Prayer for Coronavirus – Shepparton Interfaith Network

Googling Prayer during Covid-19

May 4, 2020 by Admin

Praying with the Bible In times of crisis, humans have a tendency to turn to religion for comfort and explanation. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Daily data on Google searches for 95 countries demonstrates that the COVID 19 crisis has increased Google searches for prayer (relative to all Google searches) to the highest level ever recorded. This rise amounts to 50% of the previous level of prayer searches or a quarter of the fall in Google searches for flights, which dropped dramatically due to the closure of most international air transport. Prayer searches rose at all levels of economic status, inequality, and insecurity, but not for the 20% least religious countries. The increase is not merely a substitute for services in the physical churches that closed down to limit the spread of the virus. Instead, the rise is due to an intensified demand for religion: We pray to cope with adversity.
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Call to Prayer

March 16, 2020 by Admin

The Australian Religious Response to Climate Change issues a Call to Prayer:

Let us each pray in our own tradition that communities everywhere will pull together with a common sense of purpose to slow the spread of the coronavirus, enough to allow hospitals to cope and a vaccine to be developed. May this crisis bring out the best in us, by our care with not risking spreading the disease and our offering assistance to those who are suffering because of it. May those afflicted be restored to health.

Let us pray that governments make wise decisions to protect their populations both from the disease itself and the economic impact on vulnerable workers. From this crisis, may humanity grow in wisdom such that we work together more effectively for a fairer, more sustainable world, one in which all people can flourish. Amen.

Along these lines, Avaaz has a great People’s Pledge that’s worth signing and sharing around.

Church leaders call for accurate information as well as prayers to overcome coronavirus

February 10, 2020February 9, 2020 by Admin

As a mass quarantine continued in Wuhan and surrounding provinces in China, church leaders from around the world called for accurate information and education, as well as a sense of solidarity related to the coronavirus outbreak. The death toll in China has surpassed 908, and the number of confirmed cases is now more than 40,171. There are also more than 200 cases of infection outside China.
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