were insincere).

The majority of Protestants, Catholics and the religiously unaffiliated all believe employers should let employees with religious objections keep their jobs even if they decline the vaccine. Here, identical proportions of white evangelicals and Republican and Republican-leaning respondents (82 percent) believed religious objectors should keep their jobs.

Only 29 percent agreed employers should mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, while 27 percent said employers should neither require nor encourage employees to get vaccinated. Those who believe in vaccine mandates are likely to be skeptical of religious objections, with only five percent thinking these objections are sincere. Among the group who objects to mandates or even at-work vaccine encouragement, 86 percent believe employees should keep their jobs even if not vaccinated. Nearly half also accepted religious excuses as sincere.

The vast majority (44 percent) however, thought employers should encourage the vaccine but not mandate it. This middle path group wasn’t keen to see people losing their jobs even if only using religion as an excuse.

Overall, at this point, there appears to be apathy for picking a fight about vaccines when religion can be invoked.