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COVID-19: Exploring Faith Dimensions
WEEKLY HIGHLIGHT
#158
COVID-19 Offers Opportunities for Religious Cooperation, But Also Stokes Tensions


Discussions and events this past week highlighted various efforts focused on positive and less positive roles that religious “influencers” play in the urgent and fast-paced efforts to respond to COVID-19. A focus is on the immediate and urgent challenge to vaccinate large segments of global populations. In reporting on a May 20 webinar about faith actors in vaccine equity and access, WHO highlighted the continuing series and plans for a conference in the fall. A planned June 10 webinar will focus on “Overcoming Barriers to Vaccination: Concentrating on Delivery and the Practical Enabling of Equity and Access.” 

In the United States, the multifaith Faiths4Vaccines coalition organized a May 26 summit that highlighted practical efforts (houses of worship as vaccination sites, purposeful efforts to transmit positive messages) to address the not fully convinced and tip them to be vaccinated. “The path to herd immunity runs through America’s faith communities,” argue Eboo Patel and Robert P. Jones. Cross-sector cooperation is a priority goal, including to integrate religious efforts with government programs. Overall, nationally focused priorities that are often described as “vaccine nationalism” pose real challenges for the oft-stated observation that “no one is safe until all are safe.”

Globally, with notable regionally focused efforts, religious actors including interfaith (especially Religions for Peace) and ecumenical groups (World Council of Churches) are working independently and with governments and WHO to mobilize and to address bottlenecks to vaccination campaigns. Vaccine inequity remains a stark reality as wide disparities are a constant drumbeat in analysis of the path ahead on COVID-19. Negative as well as positive examples are cited. One article pointed to aspects of the Sri Lankan approach (lauded early on as exemplary) that profiled ethnic and religious communities and failed to counter the impact of religious gatherings, with negative consequences.

Religious aspects are a frequent focus in the continuing COVID-19 tragedy in India. Of special note is the enormous Kumbh Mela gathering. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, suggested that it is possibly “the biggest superspreader event in the history of the pandemic,” as some three million people traveled and bathed together in the Ganges River. New “COVID devi (idols) reflect deeply traditional reactions to the frightening pandemic, as people “flock to shrines.” Some devotees with nowhere else to turn are seeking divine intervention at temples dedicated to “coronavirus goddesses.” The article pictures two such goddesses crafted from sandalwood and stone, consecrated at the Kamatchipuri Adhinam temple in Coimbatore, “where priests say daily prayers in a bid to alleviate people’s suffering.” Similar shrines for COVID-19 and other illnesses can be found all around India.

Tensions around religious practices are arising in various settings. Tensions around Parsi death rituals pit public health measures against the different traditions of various communities (in the Dokhmenashini ritual, dead bodies are exposed on hilltops rather than buried or cremated). In Sikkim, the spread of COVID-19 among monks is being attributed to the rituals that follow COVID-19 deaths. Some Christian caregivers face charges that their interventions have conversion as a motive. More positive are reports of Sikh care for COVID-19 patients in a temple repurposed as a hospital. The stark reality of poverty explains why dead bodies are found in the Ganges as people cannot afford proper rituals.

In Romania, a massive Catholic pilgrimage that attracts thousands of foreign pilgrims was taken as an opportunity to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, with a no-appointment-needed “vaccination marathon” for those wishing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Health authorities described the pandemic as a dragon: “Until we cut off all of its heads, it will not go away.”

Decisions about vaccination are influenced by diverse and often complex interactions that include religious beliefs and community expectations, among others. A study of Orthodox Jewish communities highlights the complexity: “the discourse of ‘religious’ exemption and opposition to vaccination obscures the diverse practices and philosophies that inform vaccine decisions, and how religious law and leaders form a contingent influence. Rather than viewing religion as the primary framework through which vaccine decisions are made, Orthodox Jewish parents were more concerned with safety, trust and choice in similar ways to ‘secular’ logics of non-vaccination.”
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