Digitalisation and European Religious Communities Responding to the Pandemic

While, historically, religious life has been something of a refuge from the digitalisation of European society,the COVID-19 pandemic changed that.

The social restrictions imposed by the pandemic rapidly acceleratedreligious communities’ embrace of digital tools and structures in order to continue their essential social andpsychological work during this crisis.

As our preliminary research has shown, these developments haveopened up new and productive possibilities for how European religion is done, and so these developmentsare likely to persist long after the pandemic has ended.But exactly what the consequences of this rapid digitalisation of religious life in Europe will be, for majorityand minority traditions, requires further research.

How will issues such as religious authority, communitybelonging and membership, the (digital) sense of sacred place, the making of meaningful and affectivelypotent rituals, and the relationship of religious communities to the wider public sphere change when thosecommunities exist primarily, or even completely, in the digital realm?This project brings together scholars from seven European countries with backgrounds in the sociology ofreligion, anthropology, digital religion, performance studies, and allied disciplines to address these questions.The primary method will be ethnography, including both traditional and digital methods.

We will conductethnographic research on mainstream, long-established minority, and emergent or newly-built religiouscommunities in our countries in a way that facilitates both ethnographic depth and internationalcomparability.

To add to this, we will (a) review and analyse large-scale social surveys of European experienceof and engagement with religion and the digital, (b) conduct a social and broadcast media analysis ofchanging coverage of religion in response to the pandemic, and (c) conduct an aesthetic analysis of onlineand hybrid rituals with the tools of performance studies.