Abstract
This article aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the religious lifestyles of practicing female Roman Catholics in Belgium. I explore how these Catholic believers manage to stay in touch with their faith and faith community in times of crisis when physical and real-life contact is very limited. In this article, I draw on in-depth interviews conducted via Zoom, carried out in the framework of my current ethnographic research project. The empirical results show how Catholic women grappled with the multiple lockdowns during the last year and a half, and how the lockdowns led to severe changes in their religious practices and routines. Many believers had to find alternative possibilities and modalities in order to preserve continuity with their religious pre-COVID-19 lives. Throughout the article, I intend to map their practices and strategies. I will argue that inquiring how religion and religious practices are performed during a pandemic can contribute to the flourishing and timely scholarship on digital and online religion and it also provides us with further insights in the performativity, materiality, and embodiment of religion.
Highlights
This article aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic occurring in 2020 and 2021 has affected the religious lifestyles and practices of Roman Catholic1 women in Belgium
As have many other religious groups and communities, the Catholic Church in Belgium had to make a swift and radical shift towards the online sphere in the spring of 2020 due to the federal measures in order to combat COVID-19. All of this raises the following questions: how do Catholic believers perceive the impact of COVID-19 on their religious practices and routines? How do they enact religion if they are not able, for instance, to attend Sunday Mass, to join their prayer group, or to go on a pilgrimage? Do they experience difficulties and obstacles to stay connected to their local
While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious practices and routines is not one of the main topics I prioritize in my research project, it often came across in the interviews I conducted since the outbreak of COVID-19
Summary
This article aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic occurring in 2020 and 2021 has affected the religious lifestyles and practices of Roman Catholic women in Belgium. As have many other religious groups and communities, the Catholic Church in Belgium had to make a swift and radical shift towards the online sphere in the spring of 2020 due to the federal measures in order to combat COVID-19. All of this raises the following questions: how do Catholic believers perceive the impact of COVID-19 on their religious practices and routines? While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious practices and routines is not one of the main topics I prioritize in my research project, it often came across in the interviews I conducted since the outbreak of COVID-19.
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