ABSTRACT
The chapter is an exploratory inquiry into the African Indigenous Churches’ (AIC) response to the COVID-19 vaccination programme in Zimbabwe. The chapter observed that the COVID-19 vaccination programme was met with apprehensive responses, particularly from African Indigenous Churches. The researcher sought to find out how amenable the Johanne Marange Apostolic Church’s beliefs and doctrines were in complying with the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Using a qualitative research design, the study focused on one African Indigenous Church, the Johanne Marange Apostolic Church and critically interrogated the challenges and opportunities the Church faced as it struggled to remain compliant with COVID-19 preventive and containment measures. The research’s preliminary findings were that the prevalence of COVID-19 had an impact on the customised existence of the Johanne Marange Apostolic Church. The research revealed that there was a clash of conflicting interests between the Johanne Marange Church beliefs and the government’s and the World Health Organization’s vaccination programmes. The Church’s doctrine does not allow its members to receive help from medical institutions. It also emerged that most AICs portray the coronavirus as a ‘spiritual force of evil’ rather than a biomedical disease. Hence, they did not believe in the vaccination programme.
