Religion and the COVID-19 pandemic: mediating presence and distance
Religion
; 52(2):177-198, 2022.
Article
in English
| ProQuest Central | ID: covidwho-1805777
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.
Philosophy; COVID-19 pandemic; mediation; religion and media; religion and senses; pandemic ritual; ritual temporality; sacred space; innovative religiosities; Ethnography; Religion; Religious communities; Healing; Innovations; COVID-19; Pandemics; Televised; Mourning; Rituals; Coronaviruses; Memories
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Databases of international organizations
Database:
ProQuest Central
Language:
English
Journal:
Religion
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
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