Religion

Keeping the faith: religion in the UK amid coronavirus


It started with a tap on the microphone. Then a voice echoed around the west London housing estate: “We are passing through the valley of the shadow of death, but we are not alone.” It was Sunday 19 April, when the Covid-19 pandemic was at its most intense in London and the earth was shifting beneath our feet.

The Rev Pat Allerton, a Church of England vicar, pressed a button on his phone to play Judy Collins’ powerful rendition of Amazing Grace, and something extraordinary happened.

Faces appeared behind glass, windows opened and people leaned out. Residents came on to balconies. Some held up small children to see. A woman aided by a walking frame shuffled on to a path. A couple of older men in vests stood with their arms crossed; women in hijabs came out of their homes; a man wearing a kippah stopped to listen.

The Rev Pat Allerton prays for NHS workers outside University College hospital in London during the peak of the pandemic in the UK.



tion on Tottenham Court Road to broadcast prayer and Judy Collins’ rendition of Amazing Grace to passersby



19 April: Locked-down residents of Colville Square in west London look out of their windows to hear Allerton’s prayers from the streets below.



19 April: People stop to listen to Allerton’s message on a Sunday afternoon as churches remained closed.



Amazing Grace faded and Allerton took up his microphone. As he began the Lord’s Prayer, some people bowed their heads, some put their hands together, some mouthed words taught many years before. A few wept. No one laughed or jeered or heckled. In the middle of one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth, this was a communal moment of spirituality.

A month earlier, the Church of England had suspended services and locked its church doors. Mosques cancelled Friday prayers, temples closed, synagogues shut. At a critical moment when people were frightened, uncertain and in desperate need of comfort and hope, congregational prayer and worship, the cornerstone of organised religion, was no longer. Faith leaders were forced to find new ways of reaching out.

Allerton decided that if people were unable to go to church, he would take church to the people. He rented a cargo bike, borrowed a sound system and bought a portable generator online. He was uncertain how people would react to his bite-sized services on the streets, in estates and outside hospitals. But he said: “I’ve been amazed by the response. People feel very emotional. They are looking for answers.” The crisis had shown a “spiritual hunger out there”, he added.

11 April: At 8pm on Holy Saturday, the Rev Canon Aidan Platten steps out of his home to light the paschal candle from the Easter fire outside Norwich Cathedral. For only the second time in its 900-year history, the cathedral is closed.



  • 11April: At 8pm on Holy Saturday, the Rev Canon Aidan Platten steps out of his home to light the paschal candle from the Easter fire outside Norwich Cathedral. For only the second time in its 900-year history, the cathedral is closed.

24 May: Pushpa Chaudhary, 85, prays to a Hindu shrine in her porch at home in Southall, London



  • 24 May: Pushpa Chaudhary, 85, prays to a Hindu shrine in her porch at home in Southall, London. Her son Vivek says: “She’s asking the gods to protect the house, protect all the family and to protect everybody at this time.” There has been a shrine in the porch since the family moved to the house in 1970. “Everyone has added their touches to it,” says Vivek, who contributed a Spurs scarf.

As Covid-19 tore through the world, Google searches for “prayer” rose by 50%. According to one survey, a quarter of British adults said they had prayed for an end to the crisis.

Russell Brand, the comedian and activist, mused on this subject on Instagram. “People want to know how to pray all of a sudden. There was a time not that long ago when we thought that prayer and religion was redundant, that mankind could answer all of our questions through technology,” he said. Prayer was a recognition that life on earth was “limited … on some level we know [it] is not enough.”

Five million people tuned in to a service led by Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, at a makeshift altar on his kitchen table on 22 March, broadcast on the BBC and Facebook. The C of E, which has seen a steep decline in churchgoing in recent decades, said it was the largest single “congregation” in its history.

13 April: A Sikh devotee prays outside the closed Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick during the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi.



13 April: An NHS driver stops his van to offer a prayer as he passes the closed Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick during the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi.



Clergy at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square were astonished to find more than 1,000 people joining their online morning prayer sessions. At St Nics in Durham, more than 2,300 people watched a streamed service one Sunday in March, compared with a normal attendance of about 300.

The Church of England launched a 24-hour free phone line for Christian worship and prayer, aimed at people with no or limited access to the internet and offering “words of comfort and hope”. More than 6,000 calls were made in the first 48 hours of operation.

3 May: The Rev Helen Chandler conducts a Sunday service in her garden outside St Peter and St John, an Anglican church near Lowestoft, Suffolk



  • 3May: The Rev Helen Chandler conducts Sunday service in her garden outside St Peter and St John, an Anglican church near Lowestoft, Suffolk. The outdoor altar was blessed by a bishop, allowing Chandler to conduct services here while the church remains closed. “I’ve spoken with more neighbours in the past month or so than I had before,” she says.

Other faiths and denominations saw similar trends. Anglicans, Pentecostals, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and others rapidly developed or expanded online prayers and services. Remarkably, the transfer of faith to the easily accessible and informal virtual world unleashed a new experimentation.

“People who might be curious but perhaps inhibited by unfamiliar dress codes or arcane rituals discovered they could try out faith anonymously, log in to different services, even cross religions,” said Ed Kessler, founder director of the interfaith Woolf Institute. “You might think: I wonder what happens at Muslim prayers – now you can find out.” Rather like a pub crawl, people could do a “place of worship crawl”.

As religious leaders learned to master the mute button, some sought more creative ways to keep the faith.

30 April: Sophie Matkovits (second left) celebrates her batmitzvah with friends and family around the world via Zoom from her home in Finchley



  • 30 April: Sophie Matkovits (second left) celebrates her batmitzvah with friends and family around the world via Zoom from her home in Finchley. “Judaism has always had to adapt,” Rabbi Miriam Berger tells the virtual gathering.

30 April: During lockdown, the yad (pointer) was passed from family to family as they held bar and batmitzvahs



  • 30 April: During lockdown, the yad (pointer) was passed from family to family as they held bar and batmitzvahs. Lynne, Sophie’s mother, picked up the yad from the front garden of another family, and after the ceremony she disinfected it and left it on the doorstep to be collected by a family celebrating a batmitzvah the following week.

In Stamford Hill in north London, Europe’s biggest ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the closure of synagogues and the government’s edict to maintain physical distance from people outside one’s household were grievous blows.

Two weeks before lockdown began, Jews celebrated the festival of Purim with prayer services and parties, where dancing, singing and embracing almost certainly spread the virus. Two weeks after the start of lockdown, as the Jewish death toll from Covid-19 was rising at an alarming rate, Passover – traditionally another time of communal worship and family feasts – was marked in isolation.

For many Jews, the directive from faith leaders to pray at home or online was not simple. Many ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jews have limited access to the internet, and the use of technology is prohibited on Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath. Moreover, a minyan – a physical quorum of 10 males over the age of 13 – is required for prayer. How could they meet both the requirements of their faith and the coronavirus constraints?

4 May: Haredi men form a minyan – a quorum of 10 men required for Jewish worship – for shacharit (morning prayer)



  • 4May: Haredi men form a minyan – a quorum of 10 men required for Jewish worship – for shacharit (morning prayer). They congregate across neighbouring gardens in Stamford Hill, north London, in order to socially distance.

Joel Snitzer had an idea. The owner of a construction company and the father of 10 children, Snitzer went to the synagogue to pray three times a day before lockdown. Now the synagogue was locked, but perhaps he and his neighbours could form a minyan, each separated in their own back garden.

Over a weekend, he built a bimah, a raised platform from which the Torah is read, where his garden meets the garden backing it. He fetched the Torah scroll from his synagogue. The neighbours agreed on a daily act of worship at 9.45am. To all intents and purposes, they created a backyard synagogue.

7 May: Because all synagogues are closed, members of the tight-knit Jewish community of Stamford Hill come together in their front gardens and on the roadside so that they could form the minyan required for daily prayer.



  • 7May: Because all synagogues are closed, members of the tight-knit Jewish community of Stamford Hill come together in their front gardens and on the roadside so they can form the minyan required for daily prayer.

7 May: In order to form a minyan, each participant must be able to hear the chazzan (person who leads the services).



“We’re fortunate to have so many of us living in adjacent properties,” he said one morning in early May. “Jews have had many challenges in our history, and we usually find a way of adapting – and this is what we’ve done now. People are thriving on it, especially the older generation who can’t leave their homes.”

After attaching tefillin – small leather boxes containing handwritten parchments – to his forehead and bicep, winding the straps seven times around his forearm and hand, Snitzer adjusted his tallit, or prayer shawl, and climbed the steps to the bimah for their daily act of worship. In gardens and on flat roofs, his neighbours gathered with their prayer books.

7 May: Rabbi Daniel Epstein conducts a funeral at a Jewish cemetery in Waltham Abbey for a victim of Covid-19, broadcast via Zoom



Not quite all the neighbours: the family living next door to the Snitzers are Muslim. Wass Bham had no problem with daily Jewish prayers. “I think it’s a good thing that people find a way to practice their religion and achieve a sense of community in a safe way at this time,” he said. “Muslims and Jews have a lot in common. And at the end of the day we are living side by side.”

15 May: Raheema Caratella reads to her family from the Qur’an.



By then, Bham had been fasting during daylight hours for two weeks, with another two weeks still ahead of him. Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, was an unprecedented challenge this year, with people unable to go to the mosque to pray after sunset and prohibited from sharing their iftar meals to break the daily fast with loved ones.

