Religions and the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Global Health Crisis as Shifts Catalyser in Religious Imagination and Practices

Alexander Agadjanian

doi:10.56673/18294502-22.15-7

##article.authors##

Alexander Agadjanian Yerevan State University

##semicolon##

https://doi.org/10.56673/18294502-22.15-7

##article.abstract##

This paper draws upon the author’s own research and the two special issues in the two academic religious studies journals he himself edited. In addition, the paper gives an overview of many other publications that appeared in the recent years as an attempt to analyse the reactions of various religions to the Covid-19 pandemic and the respective shifts in religious practices the pandemic triggered or accelerated. The author singles out a few major themes that stood out prominently in the experiences of the religious communities during the pandemic: theological interpretations of the health crisis; shifts in corporate rituals; an explosive growth of the virtual forms of worship; a reconfiguring of authority structures; preserving specific religious identity, etc.

##submission.citations##

Alexander Agadjanian, «Сопротивление и покорность. Вызовы пандемии, поздне-модерные эпистемы и русский православный этос». Государство, религия, церковь в России и за рубежом 39, no.1 (2021):12-38.

Alexander Agadjanian, “Pandemic, homo somatis, and Transformations of the Russian Orthodox Ethos. Entangled Religions 12, no.3 (2022). Doi: https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.9655.

Религия и Ковид-19. Тематический блок. Государство, религия, церковь в России и за рубежом 39, no.1 (2021); Religion and Pandemic: Shifts of Interpretations, Popular Lore, and Practices. Special Issue. Entangled Religions 12, no. 3 (2022).

“Dossier Corona”, Religious Matters in an Entangled World, Utrecht University: https://religiousmatters.nl/dossier-corona1/.

The Covid-19 section in London School of Economics blog “Religion and Global Society”: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/category/covid-19/.

“Religion and the COVID-19 pandemic: mediating presence and distance,” Religion, 52, no.2 (2022).

Galina Zelenina, “Тора против вируса, раввины против правительства: ультраортодоксия перед лицом пандемии,” Государство, религия, церковь в России и за рубежом 39, no. 1 (2021): 104-105.

Sofia Ragozina, “’Popular Ijtihad’ and Entangled Islamic Discourse on the Covid-19 Pandemic in Russia,” Entangled Religions 12, no.3 (2022). Doi: https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8919.

Dauda Abubakar, Abdullahi Muhammad Maigari, Murtala Ibrahim and Arafat Ibrahim, “Curtailed Worship, Conspiracy Theories, and Hollywood Dystopias: Reacting to the COVID-19 Pandemic among the Reformists Muslims and Pentecostal Christians in Nigeria,” Entangled Religions 12, no. 3 (2022).

Webb Keane, “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things”, Language & Communication 23, no. ¾ (2003): 419.

Oğuz Alyanak,“Turkey’s Diyanet and Political Islam during the Pandemic,” in: Viral Loads: Anthropologies of Urgency in the Time of COVID-19, ed. Lenore Manderson, Nancy J. Burke, Ayo Wahlberg, (London: UCL Press, 2021) 162-180.

Tsipy Ivry and Sarah Segal-Katz, “Purity’s Dangers: at the Interstices of Religion and Health in Israel,” in Viral Loads: Anthropologies of Urgency in the Yime of COVID-19, ed. Lenore Manderson, Nancy J. Burke, Ayo Wahlberg, (London: UCL Press, 2021), 384-408.

Stefan Dascalu, Patrik G. Flammer, Mahan Ghafari, Shaun C. Henson, Roger Nascimento, and Michael B. Bonsall,”Engaging Religious Institutions and Faith-Based Communities in Public Health Initiatives: A Case Study of the Romanian Orthodox Church During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Frontiers in Public Health, 16 December 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.768091.

Claire Maes, “Jain Life Reimagined: An Examination of Jain Practice and Discourse During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Entangled Religions 12, no. 3, https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.9179.

London School of Economics blog: Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek, 2020. “Contagious crowds: religious gatherings in the age of coronavirus,” 22 May 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/05/22/contagious-crowds-religious-gatherings-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/.

Arndt Emmerich, “Masks, Mosques and Lockdowns: Islamic Organisations Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany,” Entangled Religions 12, no. 3, doi: https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8900.

David Robichaux, José Manuel Moreno Carvallo, Jorge Martínez Galván, “Dancing for the Saints in the Time of Covid-19: Responses to the 2020 Lockdown in Central Mexico,” Entangled Religions 12, no. 3, doi: https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.8901.

Andreas Papazoglou, Dimitrios V. Moysidis, Christos Tsagkaris, Marko Dorosh, Efstratios Karagiannidis and Rafael Mazin, “Spiritual Health and the COVID‐19 Pandemic: Impacts on Orthodox Christianity Devotion Practices, Rituals, and Religious Pilgrimages”, Journal of Religion and Health 60 (2021), 3217–3229.

