INTEGRITY AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE YEAR OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

It should be noted that the year 2020 had a specificity that contemporaries of the present times never imagined, namely the Covid-19 Pandemic, a real threat of mass disease, against which no effective defensive methods have been identified yet.  It has been eight months since Romania lived an atypical reality full of challenges and unknown. Adapting to the new reality is done on the fly, but all social systems are upset and looking for quick ways to survive a fact that escapes, for the  moment, any prediction. This unusual situation, which generated fear and one of the most unexpected methods of prevention, inevitably influenced and affected religious behaviour and especially how the rich Orthodox religious tradition is  expressed. That is why we were confronted and challenged to create new strategies and means of expressing religiosity that would allow both the preservation of the Christian Orthodox specificity but also the observance of the restrictions of  prevention against Pandemic infestation. Looking closely at what has happened and continues to occur in the direct relationship between the  Pandemic and Religious Life, we wonder if religious life has suffered or will suffer, mutations and  different positions from the spiritual manifestations known so far? Is the integrity of religious freedom threatened in the context of the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 Pandemic? And in the long run, we wonder, what mutations will be  triggered in religious behaviour? Is there a risk of diminishing spiritual and religious rights and freedoms due to the Pandemic, as a form of abuse by the ruling political power? Here are just a series of questions that will guide the following lines  and our analyses in the sensitive field of contemporary religious life.