Here is a modified version of a notice of sincerely held religious belief. Please feel free to use what you can from this. Although this was designed for use by a federal employee, most of the information can be used by someone in private sector. Do not just copy and paste but be sure that anything you use is your own sincerely held religious belief. I make reference of an attachment of legal references. These references can be found on another page in my site.
This letter is to notify you that I am unable to take any vaccinations due to my sincerely held religious beliefs. Prior to the Presidential order, there was no employment requirement for vaccination, so I never had to disclose any of my sincerely held religious beliefs. Even now, there is no posted guidance telling me how much I need to disclose, or the process of how determination or appeals is made. I know that my livelihood is at stake. My sincerely held religious beliefs are against all vaccinations and not just the Covid vaccines. I have held these beliefs for 22 years since 1999. They have shown forth for over 14 years with the fact that my children have not received any vaccines. It comes at great pain that I must decide between my religious beliefs and following my President’s executive order. My religious beliefs are so strong that I will lose my job before sinning and disobeying my God. I pray that you will read this letter sincerely as my livelihood depends on you, your taking this seriously, and making reasonable accommodation available so I do not lose my livelihood and can continue to provide for my wife and children. My particular brand of ‘religion’ purposefully does not adhere to a particular convention or board that oversees churches. One of the tenants of my faith is the priesthood of the believer which means I and my family alone can have just as close of a walk with God and seek His will as any priest, pastor, or pope in this world. This means as one of the primary tenants of faith, I do not need to align nor does my church align to a centralized convention. With all of that said, my pastor has expressed his interest that, if needed, he would gladly write a letter of support.
I have multiple sincerely held religious beliefs against ALL vaccination in general.
Vaccines are a perversion against God’s design and plan for my body and therefore a sin to take them.
It is a sin to put potentially harmful contaminants into my body.
It is a sin to benefit from the murder of unborn children whether it is the direct cells of the murdered children, cell lines derived from murdered children, to include the testing or manufacturing with the
same. (Even if they did not contain or were tested with, my belief of 1 and 2 are so strong that I could still could not take any vaccines.)
The following are reasonable accommodations that can be made by the agency due to my sincerely held religious beliefs.
Exception from discrimination by termination of employment, unfavorable employee actions and not denying favorable actions due to my inability to vaccinate as policy exceptions are authorized for use as a reasonable accommodation.
100% Telework if the agency will refuse policy exceptions above even though EEOC and Title VII state policy exceptions are authorized. (Note: my entire team has been 100% telework throughout Covid and we have staff on our team who are 100% telework due to medical RA for years.) OPM specifically lists telework as a reasonable accommodation.
Attached are additional legal references that should be considered. It is my understanding that according to EEOC that, “Title VII requires an employer, once on notice that a religious accommodation is needed, to reasonably accommodate an employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement” The employer is also to, “Because the definition of religion is broad and protects beliefs, observances, and practices with which the employer may be unfamiliar, the employer should ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief.” Additionally, EEOC states that, “For purposes of Title VII, religion includes not only traditional, organized religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, but also religious beliefs that are new, uncommon, not part of a formal church or sect, only subscribed to by a small number of people, or that seem illogical or unreasonable to others. An employee’s belief or practice can be “religious” under Title VII even if the employee is affiliated with a religious group that does not espouse or recognize that individual’s belief or practice, or if few – or no – other people adhere to it.” “An employer also should not assume that an employee is insincere simply because some of his or her practices deviate from the commonly followed tenets of his or her religion.”
Regarding my sincerely held religious beliefs:
Refusing vaccination when an authority has mandated it is NOT a sin when to refuse is in obedience to God.
“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”(Acts 5:29)
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers…” (Romans 13:1a) The highest power is God, when there is a conflict between God and man, we are to obey God every time.
Vaccines are a perversion against God’s design and plan for my body and therefore a sin to take them.
This is not my body, it is God’s. He decides through his Word what I can do to and with it. “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (I Corinthians 6:19-20)
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
Healing comes from God, not man. “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;” (Psalm 103:2-3)
“And the LORD hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.” (II Chronicles 30:20)
“For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.” (Jeremiah 30:17)
“For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Acts28:27)
“For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Matthew 13:15)
“He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.” (John 12:40)
“Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the LORD.” (2 Kings 20:5)“I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.” (Psalm 4:8) God promised His people, “… If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.” (Exodus 15:26)
I cannot glorify God by perverting my body with vaccinations. Nor do I drink or smoke as that perverts the body. “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” (I Corinthians 10:31)
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalm 139:14)
To take the vaccine would be an act of fear, rather than an act of faith. “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” (Psalm 91:5-11)
Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. “And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)
“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” (Hebrews 9:27) I will die when my appointment with death comes, not before and not after.
It is a sin to put potentially harmful contaminants into my body. This body is not my own rather it is God’s. He calls it a temple and we are not to defile that temple. Defiling can come by putting things into it such as cigarettes, liquor, beer, strong drink, wine, the food we eat, the ingredients we place into our body. Vaccinations have certain ingredients that God did not intend to place into our body. By doing so would violate his purpose and plan for my body.
