During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world have limited giant gatherings to slow the spread of the virus. Religious events, in addition to in-person worship services, have been banned in many places. In each and every region of the world, at least a few devoted teams have protested against those rules.
The Pew Research Center’s thirteenth annual report on faith restrictions in 2020 includes new research into how coronavirus-like public fitness measures affected devout teams in the year the pandemic gripped the globe. The report also shows that general government restrictions and faith-like social hostilities remained robust from 2019 to 2020.
The study analyzes 198 countries and territories and analyzes policies and events in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.
These are the conclusions of the report.
This article is based on the thirteenth annual report of the Pew Research Center, which analyzes the extent to which governments and societies around the world invade devout ideals and practices. The studies are part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which looks at and has an effect on societies around the world.
To measure global restrictions on faith in 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, the study evaluates 198 countries and territories based on their degrees of government restrictions on faith and faith-related social hostilities. The new study is based on the same 10-point indices used in previous studies.
To track those signs of government restrictions and social hostilities, the researchers reviewed more than a dozen widely cited and publicly available information resources, and added the U. S. State Department’s annual reports. The U. S. Department of State’s Freedom on the Freedom of Foreign Devotees and the U. S. Commission’s annual reportsReligious freedom. Freedom, as well as reports and databases from European and UN agencies and several independent non-governmental organisations. (Read the method to learn more about the resources used in the study. )
For the section on the COVID-19 pandemic, which is new to this year’s report, coders accumulated data from the same set of resources used for annual tracking of religious restrictions. To complement these resources, coders conducted electronic searches of English-language newspaper websites. for each country and territory analyzed, terms similar to devout restrictions and COVID-19 to locate applicable news articles. Coders also reviewed English-language global news sites and COVID-19 reports produced through organizations such as think tanks and educational think tanks. (For a list of global organizations and news sites, read the methodology. )
To ensure that GRI and SHI knowledge resources remain consistent from year to year, incidents that only appear on the websites of the registries used for the COVID-19 segment are not included in any of those indexes. However, COVID-19 incidents were included in the GRI and SHI analyses when they gave the impression of being the number one and secondary resources historically used for indices.
In 69 countries (35% of the total analyzed), one or more devoted teams defied public fitness measures imposed by the pandemic. the coronavirus. Leaders of Free Grace Baptist Church and Free Reformed Church in Chillwack, British Columbia, argued that restrictions on gatherings violated their rights and freedoms. And in the United States, a Louisiana pastor defied orders to stay in the governor’s space by holding his church premises, telling many of the attendees they had “nothing to worry about but worry. “
Religious teams criticized public fitness measures imposed through the government in 54 countries (27% of all countries analyzed), claiming that the regulations violated the freedom of devotees. In forty-five countries (23%), devout teams said limits on giant gatherings targeted them in relation to department stores, restaurants or other businesses. In Belgium, for example, a hundred Catholics asked the Council of State to cancel the suspension of all devout gatherings (except funerals), arguing that it was unfair that giant crowds were allowed through. They argued that the rule was “disproportionate and violates the devout freedom guaranteed in the [country’s] Constitution. “
In nearly a quarter of countries, governments have used physical force, such as arrests and raids, to force devout teams to comply with COVID-19 public fitness measures. In Comoros, Gabon and Nepal, police used tear gas to disperse devout gatherings that violated COVID-19 lockdown rules. In the United States, New Jersey police arrested another 15 people at the funeral of a rabbi who violated the state’s stay-at-home order. (The arrests came after some mourners messed up and argued when police tried to convert back to the crowd, according to media reports. )Their leader has refused to share club lists with the government so they can track the spread of the virus. And in India, two Christians died after being beaten in police custody; had been charged with violating COVID-19 curfews in the state of Tamil Nadu.
Authorities and social teams in several countries have blamed devoted teams for spreading the virus. In 18 countries, the government has linked devotional teams or collections to the spread of COVID-19. And in 39 countries (20% of all countries studied), Americans or teams have blamed the spread of the virus on devoted teams. In Pakistan, ethnic Hazara Shia Muslims who returned from a pilgrimage to Iran have been accused by officials in the country’s western province of spreading COVID-19, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. In Cambodia, which has a Buddhist majority, the Health Ministry in March 2020 began drawing attention to Muslims by adding a special category for them in infection rate data, after reports surfaced. revealed that Cambodian Muslims had contracted COVID-19 in a devout group in Malaysia. before returning to Cambodia. Some Muslims later said they had been subjected to suspicion and discrimination. Some Cambodian investors reportedly refused to sell products to Muslims, while other non-Muslims only wore masks in the presence of Muslims.
Private teams or Americans have also used conspiracy theories or other incendiary narratives to blame express teams for the spread of the virus. In France, social media users shared anti-Semitic tropes with caricatures of a former Jewish fitness minister depicting her poisoning a well — an insinuation that Jews were to blame for the pandemic (and a reference to a trope dating back to the Black Death of the fourteenth century).
Muslims have been the target of such inflammatory rhetoric in 15 countries. In India, for example, Islamophobic hashtags like #CoronaJihad have circulated widely on social media. Meanwhile, Christian teams have been accused in nine countries of spreading COVID-19. In Turkey, they set fire to the door of an Armenian Orthodox church and a guy told police he did it because “they [Armenian Christians] brought the coronavirus” to Turkey, according to reports.
Despite friction over giant gathering limits, devoted teams or leaders promoted one or more types of public fitness measures, such as social distancing and handwashing, in 94 (or 47%) of the countries analyzed. In Lesotho, for example, evangelical groups and Protestant Catholic churches helped raise awareness about the pandemic and encouraged others to take precautions. And in Albania, devout leaders subsidized government fitness measures and canceled devout gatherings for two months.
Overall, scores captured on the Center’s Government Restrictions Index (GRI) and Social Hostilities Index (SHI) remained strong in 2020. The average score on the GRI, which includes laws, policies and movements of government officials who infringe on devout ideals and practices, rose from 2. 9 in 2019 to 2. 8 in 2020. And the median SHI score, which includes religion-related hostilities across Americans and organizations, rose from 1. 7 in 2019 to 1. 8 in 2020 (scores on either index range from 0 to 10).
Meanwhile, the number of countries with “high” or “very high” degrees of government restrictions remained the same, at 57 countries (29%) between 2019 and 2020, a record number for the study. At the same time, the number of countries with “high” or “very high” levels of social hostilities higher from 43 countries (22%) in 2019 to 40 countries (20%) in 2020, down from the peak of 65 countries (33%) recorded in 2012.
Note: For a list of global news sites and organizations used and more main points about the resources used in the study, read the methodology.
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