The world’s religions face a post-pandemic reckoning

ASK A VICAR, a rabbi or an imam about the biggest challenge facing his or her congregation, and the need to foster spiritual values in a secular world may leap off the tongue. Yet the world’s religions face an equally acute but different sort of problem: how to stay in business in a material, competitive sense. In religion as elsewhere, covid-19 has helped sort out winners and losers. Churches that were catering effectively to the needs of their flocks even before the pandemic have often thrived as people worry more about death—and in lockdown have found more time to spare for worship and prayer.