The Mechanisms of the Religious Reaction on the Pandemiс of Coronavirus

Abstract

The article analyzes the reaction of religious organizations, Christian churches of Europe and Russia, to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The participation of religious organizations in countering the spread of the virus has shown that they are not archaic, they respond to social challenges. For many of them, especially for the Orthodox, the crisis sharply posed the problem of developing new forms of Christian mission and attracting people to the church. In many countries, the pandemic has helped develop interreligious dialogue. Social changes caused by the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the existing problems and accelerated the processes that were already taking place in the church life. During the coronacrisis, representatives of various churches proposed their own options of preserving European solidarity. Religious organizations in the crisis situation of the fight against coronavirus were able to sacrifice the most important thing for them – public worship, which form the basis of the life of believers in any faiths and religions. For the majority, this refusal was a test of surviving because the absence of live joint prayers is the separation of members of religious communities, the cessation of activities of individual parishes, and also the deprivation of a portion of income.