Religion and Pandemic: Shifts of Interpretation, Popular Lore, and Practices. An Introduction

Abstract

In this Introduction, the guest editors discuss the main themes of this special issue and relate them to the growing field of research on how the extraordinary social conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic affected the practices of religious individuals, groups, and institutions. As we suggest here, the pandemic revealed and catalysed important trends within religious traditions and also exacerbated the issues of specific religious identities as confronted against, or negotiated with, the dominant frame of secular state-controlled public health priorities, policies, and protocols.