Trauma and Lived Religion in Times of Pandemic: Resilience and Responses

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Religions will focus on trauma and lived religion in times of pandemic. In particular, we seek to explore the implications of bringing trauma and religion together, so as to increase our understanding of the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times; and the ways in which individuals and communities negotiate, transfigure, and transcend traumatic events and radical situations of anxiety, uncertainty, and vulnerability.  

The current pandemic has impacted religious practices and responses in various ways. As the pandemic interrupts life and reconfigures the ways we see, know, understand, and engage with the world, lived religious world-making processes involve negotiations of various relationships between body, community, fear of death, anxiety, coping mechanisms, meaning, and the sacred. These processes take place in a realm where earlier taken-for-granted references have been traumatically interrupted and stripped of their previous significations. Lived religious subjectivities can, however, inform post-traumatic coping mechanisms, significantly contribute to the re-envisioning of traumatic responses, and open a regenerative realm of action, coping, and resilience.

The aim of the Special Issue is, therefore, to bring together scholars from different areas, disciplines, and interests to explore the links between lived religion and trauma studies in the context of pandemic times. Using lived religion as an approach to the interdisciplinary study of trauma allows for a wider interpretation of meaning and also provides an opportunity for a better understanding of spirituality, resilience, hope, anxiety, meaning making, religious coping, and rituals. It is this lived experience that itself invites an interdisciplinary approach and more inclusive and nuanced interpretations. Granting recent scholarly developments in attending to the disrupting power of traumatic experiences and its influence on lived religious world making, a profound reflection on the meaning of trauma for society, identity, religion, and everyday life in pandemic times is called for.

We invite contributions to this Special Issue based on empirical research and innovative theoretical constructions. We also hope that this Special Issue will inspire new topics and frameworks in the study of lived religion, trauma, and pandemics as possible sites of new knowledge production. Researchers from the social sciences, humanities, religious studies, and practical/empirical theology are invited to contribute to this volume.

Topics might include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• Public health and religion;
• Collective trauma, uncertainty, and resilience;
• The esthetics of illness and trauma;
• The history of plagues and religion;
• Materiality, lived religion, and pandemics;
• Pandemics, trauma, and rituals;
• The politics of trauma and pandemics;
• Conspiracy theories, trauma, and religion;
• Theology of illness and trauma;
• Finding meaning in uncertain times (religious, spiritual, and secular);
• Digital ethnography, trauma, and pandemics;
• Lived religion, fear of death, and trauma;
• Religious coping and pandemics;
• Trauma, communities, and pandemics;
• Religion and vaccination.

Dr. Srdjan Sremac
Mrs. Lenneke Post
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• trauma
• lived religion
• resilience
• pandemic
• religious coping
• meaning making
• uncertainty
• vulnerability