15 May: Irhfan Mururajani leads his family in prayer at their home in Leicester during Ramadan.



  • 15 May: Irhfan Mururajani leads his family in prayer at their home in Leicester during Ramadan. “This is the first time I’ve done the night prayer with a female member of my household,” he says. “The very first time we are praying as a whole family. It’s a lovely feeling.”

“This is something completely new for us,” said Mohammed Kozbar, the chairman of the Finsbury Park mosque, shortly before Ramadan began. “We would normally have about 2,000 people coming through the mosque every day – even those who don’t normally pray. Now the mosque is locked and empty. It’s heartbreaking.”

The silver lining was the chance to spend more time with his family, he said. With the closure of mosques, Muslim men and women began praying at home together for the first time. It was “one of the small blessings we can see in this horrendous situation,” said Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, a Leicester imam.

3 April: The Baitul Futuh mosque, the largest in western Europe, empty at Friday prayer time during the first full week of the lockdown.



  • 3 April: The Baitul Futuh mosque in Morden, the largest in western Europe, empty at Friday prayer time during the first full week of the lockdown.

The East London mosque, which serves the UK’s biggest Muslim community and usually has around 7,000 people in attendance on Fridays, decided – similarly to Allerton – that if people couldn’t come to the mosque for iftar, they would take iftar to the people. In partnership with the charity Serving Humanity, throughout Ramadan they delivered hundreds of meals to Muslim and non-Muslim staff at the Royal London hospital.

20 May: Imam Faruq Siddiqi, the Muslim chaplain for the Royal London hospital in east London, prays in an empty consulting room during Ramadan.



  • 20 May: Imam Faruq Siddiqi, the Muslim chaplain for the Royal London hospital in east London, prays in an empty consulting room during Ramadan.

Iftar meals are cooked and prepared for distribution from Saffron Kitchen in Leyton by the charity Supporting Humanity



Iftar meals are cooked and prepared for distribution from Saffron Kitchen in Leyton by the charity Supporting Humanity



  • 16 May: Iftar meals are cooked and prepared for distribution from Saffron Kitchen in Leyton by the charity Supporting Humanity. In conjunction with the East London mosque, meals are delivered to NHS workers at the Royal London hospital.

20 May: Nurse Ayesha Khan breaks her fast with an iftar meal delivered by Serving Humanity and East London mosque



One recipient, Boshura Khatan, a respiratory and cardiac nurse, said the hospital felt like “a war zone” when Ramadan began. She had prioritised her patients over her prayers on many evenings and had often gone home with a “banging headache” after a 12-hour shift in full PPE and with no food or water. Ayesha Khan, another nurse, also had not always found the time to pray. “I feel sad about it, but I also feel I’ve become closer to God through this crisis. My faith has definitely deepened.”

For many people, the pandemic has led to a fundamental recalibration of the way we live and what is really important. In contemplating mortality, the question “is this it?” takes on weight and urgency. No wonder there has been some degree of religious revival – but how enduring it is remains to be seen.

16 April: Father Rayner Wakeling, of St Silas church in King’s Cross, prepares to deliver a service to his parishioners via Facebook from his home



  • 16 April: Father Rayner Wakeling, of St Silas church in King’s Cross, prepares to deliver a service to his parishioners via Facebook from his home. “I didn’t initially think I would do any live streaming. Certainly celebrating mass at home on my own was going to be really strange. [But] on Sunday something like 300 people watched on Facebook, compared to around 35 people who come to church each week. Well, I was amazed!”

Now some faith leaders are asking themselves whether the changes in the way they have practiced their faith under lockdown will leave a lasting mark. In conversation with Kessler about the new religious landscape, Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, wondered whether time was up on the concept of religious institutions as “official brokers” between people and God. Joe Aldred, a Pentecostal bishop, said lockdown had “solidified my longstanding sense of wanting to understand God beyond the euphoria of what happens on a Sunday”. Isolation, he added, could “enrich the spiritual experience”.

Faith leaders had adapted surprisingly quickly to new circumstances, said Kessler. “They have generated new communities, some of which will survive. But the institutionalisation of religion will be less important in the future. People might want certainty, but they don’t want rigidity.”

Allerton had similar thoughts. Of his church congregation, he said: “Like any family, we miss each other and we long to be back together. But there’s been real learning about how to reach out and reconnect with the world. Our message stays the same, but its delivery needs to move with the times.”

5 June: A Ghanaian funeral ceremony takes place outside the home of a 59 year-old man who died in March



  • 5 June: A Ghanaian funeral ceremony takes place outside the home of a 59 year-old man who died in March. The undertakers brought his coffin to his home in Croydon so his family and friends could hold a religious ceremony on the roadside. “The deceased man was in our care for two months while the family waited in the hope that they could have a traditional funeral. I’ve seen people’s faith tested to the very limits,” says the funeral director Gary Valentine-Fuller.





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