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COVID-19: Exploring Faith Dimensions
WEEKLY HIGHLIGHT
#212 Emerging from the Pandemic: Lasting Effects?

Despite recurring spikes in COVID-19 infections, much media attention is focused on issues other than positivity rates and other statistics. Instead, much of the analysis has shifted to questions regarding lasting effects, next steps, and lessons learned. 

In a period quite intensively focused on public policy and religion (highlighted in recent events such as the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, DC, and the Freedom of Religion or Belief [FoRB] Ministerial in London) we identified only one session explicitly focused on COVID-19 and faith. Nonetheless, the all-too-familiar cycles of canceled religious and other festivals continue in places where infections are still on the rise, for example in India. This trend has also persisted in the Middle East, for even though the hajj has largely resumed, some disruptions are at least in part linked to COVID-19 legacies.

A survey in Canopy, a legal journal, comments on the responses of court systems worldwide to restricting public worship during the pandemic: “As in other contexts, in law, the COVID pandemic has revealed important dynamics that already existed and important trends that were already underway.” A conclusion? In essence, courts relied on “common sense and intuition,” and in the United States in particular, “Covid revealed a divide that has made consensual resolution of conflicts over religious freedom increasingly problematic, and perhaps impossible, even during a once-in-a-century pandemic.”

As the spotlight shifts to pandemic preparedness, now a central global policy issue, the search for success stories continues, including instances where religious dimensions were well integrated in national or other responses. The Atlantic chronicled what it terms an unlikely triumph: Bhutan’s quite remarkably purposeful response to COVID-19 that involved the active engagement of Buddhist leaders and communities. 

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If you have news articles, guides, or other relevant resources you wish to share with us for review please email covid19.faithresponse@gmail.com. We are particularly interested in learning more about groups facing acute vulnerabilities (refugees, elderly, those impacted by the digital divide, in fragile states, etc.). Please send us any information you see.
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