Are Vaccine Resisters Damaging Religion's Good Reputation?

America's favorite neighbor, Mister Rogers, once said to look for "the helpers" when you're feeling scared. Amid a devastating pandemic and associated economic downturn, many Americans embarked on that search and, according to new research, got the help they needed from a church. The 2021 American Family Survey from the Deseret News and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University found that the share of U.S. adults who say houses of worship were helpful during the COVID-19 crisis is higher than the share who say the same about employers or public schools. Only government officials at the local, state and federal levels received notably higher marks for helpfulness than religious institutions.