Elastic Rituals: A Multi-Religious Analysis of Adaptations to the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis truly challenged social interaction, the use of space and objects, as well as our sense of purpose and meaning in life. In this context, religious communities faced sudden interruption of their usual activities, lack of access to communal spaces and a global epidemic that summoned ancient “medieval plague” anxieties to work with. This article focuses on the vast repertoire of adaptations and reactions to the crisis that several religious communities developed in Spain. Our research is based on 40 conversations with members of Protestant and Evangelical denominations, Sunni Islam, Orthodox churches, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Church of Scientology, Baha’i, Seventh-day Adventist Church, Christian Science and Paganism, all of them minorities in the traditionally Catholic country. To analyze this repertoire of adaptations we focus on three aspects: the general context of changes and challenges, the ritual adaptations and the subjective experience of the adaptations. Grace Q. Zhang’s theories on linguistic elasticity will be applied to understand the elasticity of ritual adaptations in COVID times.

Framing the Study of Digital Religion: Waves of Academic Research, Theoretical Approaches and Themes

“…Furthermore, more specialized inquiries provide insights into the execution of religious rituals through social media platforms (Åhman & Thorén, 2021;Anwar & Mujib, 2022;Eken, 2020;Ferguson et al, 2021). However, the predominant trend in recent years within digital ritual studies in DRS has been an exploration of how religions grapple with the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic (Ben-Lulu, 2021;Cornejo-Valle and Martin-Andino, 2023;Huygens, 2021;Jacobi et al, 2022;Kapoor et al, 2022;Lorea, 2020). This predominant thematic orientation towards COVID-19 can be understood as a response to the limitations imposed by lockdown periods, wherein individuals are deprived of physical spaces to engage in their religious rituals.…”