God’s Wrath in the Era of the Digidemic: Religious Interpretations of Covid-19 in Ethiopia

Abstract

During the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, many Ethiopians viewed the pandemic as an expression of God’s punishment for sin. Although such interpretations reflect historical continuity, an analysis of these sentiments and of how the pandemic unfolded in Ethiopia reveal an interesting conundrum. Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic clearly has had devastating impacts all over the world, the very experiences that historically generated interpretations of divine punishment and judgement—violent human suffering and mass deaths—have been close to absent in Ethiopia. To understand why many Ethiopians interpreted Covid-19 as an expression of God’s wrath, we develop the concept of the digidemic, allowing us to recognize how the circulation of images, norms, ideas, and goods, via global and digital networks—in addition to fueling fear—created connectedness and a felt proximity, wherein far-away hot-spots and phenomena were made real and near as threats to people’s livelihood and religious worldviews.