ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic led to major lockdowns over the world in 2020. This situation severely limited the possibility of several social activities, including religious gatherings. In Russia, the peak of the pandemic coincided with the central period in the Orthodox calendar - the last week of Lent and Easter. As the Patriarch blessed stay-at-home politics, churches were officially closed for everybody but the clergy, and live streams of services on social media were organized;believers had to adapt swiftly to a new mode of copresence in church by participating in services online. To do this, they had to make a choice from the places from which the live stream was organized, transform the space of their homes to accommodate sacrality of the event, rethink the locality of their own body in being instantly at home and "in church", and manage communication with the priest, fellow parishioners, and family members during Easter night. This involved subtle mechanisms of balancing authority within the network of sacred objects, gadgets, and people. Based on digital ethnography (including participant observation online) and 40 in-depth interviews, the paper investi-gates how believers constructed and reflected the space of the Easter service in their homes, and presents three key strategies: synchronization, spacing, and appellation to experience.
ABSTRACT
County Durham in the UK has witnessed dramatic social and environmental shifts over the past 50 years, yet Durham Cathedral has stood at the heart of the region, seemingly solid, unchanging and eternal. It is frequently narrated as a prestigious jewel (a national treasure) that is surrounded by a countryside (and people) that clearly bear the time‐marked scars of the processes of industrialisation and deindustrialisation. In this paper, I explore a recent moment in time when a partnership between the Cathedral and the local secular authorities aimed to rapidly transform our understanding of this space by connecting Cathedral and county through the newly laid Northern Saints' Trails. These Trails were designed as both a response to rapid changes in the local ecology and a catalyst for further transformation. The processes of this formation were ultimately delayed by the outbreak of COVID‐19, yet this external force allowed the Pilgrimage project to find new life as a powerful healing practice for those who dwell in Durham. Attention to this process of purposeful, regular pilgrimage directs our attention towards the entangled nature of the home anthropologist and their role in the co‐construction of space, leading to a call for a new articulation of both core methods in the anthropology of religion and a return to a form of prophetic anthropology (Miles‐Watson, 2020). [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
High profile (and controversial) events and installations, like the Helter-Skelter in Norwich and the Crazy Golf Bridges in Rochester, have drawn attention to innovation and public engagement within Anglican cathedrals. The present study contextualised these innovations both empirically and conceptually. The empirical framework draws on cathedral websites to chronicle the wide and diverse range of events and installations hosted by Anglican cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man between 2018 and 2022. The conceptual framework draws on Edward Bailey’s theory of implicit religion to classify and to explore these events and installations. Two insights from the theory of implicit religion emerged as of particular significance. First, the notion of implicit religion softens the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. This was exemplified by eight categories of events: scientific exhibitions, festivals, musical events, art exhibitions, theatre, markets, community events and installations. Second, the notion of implicit religion draws attention to the themes and activities that generate meaning and purpose. This was exemplified by seven themes: social justice and social conscience, violence and reconciliation, remembrance, migration and sanctuary, COVID-19 and lockdowns, personal well-being and nature and environment. Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this article identifies the range of innovative events and installations hosted by Anglican Cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man and assesses the significance of these events and installations through Edward Bailey’s lens of implicit religion, discussing first the softening of boundaries between the sacred and the secular and then the generation of meaning and purpose through the core themes raised by these events and installations. © 2022. The Authors.
ABSTRACT
This introduction opens a collection of seven articles which investigate how religious communities negotiate demands for physical distance induced by governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in accord with their religious and spiritual aspirations to establish presence and togetherness. Grounded in ethnography and media analysis, our contributors offer studies on Pentecostal healing, Mormon eschatology, Hindu diasporic rituals, Chinese spirit mediums, the virtual Burning Man festival, Sufi sonic meditations, and televised Shia Muslim mourning. These studies collectively demonstrate that in pandemic rituals (1) Media are reflexive and enchanted;(2) The religious sensorium is sticky and lingers in embodied and mnemonic ways even under new circumstances of mediation;(3) Space and time emerge as modular, transposable, condensed, yet expanding. Ritual innovations can provoke new kinds of mediations, sensory engagements, and temporal-spatial arrangements, while revealing continuities with pre-pandemic cosmologies, theologies, liturgies, and social hierarchies, and relying on memories of previous ritual sensory experiences.
ABSTRACT
Epidemics of COVID-19 led to major lockdowns all over the world in 2020. This situation severely limited the possibility of a number of social activities, including religious gatherings. In Russia, the peak of the epidemic coincided with the central period in the Orthodox calendar - the last week of Lent and Easter. As the Patriarch blessed “stay-at-home” policies, churches were officially closed for everybody but the clergy and livestreams of services in social media were organized, while believers had to adapt swiftly to a new mode of co-presence in church by participating in services online. To do this, they had to make a choice between the places from which a livestream was organized, transform the space of their homes to accommodate the sacrality of the event, rethink the locality of their own body in being simultaneously at home and “in church”, manage communication with the priest, fellow parishioners and family members during Easter night. This involved not only formal decoration of homes but also subtle mechanisms of balancing authority within the network of sacred objects, gadgets and people. Based on digital ethnography (including participant observation online) and 40 in-depth interviews, the paper investigates how believers constructed and reflected the space of the Easter service in their homes, and presents three key strategies: synchronization, spacing and appellation to experience. © D. A. RADCHENKO