Did Religious Freedom Exacerbate COVID-19?: A Global Analysis
Did countries that became more repressive of religion during the COVID-19 pandemic, experience more COVID-19 cases and associated fatalities than countries that did not restrict religious freedom? As the pandemic raged across the world, many houses of worship defied governmental orders against publi...
| Authors: | ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V.
2023
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| In: |
Journal of religion and health
Year: 2023, Volume: 62, Issue: 4, Pages: 2799-2819 |
| Further subjects: | B
Covid-19
B Democracy B Religion B Pandemic B Religious Freedom |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Did countries that became more repressive of religion during the COVID-19 pandemic, experience more COVID-19 cases and associated fatalities than countries that did not restrict religious freedom? As the pandemic raged across the world, many houses of worship defied governmental orders against public worship, leading many pundits, policy makers, and critics of religion to express concern that churches, mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship would become incubators of COVID-19. In this view, religious freedom was seen as an obstacle to combatting the virus. In this article, we evaluate this proposition. We find that countries that maintained their levels of religious freedom throughout the pandemic were not more likely to witness higher rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths from COVID-19. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-6571 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religion and health
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10943-023-01810-x |