FOR MANY of Reading's residents, the pandemic has not just stopped people from meeting up - it has caused a seismic shift to the way religious faith is expressed and felt by all members of the community.
But it would be false to say it has impacted everyone equally - some communities have been able to make worship work, with the help of technology and using the limited time available to worship in unity.
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Some communities however, due to the nature of worship, the age of members or otherwise, have had limited successes.
Changes to everyday life have seen a rise in interest in religious practice of all forms, and a desire for community among the general public.
Research conducted by the University of Copenhagen showed that the level of online prayer searches in March 2020 were more than 50 per cent higher than the average during February 2020, the month prior to lockdown.
In response to this, we asked religious people from all over Reading - how has the lockdown changed how you worship, and how has the pandemic changed your faith?
Emma Major, Church Minister for St Nicolas Earley, said: "When I think about how the lockdown has affected my faith I think about the way we have come together as churches to form Earley Help Hub to serve our community in love, and how we have relied more on prayer than ever before, both individually and together.
"Personally, I have seen so many more people asking me for prayer, sharing my Facebook posts about prayer and God's love.
"People have questions about why this has all happened, and though I don't have answers, I do have the sure and certain truth that God is with us through it all and that we never need to feel alone."
Mrs Major has spent the majority of the coronavirus pandemic 'shielding' at home, due to being a clinically extremely vulnerable person.
During this time she has been writing and illustrating her poems, many of which openly discuss faith, despite being registered as legally blind.
She continued: "I have grown even closer to God, because in the loneliness of a year Shielding I have had time to be with God - in prayer, in creativity, in tears and in laughter.
"Worship has obviously changed, providing services online was a huge move and has been appreciated by congregations and people who would never normally come to church.
"But more than that, worship has become more personal for lots of us - something between me and God - more like a friendship than ever before."
19-year-old Rehan Alam would regularly attend the Aisha Madjid & Islamic Centre in normal circumstances, and has identified as Muslim all his life.
He said: "With it being not safe to congregate in the mosque, celebrating Eid and Ramadan was especially hard because you couldn't do the stuff you would usually do, like go and meet with friends or go to a restaurant after the fast.
"Last ramadan we were all put into lockdown so we were all a bit scared - it was difficult but we had to stick together.
"If anything, [the pandemic] has brought me closer [to God] and given me more time to reflect my relationship with God."
Government guidance on how Ramadan should be safely celebrated was released in April 22, 2020 - This included keeping connected via telephone and video calls as opposed to traditional communal prayer, and advising against fasting to those suffering with severe Covid-19 symptoms.
Mr Alam explained to The Chronicle that he had been using his downtime during the lockdown to look further into Islamic teachings.
He said: "I have been gaining more knowledge on how you are meant to deal with different things such as loneliness, sadness, family issues - this lockdown has given me time to look at it all from the religious point of view.
"A lot of us have done stuff which could be considered a sin, but when people have a lot of free time they turn to religion and find out about themselves and what they believe in.
"A lot of people my age have dived into it, searching for a higher purpose and looking things up on google to find out more."
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Mr Alam added: "It's just having that unity - you're not congregating in the mosque because of Covid, but you are all still praying towards same direction and at same time - it's just knowing you have that unity behind you.
"Even if you're by yourself, you're not by yourself because there's a whole religion behind you."
Sarah Firsht has been president of the Reading Hebrew Congregation (RHC) for more than six years, and had previously been on the management committee for "many many years" before then.
She told The Chronicle: "The lockdown has not affected my faith at all. The only problem is one can't entertain as one would like to, as we would usually have people around for the Sabbath, for festivals and for meals.
"If someone's in the synagogue, as they've ended up in Reading and can't get home in time for Sabbath, they would ring the synagogue and say 'could someone give me a Sabbath meal?' and we would oblige.
"Of course you can't do that now, but it's also true that we're not getting that sort of request because people aren't visiting Reading. The social aspect has been interrupted.
"Coming to synagogue is important, as there is no concept of private prayer in Judaism. it is always communal learning and communal prayer."
The RHC initially reopened on July 25, 2020 following the 'end' of the first lockdown, and began to provide communal services again before closing again in early November.
"The problem we have as orthodox community is that we cannot run services on a Sabbath via zoom.
"We stopped at the beginning of November when another lockdown started.
"We then had a couple of weeks in December but stopped because cases were rising, and people were getting anxious."
"We then started again in the first week of March [2021], because generally speaking the people who come to the synagogue are of an age where they could be vaccinated, so it made sense."
According to the Office For National Statistics, those that identified as Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu in England and Wales were at a higher risk from dying of Covid-19 from March 2 to May 5, 2020.
She added: "We've done our very best to comply with regulations, and although we're two metres apart with masks on, it's still nicer to see people than not.
