Vaccine reluctance: A pastor’s life depends on a coronavirus vaccine. Now he faces skeptics in his church.

Members of Houston Northwest Church don’t wish him harm, but because of heart failure issues in his 20s, Bezner’s doctor has warned him he could die if he catches the virus. Many of his members shun masks and don’t take the virus seriously.

“I took it pretty personal at first,” he said. “Over time, I realized their decisions have nothing to do with me. Instead, they were based on personal opinions or political persuasions.”

Bezner would be less fearful of his congregants if he and enough of them would get vaccinated for the coronavirus.

But many of his Southern Baptist parishioners are skeptical of vaccines or completely opposed to getting inoculated, a reflection of broader suspicion of the coronavirus vaccines among many White evangelicals. They are split nearly 50-50 on whether they “definitely/probably” will get the vaccines, according to a November survey by the Pew Research Center, compared to 60 percent of the American population who say they would get them.

Down the road from Bezner’s church, Blake Wilson, pastor of a predominantly Black church called Crossover Bible Fellowship, also fears his community will have similar reservations over the vaccines but for different reasons.

Distrust of the medical establishment permeates Black communities. Many recall how, starting in the 1930s, Black men with syphilis in Tuskegee, Ala., were deceived and denied treatment over a 40-year period so doctors could study the disease. According to Pew, 59 percent of Black Protestants say they definitely/probably will not get the vaccine, making them the religious group least likely to say they plan to get one. There is no agreed upon number of people who need to be vaccinated to reach “herd immunity,” but Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease expert, has said at least 75 percent of the population needs to opt in. ...