The Critical Study of Religion and Division in the Age of Covid-19

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic presented enormous challenges for secular and religious institutions as well as religion scholars engaged in the critical study of religion. The unique opportunities for scholars of religion include questions about the very nature of our academic work. Inclusive of scholarly research and dissemination, along with the administrative work and service that facilitates this, is academic work to draw from the rich wellspring of the traditions we study and represent, or does it neglect them in the daily affairs of our work? With a particular regional focus, and despite traditional academic disciplinary conventions within the critical study of religion, this article argues that religious traditions and the critical appropriations of their wisdom and ongoing actions provide an important reckoning with the reality of the ever-changing and often terrible conditions in the contemporary world. They provide a critical feature of what it means to cultivate an ecology of ethical responsibility and care.

Youth in the Society During the Pandemic. Subjective Evaluation of the Pandemic and Its Objective Consequences for Students in the Remote Teaching Process

“…Another subject of studies were certain areas of the social reality such as accelerated digitalisation of religious communities forced by the pandemic (Kühle 2021;Barreau 2021;Ganiel 2021) or religious, ethnic and political conflicts, for which the pandemic frequently acted as a catalyst (Perry, Whitehead and Grubbs 2020;Erdoğan 2020;Sexton 2021), which was true also in Poland (Bożewicz and Boguszewski 2021).…”