Mediated Easter: Constructing Religious Rituals in a Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic led to major lockdowns over the world in 2020. This situation severely limited the possibility of several social activities, including religious gatherings. In Russia, the peak of the pandemic coincided with the central period in the Orthodox calendar – the last week of Lent and Easter. As the Patriarch blessed stay-at-home politics, churches were officially closed for everybody but the clergy, and live streams of services on social media were organized; believers had to adapt swiftly to a new mode of copresence in church by participating in services online. To do this, they had to make a choice from the places from which the live stream was organized, transform the space of their homes to accommodate sacrality of the event, rethink the locality of their own body in being instantly at home and “in church”, and manage communication with the priest, fellow parishioners, and family members during Easter night. This involved subtle mechanisms of balancing authority within the network of sacred objects, gadgets, and people. Based on digital ethnography (including participant observation online) and 40 in-depth interviews, the paper investigates how believers constructed and reflected the space of the Easter service in their homes, and presents three key strategies: synchronization, spacing, and appellation to experience.