Bishop Methodius (Kondratiev), «Мы так или иначе умрем», Znak, 13.04.2020. https://www.znak.com/2020-04-3/my_tak_libo_inache_umrem_na_urale_episkop_prizval_hodit_v_hramy_vo_vremya_pandemii.

Online Forum «Азбука веры», https://azbyka.ru/forum/threads/voprosy-pro-koronavirus-i-ne-tolko.23701/page-10#post-385112.

Instruction – “Инструкция настоятелям приходов и подворий, игуменам и игумениям монастырей Русской православной церкви в связи с угрозой распространения коронавирусной инфекции,” Заседание Синода, Журнал №3, 17.03.2020, Officital Site of the Moscow Patriarchy, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5608594.html. See my longer analysis in: Agadjanian, Сопротивление, 15-17.

Carola Lorea, Neena Mahadev, Natalie Lang & Ningning Chen, “Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mediating Presence and Distance,” Religion 52, no. 2 (2022), 177-198.

Birgit Meyer, “Introduction: From Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms, and Styles of Binding,” in Birgit Meyer, ed., Aesthetic Formations. Religion/Culture/Critique, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 1–28.

Giorgos Papantoniou & Athanasios K. Vionis, “Popular Religion and Material Responses to Pandemic: The Christian Cult of the Epitaphios during the COVID-19 Crisis in Greece and Cyprus,” Ethnoarchaeology 12, no. 2 (2020), 85-117.

Heidi Campbell, The Distanced Church: Reflections on Doing Church Online, 2020, Available electronically at https://hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /187891.

Heidi Campbell, ed., Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds. London: Routledge, 2013.

Heidi Campbell, “Surveying Theoretical Approaches within Digital Religion Studies”, New Media & Society 19, no.1 (2017), 15–24.

Teresa Berger, Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Heidi Campbell and Ruth Tsuria, eds., Digital Religion, London, Routledge, 2021, and Heidi Campbell, John Dyer, eds., Ecclesiology of the Digital Church: Theological Reflections of a New Normal, London, SCM Press, 2022.

Steven Hoover and Nabil Echchaibi, Media Theory and the ‘Third Spaces of Digital Religion. Colorado Boulder: University of Colorado Boulder, 2014.

Bhambra Manmit and Austin Tiffany, “From the Sanctuary to the Sofa: What COVID-19 has taught us about Sacred Space,” LSE Religion and Global Society Blog, April 28, 2021. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2021/04/from-the-sanctuary-to-the-sofa-what-covid-19-hastaught-us-about-sacred-space/.

Joseph Baker, Gerardo Marti, Ruth Braunstein, Andrew L. Whitehead, and Grace Yukich, 2020. “Religion in the Age of Social Distancing: How COVID-19 Presents New Directions for Research,” Sociology of Religion 81, no. 4 (2021), 357–370.

Mohammad Alami Musa, “Will Religion post-Covid-19 be More Personal, Less Communal?” The Strait Times, July 2, 2020. ttps://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/willreligion-post-covid-19-be-more-personal-less-communal

Loïc Bawidamann, Laura Peter & Rafael Walthert, “Restricted Religion. Compliance, Vicariousness, and Authority during the Corona Pandemic in Switzerland,” European Societies 23: sup1 (2021), 638-639.

Wesley J. Wildman, Joseph Bulbulia, Richard Sosis & Uffe Schjoedt, “Religion and the COVID-19 pandemic,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 10, no. 2 (2020), 115-117.

Петиция «Откройте храмы на Пасху». CitizenGo. https://citizengo.org/ru/rf/178484-otkroyte-hramy-na-pashu?utm_source=wa&utm_medium=social&utm_content=typage&utm_campaign.

Online Forum “Батюшка-онлайн,” in VKontakte 13.04.2020 https://vk.com/topic-25505827_26391950?offset=4480; Рождественское интервью патриарха Кирилла телеканалу «Россия» 7.01.2021, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5746352.htm.

Carol Teuton Benoit, Patricia A. Thomas & Theodore P. Remley Jr., “Tibetan Buddhist Pilgrims and the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 24, no. 9 (2021), 899-917.

Victor Counted, Kenneth I. Pargament, Andrea Ortega Bechara, Shaun Joynt & Richard G. Cowden, “Hope and well-being in vulnerable contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic: does religious coping matter?” The Journal of Positive Psychology, online: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1832247.

Amelie Neuve-Eglise & Mahnaz Tavakoli, “Les saints face au virus. Mobiliser les sanctuaires chiites iraniens contre la pandemie de Covid-19,” L'Homme, No. 241 (janvier/mars 2022), 65-102.

Kauthar Khamis, “Hijab and Niqab: A Cross-Religious COVID-19 Safety Measure in Madina Zongo,” Entangled Religions, 12, no. 3 (2022), doi: https://doi.org/10.46586/er.12.2021.9650.