Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake is vital for informing public health interventions. Prior U.S. research has found that religious conservatism is positively associated with anti-vaccine attitudes. One of the strongest predictors of anti-vaccine attitudes in the U.S. is Christian nationalism—a U.S. cultural ideology that wants civic life to be permeated by their particular form of nationalist Christianity. However, there are no studies examining the relationship between Christian nationalism and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake. Using a new nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, we find that Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and is negatively associated with having received or planning to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Since Christian nationalists make up approximately 20 percent of the population, these findings could have important implications for achieving herd immunity.

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Many individuals have engaged in behaviors to cope with and mitigate the COVID‐19 pandemic, including mask wearing and physical distancing. This study considers the extent to which individuals have also engaged in religious behaviors in response to the pandemic and how those responses are associated with behaviors like mask wearing. Using data from a probability survey of U.S. adults, our analysis finds that over half of the respondents have engaged in pandemic‐related prayer and about one‐fifth have taken other religious steps in response to the pandemic, such as reading religious texts or carrying religious items for protection. All else being equal, Republicans are significantly less likely to have undertaken religious steps in response to the pandemic relative to Democrats, suggesting that the politicized nature of the pandemic influences religious responses as well. The analysis also finds that religious responses to the pandemic—especially prayer—are positively associated with mask wearing and physical distancing. These findings suggest that religious responses to the pandemic are not inherently opposed to undertaking responses recommended by scientific and medical authorities.

IMPORTANCE Self-injury mortality (SIM) combines suicides and the preponderance of drug misuserelated overdose fatalities. Identifying social and environmental factors associated with SIM and suicide may inform etiologic understanding and intervention design. OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with interstate SIM and suicide rate variation and to assess potential for differential suicide misclassification.

Religious beliefs, practices, and social support facilitate coping with psychologically distressful events and circumstances. However, COVID-19 and governmental mandates for social distancing and isolation make in-person communal forms of religious coping difficult. While some congregations began holding virtual rituals, this was not an option for Amish and conservative Mennonite groups that restrict communication and media technologies as a religious sacrament. Governmental mandates placed a disproportionate burden on these groups whose members could not conduct rituals or interact virtually with other members and family. What religious coping strategies did the Amish and Mennonites use to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic given their restricted ability to participate in in-person rituals? We collected data from The Budget and The Diary, two Amish and Mennonite correspondence newspapers, which provide information on the experiences of community members. We content analyzed all entries from March 2020 to April 2020 and identified several themes related to religious coping focused on the positive benefits of the pandemic, specifically how it helps and reminds the Amish and Mennonites to refocus on the simple and important things in life, including God, spirituality, family, tradition, gardening, and other at-home hobbies, all of which reflect their religious commitment to a slower pace of life.