The Religion and Globalisation Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, is launching a research blog on religious responses to COVID-19. We are looking for reflections, analysis, opinion, commentary pieces, photographic essays and multimedia contributions at the interface of the COVID-19 pandemic and the life of religious communities and ritual practices.

Since the beginning of the spread of COVID-19 within and outside of China, every religious tradition has undergone radical changes. With the implementation of safety measures, some religious lives have gone digital. The enforcement of hygienic and ‘social distancing’ practices has dramatically changed aesthetic, affective and material dimensions of ritual acts. Religious leaders and congregations of followers have responded in innovative as well as controversial ways to the spread of COVID-19, producing new cultural phenomena that might be temporary, or long-lasting. This research blog aims to look at ritual innovations and religious responses at the time of coronavirus in Asia with a global and comparative outlook.

We are interested in critical reflections and multimodal contributions that can add to the understanding of the mutual shaping of religion and society during the COVID-19 pandemic, including and encompassing the following topics:

• The use of new media and the various meanings of the digitization, de-sensorialization and disembodiment of religious gatherings
• The new instances of visibility of religious and spiritual dimensions in the public sphere from a post-secular vantage point
• The use of religious identity politics to display conflicting ideologies of healing and socio-political tensions among communities occupying unequal positions of power
• Religious innovations that change ritual praxis and discourses around the protocols of accessibility, the authorization, legitimization or contestation of new practices
• Transformations of local as well as transnational religious events and the economic impact of religious change across borders, including pilgrimage economy as well as religious networks of aid
• Religious responses providing for rationalization, moral justification, divination, techniques of the mind-body complex that provide for comfort, healing and wellness in times of uncertainty and distress – and how these affect people’s choices and habits

We welcome contributions of about 1,000 words. If you are interested in sending a contribution, please send your personal details (name, affiliation, email address) and a short abstract describing the main theme and the format of your contribution to Carola Lorea at aricar@nus.edu.sg and Natalie Lang at natalie.lang@cemis-uni.goettingen.de

back to project's homepage