Church leaders say the moral responsibility of vaccines trumps other concerns, and local leaders follow suit.

When Covid-19 started infecting people in Monterey County back in March 2020, there wasn’t a question in the minds of Pastor Ronald Britt and his wife, First Lady Angelia Britt, of Greater Victory Temple in Seaside about how the church of around 200 parishioners would respond. Early on they purchased over 15,000 masks to distribute to the community. When they were approached about serving as a testing site, they said yes and this year they’ve served as a pop-up vaccination site multiple times.

There are a few in the congregation who don’t share the Britts’ conviction that Covid is real or that vaccinations are safe. Angelia, a retired registered nurse and former director of nursing services at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, is adamant the church stay on message. “It’s important to educate people about this is a true virus and that everybody needs the knowledge that it’s not a hoax, it’s not any of that, we have a number of people that are dying. That’s my main concern,” she says.

Because the Britts and other faith leaders are considered major influencers in Seaside, both city and county officials have turned to pastors seeking their help both with education and hosting direct services like testing, vaccinations and food drives. The city of Seaside asked the Monterey Ministerial Alliance to be a part of its Vaccination Action Team, along with elected officials and nonprofit leaders.

Rosemary Soto, who oversees the VIDA community health worker program for Monterey County, says they’ve relied on pastors from the Ministerial Alliance for ideas on what will work best in reaching those who are hesitant. “We learned more about what it means when [people] are conflicted about relying on science or relying on faith,” she says. “It’s a cool thing to see the ministers were also supportive.” Those ministers have encouraged church members to get vaccinated, some using the argument that God uses scientists, doctors and vaccines for good.

Some evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics have objected to the vaccines due to the use of cell lines taken from the tissue of fetuses aborted in the 1970s and 1980s. (The cells are clones, and not directly from the original tissues.) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ruled in December that Catholics have a “moral responsibility for the common good” to get vaccinated, despite vaccines’ “remote connection to morally compromised cell lines.” On March 12, Bishop Daniel Garcia of the Diocese of Monterey issued a statement calling the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines “a legitimate moral choice in this time of Pandemic with limited vaccine options… I strongly urge everyone to take the vaccine for the protection of human life and well-being of all.”

That statement from Garcia gave something for VIDA health workers to point to when talking one-on-one with Catholics who were hesitant, Soto says. In general, the conversations with faith leaders from a variety of denominations and religions helped shape how to approach hesitant residents.

In addition, the VIDA program was able to partner with churches for events. They worked with Pastor Kenneth Raye Murray of Ocean View Baptist Church in Seaside and other churches for a wellness fair in the church parking lot on June 26. “We just want to promote the vaccination, and let people know it’s OK and to feel free to get it and feel comfortable,” Murray says.

The Britts and Murray say they’ve encountered a small number of Black residents who object to vaccinations based on fears born out of what happened with the U.S. government’s cruel study of Tuskegee airmen who suffered from syphilis. Angelia Britt counters those objections with facts: The airmen weren’t given syphilis as some suppose, they weren’t treated for it, but that’s history. “They have to realize the technology has changed and accountability is moreso than it was before,” she says.

The collective push by the Seaside Vaccination Action Team in conjunction with VIDA and others has born significant fruit: The 93955 zip code, which includes all of Seaside, Sand City and a small portion of Marina, went from a vaccination rate of 53 percent (for residents ages 12 and above) on May 17 to a rate of 64 percent on June 30. By the end of June, it was just two percentage points behind the county’s overall rate of 66 percent.

Greater Victory Mission will continue to open its doors to testing and vaccination clinics. On July 7, the Monterey County Health Department moved the state-supported Covid-19 testing site that’s been running for months at Seaside High School to the dining hall of the church, located at 1620 Broadway. It will operate 9am-6pm, Tuesday-Saturday.

Angelia Britt coordinated the details from the church’s side of things, as she and her volunteers have done for past testing and vaccination clinics. Her husband believes opening the doors of the church to such efforts is a divine responsibility.

“Every church should be a community church to be able to reach out to all of the citizens of the community,” he says. “That’s been our endeavor to open up this facility for more things to happen here.”