“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (I Corinthians 6:19-20)
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
“For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.” (Luke 1:15)
It is a sin to benefit from the murder of unborn children whether it is the direct cells of the murdered children, cell lines derived from murdered children, to include the testing or manufacturing with the same. Even if the COVID vaccines were not created immorally, my belief is against all vaccines. Life is created through God’s word and through seed. Life begins at conception. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines conceive as, “To receive into the womb, and breed; to begin the formation of the embryo or fetus of animal.” Anyone who purposefully kills fertilized seed is a murderer. My family stopped certain forms of birth control because we learned that it could murder a conceived child. Even in the days of Baal worship where people would make child sacrifice to extend their days for fear of judgement to a god, we cannot take part in using cell lines derived from murdered unborn babies to try to extend or benefit our lives. Anyone who makes use of murdered unborn children is a partaker of such and I cannot have anything to do with that or I would be sinning against God who holds children in great esteem.
It is not fetus or embryo, it is a child in the womb. “As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.” (Ecclesiastes 11:5)
“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)
“And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.” (Luke 1:31)
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isiah 7:14)
“Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.” (Hebrews 11:11)
“But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:14)
“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” (Psalm 127:3)
“And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:5-6)
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. (Psalm 139:13-15)
- All three of the COVID vaccines in the US contain either cell lines derived from murdered unborn children and(or) were tested or manufactured with by the companies developing the vaccines. Here are primary source and peer reviewed medical literature that documents this proof:
Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19Vaccine:
(Description Section) “The Ad26 vector expressing the SARS-CoV-2 S protein is grown in PER.C6 TetR cells, in media containing amino acids and no animal-derived proteins. After propagation, the vaccine is processed through several purification steps, formulated with inactive ingredients and filled into vials…Each dose may also contain residual amounts of host cell proteins (≤0.15 mcg) and/or host cell
DNA (≤3 ng).”
Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Comirnaty, BNT162b2:
“The initial demonstration of in vitro expression in HEK293 cells confirmed that transfection and subsequent protein expression could take place, including in cells incubated with the nanoparticle presentation of the vaccine.”
Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483/suppl_file/nejmoa2022483_appendix.pdf
“To produce SARS-CoV-2 pseudoviruses, an expression plasmid bearing codon-optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length S plasmid (parental sequence Wuhan-1, Genbank #:MN908947.3) was co-transfected into HEK293T/17 cells (ATCC#CRL-11268) cells with packaging plasmid pCMVDR8.2,”
Mainstream News even admits to this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-cells-taken-decades-old-fetal-tissue-are-used-covid-n1242740
“Three Covid-19 vaccine candidates that have received federal funding through the White House’s Operation Warp Speed have also used cells from fetal tissue in their research. AstraZeneca and Moderna both used the HEK293T cell line in early studies on their vaccines. Johnson & Johnson used a different cell line called PER.C6, also derived from fetal cells, to test its vaccine’s effectiveness against Covid-19.”
Please take my notice of sincerely held religious beliefs seriously and as the EEOC says to, “assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief.” My entire team has been able to work remotely during COVID and prior to COVID worked from home almost all the time. I have earned a commissioner’s award for my work during COVID along with a special act aware along with a team bonus not counting any bonus or time that comes from receiving exceeds on my reviews. I love my work and provide meaningful output to our agency and I would be thankful and love to be able to continue to provide my hard work to our agency. Please implement reasonable accommodation to exempt me from unfavorable employee action due to my inability to follow vaccination requirements because Federal Law, the President’s order, the Treasury Chief of Staff, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services all recognize the right of individuals to be exempted from vaccination requirements based on sincerely held religious beliefs. Please approve full-time telework as a reasonable accommodation as OPM states this is a valid choice and we already have staff on my team on full-time approved telework well before COVID. I am concerned that RA request forms are not handled the same as one requires manager approval and the other is handled centrally without the assigned manager’s approval. The fact that there is no IRM or posted procedures defining the process of how these are approved or measured and the fact that approvals for this are handled differently than medical accommodations omitting manager approval, and the fact that I am given a deadline for submission before any of this is available or addressed brings strong concerns on my behalf regarding equal protection and due process. I am submitting this by the due date for fear my submission will be denied out of unformalized process violations and the fact that I am told I would be fired for not
submitting the request by the due date of October 22nd, 2021.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that all agencies are to use the same processes that are already in place for other routine vaccination exemptions. The Treasury Chief of Staff states the bureau’s normal procedures are to be used for requesting reasonable accommodation. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that altering workplace policies IS a reasonable accommodation. Please process this request as you would any other reasonable accommodation to ensure you do not discriminate against me based on my religious beliefs. The rest of this notice provides important primary source references that support my statements.
Thank you sincerely for your time and consideration. Attached are legal references that should be considered when approving a reasonable accommodation to my sincerely held religious belief. I am signing this document without waiver of my legal right to seek religious exemption and accommodation from any requirement that conflicts with my sincerely held religious beliefs, and without waiver of the right to seek legal redress from any wrongful denial of such exemption or accommodation. I am submitting this document because I have been instructed to do so by management, executives, and the Human Capitol Office even without posted procedures that instruct how these requests will be measured to understand how much information I must provide. By submitting this now, it should not waive my right to resubmit later without having to use an appeals process should this notification not include all the criteria that the agency may determine should be included after my submission.
Sincerely,