Tradition and innovation: the controversial relationship between religion and pandemics

Faced with the threats of the Covid-19 pandemic, many have relied on scientists, others on religion. In South Korea, the religious practices of followers of the Church of Jesus and the Temple of the Tabernacle of Testimony caused a second wave of Covid-19. The faithful were convinced that social distancing was a sin and the virus had to be fought with a prayer to be recited hand in hand. In Brazil, President Jair Messia Bolsonaro supported the group religious practices of the Evangelical Churches during the peak of the pandemic, in violation of the prescriptions suggested by the World Health Organization. However, religious practice during the pandemic not only accelerated the spread of Covid-19. In fact, in other cases, such as the Italian and the American one, it has made use of new communication technologies in order not to renounce religious functions, but in compliance with the constraints imposed by distancing and social confinement. Religious ceremonies online have registered a high level of participation and, in some cases, contributed to enlarge the audience of traditional believers. This article aims to investigate the double, and conflicting, role that religious practice on a global scale seems to have played during the pandemic and the possible causes and consequences on the sociality and domestic life of the populations examined.