Berkley Center

Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall considers how faith leaders can bridge the gap between religion and science to address the COVID-19 pandemic, applying lessons learned from the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Marshall explores how faith leaders can cast public health messages in theological terms that their followers understand and appreciate. Faith actors also offer trust, a critical asset in any public health crisis. According to Marshall, one way to leverage the trust of faith actors is interreligious councils, which proved helpful in coordinating faith response to the Ebola crisis. Marshall calls for religious voices to be better integrated in response to COVID-19 and other public health crises. The article, published in the Conversation, draws from her collaborative work to track religious responses to coronavirus.