Is vaccine refusal a matter for Justin Welby?

It’s not quite ‘the night before Christmas’ but it’s close. The timing could hardly be worse for Justin Welby to clumsily wade into the argument over Covid vaccination. In an interview with Julie Etchingham on ITV, the Archbishop of Canterbury asserted that vaccination is a ‘moral issue’. Getting the Covid jab, he said, is ‘not about me and my rights to choose’. It is instead a fulfilment of the commandment to love our neighbour. ‘To love one another, as Jesus said, get vaccinated, get boosted,’ he continued. ‘It’s Christmas: do what he said’. What a grim and joyless corruption of the beautiful and familiar Christmas Gospel. And what wasted opportunity to deliver an uplifting Christmas message of God’s deep and enduring love for mankind.

Let’s start with the suggestion that being vaccinated somehow fulfils the requirement to love our neighbour. It is misleading to suggest that the vaccinated automatically occupy the moral high-ground.