Religion and Faith Perception in a Pandemic of COVID‐19

Kowalczyk et al.’s article, “Religion and Faith Perception in a Pandemic of COVID‐19,” presents a study conducted in March 2020 that explores the impact of the pandemic on religious sentiment in Poland—a country marked by its Catholic heritage but varying degrees of individual religiosity. Through a comprehensive survey measuring ten demographic and psychosocial factors, the researchers found that the crisis fostered an increased openness to faith and prayer across all age groups. Notably, young adults (ages 21–35) showed unexpectedly high levels of spiritual engagement, challenging prevailing assumptions of secularization among youth. Women reported stronger intensification of faith than men, aligning with global patterns of female religiosity. Elderly respondents, facing heightened vulnerability, also demonstrated a surge in religious sentiment. These findings situate spirituality as a critical psychosocial response to a public health emergency.

The study contributes to COVID-19 storytelling by documenting how individuals turned to faith to navigate uncertainty, fear, and existential anxiety—core themes in pandemic narratives globally. It highlights how the pandemic functioned as both a spiritual and epidemiological crisis, compelling individuals to reinterpret vulnerability through religious frameworks. The authors argue that spirituality became a form of narrative coping, shaping not only personal meaning-making but also collective imaginaries around suffering, mortality, and resilience. This positions religion not merely as a private refuge but as an integral part of the broader narrative landscape of the COVID-19 crisis.