ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious health crisis that has been highly disruptive to everyday life since its outbreak. It has resulted in untold suffering and deaths, a development that has prompted the scientific community to develop several COVID-19 vaccines. However, conspiracy theories have emerged precisely from the interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the light of the biblical apocalyptic traditions relating to the end of the world. Biblical fundamentalists have associated the COVID-19 pandemic with signs of the end times and, more interestingly, the COVID-19 vaccines with the ‘mark of the beast’ described in Revelations. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines how the Bible has played an ambivalent role in fostering both vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in the context of Zimbabwe. Fundamentally, the chapter argues that it is challenging to counter some of the retrogressive effects of conspiracy theories and misinformation relating to COVID-19 vaccines without a comprehensive understanding of how the Bible has been used to both support and resist vaccination initiatives. The findings of the research have important implications for the development of tailored and targeted strategies to address the challenge of vaccine hesitancy which threatened efforts to ameliorate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe.
