Finding the Silver Lining: The Church, The Virus, and The People : How has the Syriac-Orthodox Church adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden?

Sammanfattning: Assyrians/Syrians have for over two millenniums been part of the congregation of people that used to live in the Middle East in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey. Various circumstances in the form of persecution, war, and, starvation in recent decades resulted in Assyrians/Syrians fleeing their homeland and emigrating to countries around the world. Sweden is today one of the countries with the largest Assyrian/Syrian communities over the globe. What interested many Assyrians/Syrians in residing in one of the world’s most secularized countries, Sweden, is because of various factors. One of them is that it is known for its great religious freedom, which attracted many crowds to locate themselves here. This study focuses on the Syriac-Orthodox church’s approach to the global COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden and how the consequences of this crisis affected two Syriac-Orthodox churches. Little is known about the impact that this pandemic has had on the Syriac-Orthodox Church in Sweden, which raised both a need and an interest to explore. Qualitative methods were applied in this study to explore this alluring topic, and it also allowed me to look into the experiences that were brought up in the interviews told by the active representatives of these two churches. Among the myriad challenges that the pandemic has posed to our world, one that deeply worried religious leaders was whether and how to worship, which is the lifeblood of faith, could be practiced without a community gathered around in a common worship space. Mandatory quarantine and only the assembly of a very small number of the faithful being permitted, with strict social distancing and masks wearing guidelines, obviously diminished the regular liturgical celebration but was not made impossible. The results of this study show that even in our darkest times, the 2,000-year-old tradition has been changed, reshaped, and derived, but remains today, stronger than ever.