Judd Birdsall is Director of the Cambridge Institute on Religion & International Studies at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University

Dramatic moments and extreme cases often help to clarify issues, expose boundaries, and create opportunities for fresh thinking. The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of those moments for a whole range of issues, including issues related to religion.

As I reflect on the past several months of the pandemic and on the 14 weeks of our webinar series exploring the religious dimensions and religious freedom implications of the lockdown, I am struck by three main observations.

First, the lockdown has provided a civics lesson on the permissible limitations on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). Second, the varied religious responses to the pandemic have reminded us of the “ambivalence of the sacred.” Third, the lockdown has had significant—and divergent—impacts on levels of religiosity. Let’s explore each of these observations in turn. (more…)

Marco Ventura is Professor in the Department of Law, University of Siena and Director of the Center for Religious Studies at Foundation Bruno Kessler

The pandemic has amplified the already existing challenge to the modern construction of religion as separate from science (and medicine, health and well being in particular), the economy and the public sphere (society, politics, government, etc.). Whatever the topic and the region, and whoever the speaker, our webinars have constantly and systematically exposed such challenge in its multifaceted reality. As we have been experiencing disease and death, failures and achievements, fragility and strength, we are brought to realize better than before that the re-articulation of religion and science, religion and the economy, and religion and politics is a global challenge, with multiple, and sometimes conflicting trajectories and variations. The transition from the crisis in global health to the crisis in the global economy is only going to broaden and dramatize the challenge. Hence the responsibility for experts and actors, for religious leaders and their communities, to work for better knowledge and for better action. (more…)