With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, various wide-reaching regulations were implemented to mitigate the virality of disaster throughout the world. The articles in this collection examine how COVID era regulations, and anxieties of infection, have intervened in religious lives and practices. For those who hold religious or spiritual commitments, a fulfilling experience requires, at bottom, the sense and sensations of connection, communion, and presence. In these pandemic times, how have ritual actions, events and performances been (re)mediated to allow religious devotees to navigate the complex balance between “presence” (Engelke 2007) and cautious “distance”? How did established patterns of religious participation, including “sensational forms” (Meyer 2009), emerge as reproduced, (dis)embodied or re-invented? In what ways did the translocation of devotees out of shared space onto remote media platforms generate and reframe religious experience?
From ARI co-organised workshop “Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mediating Presence and Distance”, 29-30 April 2021.
