Religious Narratives of a COVID-19 Infected World
Yosra Elgendi
American University in Cairo
COVID- 19 is one of those crises that our generation and the younger generations are not accustomed to. Hence, it is possibly one of the reasons that we are ill equipped with the spiritual “skills” and “capacities” to handle such a crisis. The language we use and the way we think about it as an obstacle to economic progress, rather than a natural element of life that can reveal something profound about human vulnerability and precarity, is perhaps part of the technological era that we live in in which instrumental rationality has taken root. This instrumental rationality has entered the religious domain and shaped the religious narratives that try to make sense of the crisis. Newspapers reflect this dynamic.
Much of the newspaper reporting about the current crisis has focused on the closures that affected the houses of worship. The reporting focused on how different religions have either accepted or resisted the closures and how they made sense of them to their adherents as well as how they circumvented the closure conditions to continue praying through video-conferencing. This may remind us that religions are not extra-political after all, lest the Westphalian narrative made us forget. Indeed they are deeply embedded in a religious-political or temporal- spiritual structure and balance of power that they are expected to conform to. Hence, while the religious narratives of the crisis have a hugely consoling role to play, they also reflect within them social and political structures. I will give only a few examples of newspapers/ websites that have reflected on the religious narratives of the current crisis in the contexts of Egypt and the United States.
Some Egyptian commentators and journalists have focused on highlighting the COVID-19 crisis as a “punishment” for the wrath of God. Both pro-government websites as well as Muslim Brotherhood (oppositional) websites hosted such views. Both ascertained that there is a divine wrath but for different reasons. The Yaum- Al- Sabi’, a private newspaper with close connections to the regime, argued in an article that the narrative of divine punishment results from the lack of people’s obedience.
“God warned people against the consequences of disobedience and defiance, which include epidemics (Leviticus 26:21,25). So we remind of two times God of them took the lives of 14,700 people, and in the other 24,000 people because of disobedience in various forms (No. 16: 49 and also 9:25).
After God gave the law to Moses, he commanded the people to obey them so that they would not suffer many evils: "The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.”
Furthermore, oppositional media websites that stand against the Egyptian regime politically also joined the chorus in agreement that the pandemic is a punishment, albeit for a different reason. The reason to them is the political repression taking place in Egypt (and Syria).
“I used to tell my friends that the file may have been closed on Earth, but it was not folded in the sky, and that those who covered up the crimes of genocide in Egypt, murder and cremation on the day of the Holocaust, and covered up the killing of the Syrians, will strike upon them a thunderbolt from the sky that hurts those who did wrong in particular! My opinion was that in the face of these crimes and covering them up, the sky would intervene …”
While the Egyptian narratives focused on the narrative of the “punishment” for the “befallen” political actions, some American outlets focused on the “upcoming resurrection narrative.” For example, a Foreign Policy report highlights how epidemics were instrumental to the successful spread of Christianity.
“But the more famous epidemic is the Plague of Cyprian, named for a bishop who gave a colorful account of this disease in his sermons. Probably a disease related to Ebola, the Plague of Cyprian helped set off the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman world. But it did something else, too: It triggered the explosive growth of Christianity. Cyprian’s sermons told Christians not to grieve for plague victims (who live in heaven), but to redouble efforts to care for the living. His fellow bishop Dionysius described how Christians, “Heedless of danger ... took charge of the sick, attending to their every need.”
The narrative of the ‘positive outcome’ of the epidemic was also reiterated by the Washington Post’s reporting that the closure of the churches - as a result of the epidemic - is actually contributing to a deeper faith experience than when the churches were open with an implicit critique of institutional religion.
One in four Americans say the coronavirus has deepened their religious faith, a poll released Thursday found, including a majority of black Protestants. Just 2 percent said the virus has left their faith weakened.
Of course, these newspaper narratives are not generalizable. Needless to say, a more systematic research regarding the religious narratives of the pandemic needs to be undertaken. How can these very different views of the same phenomena be understood? These stories cannot be tied to the extent of pandemic’s impact on countries as the United States has been hit hard with some 2,888,000 cases in the US (July 2020) versus only 70,000 in Egypt up to the writing of these lines. Hence, how can these different narratives be explained?
The relations of religion with the structures of power are one way of understanding the differences of these narratives. In the Egyptian case, religion is clearly built in the vertical structures of power through which politicizing religion (ie. using religion for political ends) is only a manifestation. However, in the American case, religious bonds are horizontal bonds that can dare to discuss religion outside (and sometime even different from religious institutions). As a reaction to the political, religion is constructed as being led by the political- in the form of obedience or repression - hence led by the material and worldly. However, as a civic religion, religion is constructed as a meaning-making force for individuals and communities who are constituted by religious narratives - in part - through being consoled in times when all need a religious consolation.
