Dr Ivan Khovacs explores how the current social restrictions are affecting religious communities and how they join together for worship.

“The reality is that for people of faith, sacred spaces provide a particular sense of divine presence, a sense of community, identity, and of belonging.

“Faith is about belonging, about having a shared faith, about having a shared story. So we simply cannot reproduce the physical material experiential part of a shared meal online.

“We in the faith communities, we’ve had to mend and make do in the past few weeks. We’ve had to hold onto the ancient, migrating over to online media. But even as social media distancing rules continue and the closure of worship spaces stretch into periods of grief, and of frustration, and of absence, I see people of my Church congregation becoming more grateful for the things that we really miss.“

Dr Ivan Khovacs is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies.