Interrogating Christian and Muslim responses to COVID-19 in Nigeria

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Interrogating Christian and Muslim responses to COVID-19 in Nigeria
 
Creator Ibuot, Emmanuel J. Uchendu, Chisom Kertyo, Peter M.
 
Subject Philosophy; Religion; Cultural Studies; Psychology; Philosophical Psychology; Philosophical Anthropology; Religious Anthropology; Sociology COVID-19; religious faith; health emergencies; needs; meaningfulness; Islam; Christianity; spirit.
Description The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the far-reaching significance of religion in shaping human interaction within social crises. Efforts to slow down the spread of coronavirus prompted different national governments, including the Federal Government of Nigeria to restrict large density gatherings, enforce lockdowns and promote social distancing, which were largely resisted initially. Organised religion may have influenced citizens’ compliance with government directives for curbing the pandemic. Focussing largely on providing economic assistance to people in need, it may have missed out on the reason for recourse to faith. One outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic was the need to understand the application of religious faith in explaining epidemics and health crises. This work predominantly relies on data from secondary sources (library research and internet materials). Just as it critically investigates Christian-Muslim responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seeks also to justify reliance on religion during a health emergency. By the evaluative method of philosophy, we show that although the pandemic triggered dread of annihilation, it brought in its wake a search for ontological meaningfulness. This study therefore argues that Nigerians turned to religion to meet the deep-seated, individual need for meaningfulness (‘survivability’) that is primary to the need of soul and body, which includes material donations by organised religious entities. The primacy of fulfilling this need precedes sociality both ontologically and epistemologically because meaningfulness is an inalienable property of individuality.Contribution: This work presents religion as a rationally defensible need that is fundamentally rooted in individual human nature, even in a pandemic; religion pertains to meaningfulness, which counters human fear of annihilation and meaninglessness.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-09-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Methodic Dialectics and Evaluation
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v80i1.9813
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 80, No 1 (2024); 7 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9813/27626 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9813/27627 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9813/27628 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/9813/27629
 
Coverage Nigeria; Northern Nigeria; Southern Nigeria — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Emmanuel J. Ibuot, Chisom Uchendu, Peter M. Kertyo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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