Religion, Law, and Coronavirus

An interesting site, run out of the University of Pisa, covering breaking developments in many countries with many articles in English.

The site is DiReSom.net (no apparent connection with the rare word diresome):

The health emergency caused by the contagious virus Covid-19 is having many consequences also on religious rules – more broadly for the difficulties raising from the possible contradiction between the respect for the measures taken by civil authorities and religious rules. International law allows for the limitation of the right to religious freedom on the grounds of protection of public health, and we are witnessing a situation of unprecedented restrictions on the global scale.

As scholars engaged in the study of the legal regulation of the religious phenomenon, we have wanted to create a space to collect documents, comments and other useful materials related to the emergency, in order to assess the outcomes of the normative choices made by civil and religious authorities.

DiReSom (Diritto e Religione nelle Società Multiculturali – Law and Religion in Multicultural Societies) is a research group created in 2017 within ADEC (Associazione dei docenti della disciplina giuridica del fenomeno religioso – Association of academics of the legal regulation of the religious phenomenon). Its activities are carried out also in collaboration with the European Academy of Religion. It is coordinated by Pierluigi Consorti, full professor of Law and Religion at the University of Pisa and chairman of ADEC.

It has articles (many just posted today) on developments in Europe, East Asia, North America, and the Middle East, and it looks like it will have many more. Right now it's chiefly about how churches are deciding whether and how to temporarily replace in-person services, but I expect it will cover other topics as well. Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.