"The synagogue is old building and reasonably sized, so a colleague of mine and I measured and made sure people could sit two metres apart, so we could run services from July to October.
"A gentleman from Environmental Health did come and visit us, so we showed him what we did, and I think he was quite inpressed with how we'd organised things."
The synagogue took care to provide hand sanitizer for attendees, ensured social-distancing on site, and informed members that prior booking was now required to attend the building.
Cindy Caton is one of a small community of practicing Pagans across Berkshire.
She has been practicing for more than 25 years and has attended a number of 'Moots' - communal Pagan gatherings - in the county since she and her family first migrated to England in 2010.
She said: "I have a robust personal practice and the internet helps where there's plenty of events, such as The Last Tuesday Society which holds regular conferences from a pub in London.
"It is hard as I belong to a small group, and we haven't been able to meet up in person.
"That has been difficult because they are not only my friends but my magical partners, so we had to do online rituals.
"When you're in-ritual, you're raising energy and connecting and so now doing it over glitchy computer connections and not being with each other is hard - but we got the hang of it in the end.
"Some magical practices work better in a live group, such as Voodoo celebrations with food and dancing, to raise the energy to connect to the spirits.
"I missed that because not the same doing it yourself - dancing alone in your living room is not the same as dancing with 20 different people who have the same focus."
Regardless of lockdown, Mrs Caton "would still be making connections and working with deities," she told The Chronicle.
"I consider myself a polytheist, which means I believe there are a number of Gods across different pantheons - I can appreciate people who believe in one God, but for me there's many different aspects to God."
Dr Ashok Khare, Head of Chemistry at Shiplake College in Henley, has acted as Chairman of Reading's Hindu Temple for more than 15 years.
He told The Chronicle: "Lockdown was an unimaginable situation, and for the Hindu faith it has mainly affected communal worship and social gatherings.
"For instance, Hindus celebrate various festivals throughout the year where congregation would like to visit the local Temple and offer their prayers and respect to the Lord.
"The Reading Hindu Temple undoubtedly plays an important role in organising these celebrations for the entire Hindu community in Reading and surrounding Thames Valley areas.
"However, due to national restrictions the festivals were not celebrated in the normal way."
Immediately after the lockdown, Reading Hindu Centre’s Executive Committee (EC) activated a plan of telecasting the festival celebrations and religious services live via the Temple’s well-established social networking services.
Dr Khare continued: "The number of views recorded for the festival telecasts, which many times exceeded thousands [of views], simply proved the essential-ness of our religious services, and how much congregation valued them.
"India, where Hinduism originates and where the majority of Hindus live, has always been attacked by foreign powers.
"The first thing all of these foreign powers have done is destroy millions of Temples - however, Hinduism has not destroyed; it has remained as intact as it was always.
"In true sense, Hinduism is a way of life - and simply gets passed on from one generation to the next. Lockdowns or such calamities have no powers to destroy a faith."
Revd Ross Meikle, based at St Luke's C of E Church, Erleigh Road, was an apprentice Vicar in Witney, Oxon., when England first went into lockdown.
He said: "We weren't able to meet in church buildings in the same ways, so all of sudden I was working out anew how to connect with God in my home and on my own.
"I used to do morning and evening prayer on Instagram live, to keep disciplined.
"I think that people are asking questions about life and looking for something to sustain them day by day, and as we suddenly lose so much of what we're used to, everything turns inward.
"People are reaching out to find things like prayer and community and engaging with people in different ways, and looking for God in the other and trying to access something that often feels inaccessible."
It's true - the word 'prayer' saw a surge of Google searches worldwide during the start of the pandemic.
The word 'prayer' was related to a number of rising 'breakout' searches (of which have had a "tremendous increase" in searches, according to Google Trends), including "Prayer march 2020", "prayer for coronavirus" and "covid prayer".
The Reverend continued: "The youth group I had, we met on Zoom and we had had to rethink what we would be doing - you are already on-screen for school all day long, how much more screen do you need?
"We recognised that there were times we could meet outside, socially distanced, and work out how to have non-contact games and discussions.
"There's been a lot of re-imagining, but at the core of it is recognising that we are communities who are doing our best to love one another, and to love God and to support one another through a very dark season in our lives.
"There have been times when I was definitely frustrated with God because I was looking for a new position for a job and then the world stopped, so I was going through process of having to re-establish my trust in God.
"My relationship with God has been the key thing that has kept me going.
"I found myself listening to worship music, and that always brought me back to the idea of God being a comforter and being strength.
"The words from those songs and from the Psalms were really good sources of insight and hope."
The Chronicle made several attempts to contact the Shinfield Brethren community hall, the Aisha Islamic Centre and the Reading Gurdwara, however did not receive a response in time for publication.
How has the pandemic made a difference to your experience as a religious person? Feel free to let us know in the comments below:
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