Published in the Review of Faith & International Affairs, Senior Fellow Katherine Marshall draws on the multiyear work of the Religious Responses to COVID-19 project to assess how religious communities worldwide experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and how they have in turn shaped responses to the pandemic. This article focuses on religious public health responses, religious gatherings, and practices such as funerals, and the remarkable responses, especially at the community level, offering social safety nets to people devastated by lockdowns and economic crises. Stigma, violence against specific groups, effects on women and children, and mental health are central challenges. The pandemic casts new light on contemporary forms of religious practice, community, mobilization, and engagement.
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