The response of churches to the challenges presented by the global COVID-19 pandemic invites a closer examination of the relationships between virtual and embodied religious communities during a time of social distancing. The speed and the scale of the closure of church buildings during Easter 2020 sheds light upon the multiplicity of practical, emotional, and spiritual responses to a relationship between church and people that is increasingly dominated by online interactions. Such a seismic shift in social culture opens up the possibility and challenges of a new understanding of belonging and participation in a religious community. Given its liturgical, pastoral, and sacramental significance, Easter 2020 was a highly charged moment for the relationship between the Christian churches and the faithful, and between religious worship and social media. In the shift from embodied community to virtual congregation that followed, the material absence of physical presence in collective worship was striking, as was the psychological presence of that absence. This paper analyses different understandings of religion, church, and community in the period of a pandemic, and argues for the value of an approach that situates the debates spawned in the context of historical precedent, personal experience, and theoretical approaches to networks, communities, religion, and social media.
This article explores the role played by the relationship between witch and familiar in the early modern witch trials. It positions animal familiars at the intersection of early modern belief in witchcraft and magic, examining demonologies, legal and trial records, and print pamphlets. Read together, these sources present a compelling account of human-animal interactions during the period of the witch trials, and shed light upon the complex beliefs that created the environment in which the image of the witch and her familiar took root. The animal familiar is positioned and discussed at the intersection of writing in history, anthropology, folklore, gender, engaging with the challenge articulated in this special issue to move away from mono-causal theories and explore connections between witchcraft, magic, and religion.
The impact of the Reformation was felt strongly in the nature and character of the priesthood, and in the function and reputation of the priest. A shift in the understanding of the priesthood was one of the most tangible manifestations of doctrinal change, evident in the physical arrangement of the church, in the language of the liturgy, and in the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy, which had for centuries bound priests in the Latin tradition to a life of perpetual continence. Clerical celibacy, and accusations of clerical incontinence, featured prominently in evangelical criticisms of the Catholic church and priesthood, which made a good deal of polemical capital out of the perceived relationship of the priest and the efficacy of his sacred function. Citing St Paul, Protestant polemicists presented clerical marriage as the only, and appropriate remedy, for priestly immorality. But did the advent of a married priesthood create more problems than it solved? The polemical certainties that informed evangelical writing on sacerdotal celibacy did not guarantee the immediate acceptance of a married priesthood, and the vocabulary that had been used to denounce clergy who failed in their obligation to celibacy was all too readily turned against the married clergy. The anti-clerical lexicon, and its usage, remained remarkably static despite the substantial doctrinal and practical challenges posed to the traditional model of priesthood by the Protestant Reformation.
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