In a Pandemic Are We More Religious? Traditional Practices of Catholics and the COVID-19 in Southwestern Colombia
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In a Pandemic Are We More Religious? Traditional Practices of Catholics and the COVID-19 in Southwestern Colombia Diego Meza 1 Received: 22 June 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The relationship between times of crisis (natural disasters, pandemics) and religious behaviour has been the subject of long debate. Theoretical models of religious coping propose that adversity caused by adverse and unexpected events instigates people to use religion more intensively. This research explores this hypothesis, comparing the effects of religious practices among people who declare themselves Catholics in the Department of Nariño, Colombia, during the coronavirus pandemic. I found that gender, the type of religious practices and the frequency of pre-pandemic participation are significant predictors of religious intensification. These findings, as well as the description of the ideas and reactions that the people of Nariño have about COVID-19, contribute to a more nuanced understanding of religious behaviours and the significant implications for the future of Catholicism in this region. Keywords Catholicism . Coronavirus . Religious coping . Religious practices . Sociology
of religion . Colombia
Introduction Recent studies on religious behaviours suggest the correlation between fear and beliefs. The literature exposes two causal links: fear motivates religious faith and then the last one mitigates fear (Donovan 1994; Ellis and Wahab 2013; Jong et al. 2013; Jong et al. 2017; Wen 2010). The former has to do with a feeling of helplessness in the face of annihilation itself. Hence the answer is an “effort”, “imagination” (Hayden 2003; Hepburn 1992; Trevors and Saier 2010), “illusion” (Becker 1973: 202) or “desire” that encourages the idea of * Diego Meza [email protected]
1
Assistente, Facoltà di Scienze Sociali, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Piazza della Pilotta, 4, 00187 Roma RM, Italy
International Journal of Latin American Religions
immortality, be it literal or symbolic (Cicirelli 2002; Dechesne et al. 2003; Unamuno 1989). At the base of this notion, there is generally the affirmation of the existence of supernatural beings, the practice of certain rituals and the regulation of behaviours through moral codes. The latter indicates that all this religious experience mitigates the anxiety produced by the awareness of one’s own finitude. Thus, religious people would enjoy lower levels of anxiety thanks to their rites, norms, community ties and belief system (Jackson et al. 2017; Jong et al. 2017; Wen 2012). Although there is empirical evidence of the previous relationship (Daaleman and Dobbs 2010; Harding et al. 2005), other proofs show that beliefs can also increase fear of death (Homans 1941). For example, the feeling of eternal damnation could arouse the fear of dying. From another perspective, the theory of the apprehension of death (DA) stresses that death does not always produce the same fear. This response is not directly related to the religiosity of a person but
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