The 'Religions Geek' on how COVID has impacted religious awareness

Brian Carwana never planned to become an expert on religion. He started his professional life in business, as a strategy consultant and venture capitalist. But that all changed about 20 years ago when he met a man named J.W. Windland. The encounter changed the course of his life — ever since he's been devoted to researching and educating others about religions around the world, as the executive director of Encounter World Religions.

COVID in turn has changed the lives of many religiously-observant people, Carwana told Tapestry. He shared some of the ways he thinks the challenges brought on by the pandemic have fundamentally altered how people practice their respective faiths.

Here is part of his conversation with host Mary Hynes.

How does a guy with a business degree become a scholar of world religions? Where did this start for you?

It was completely unplanned. I ran into the guy who founded this unusual centre Encounter World Religions. He was just this quirky American Southerner who started walking into Hindu temples in Toronto in the 1980s, which no one did back then. And I bumped into him and I was fascinated first by him, but then he took me into Sikh gurdwara, and he took me to Wiccan covens and Zoroastrian temples. And I saw all of this in Toronto where I already lived, and I thought, Where am I? I've never encountered anything like this. I always say I'm not sure I chose it. It sort of chose me. And so, yeah, I completely changed my career around 20 years ago.

And are you a believer yourself?

I don't belong to any of the religious traditions. I grew up Catholic and I was a committed Catholic into my 20s. But now I find something valuable in all of them. I'm inspired by the Sikhs and their commitment to service. I love going to the synagogue. There's a Jewish rabbi who I just love listening to all the time. I'm deep friends with this imam whose basic humility and kindness inspires me. But none of them is quite fully home. And yet at some time, at some level, they're all a little bit home.

What have you seen during the pandemic? What are some of the ways different religious traditions have adapted to a very different way of being in community?

I would say that the reach has been broader but shallower. If you can reach people all over the place, people can connect from across the country. A lot of communities say that their attendance has actually gone up at some of these events because folks who are at home and can't make it can easily connect in. But it's a shallower connection. You're not there in person. You're not engaged in the ritual. And so there's a lot lost. 

Have you found that certain religious traditions have been more hampered by COVID than others? Are there certain faith groups that have felt the loss of that in-person community more than others?

It does affect different communities differently. The more that your religious practice is based on teaching and preaching, the easier it is to kind of transfer some of that to Zoom. A community that I think has suffered a fair bit on this front has been the Sikh community. One of their most central practices is "seva or service", and the number one way that that's experienced is through what's called langar. Langar is a kitchen. And when you go into a Sikh gurdwara, there is an obligation that everyone always be offered food. And they do it by volunteer labour. Part of the practice for many people is going into the kitchen and cooking and then serving people, and then cleaning up after them – and then in turn being served. Lots of religious communities do this a little bit – you know, they have potlucks or something. But with the Sikhs, it's like a central part of identity. For many Sikhs, it's the main way that they connect to their tradition, to their community and to God. And you can't do that on Zoom. So I remember talking to a Sikh friend who said for his community, he thought it was really, really a big loss.

Do you think the pandemic has awakened any other opportunities in the realm of spirituality if we're thinking of the big picture?

Yeah, very much. So you can now go online and listen to female Koranic reciters. Typically, women – there was a frowning on them doing this. But with technology, there's more of them doing this. Maybe you're gay and Hindu. Well, you can go online now and find access to those sorts of things. So if you have a marginal identity or if you're in a group that doesn't have power, it opens up new avenues for groups like that. It also opens up the opportunity for people who kind of like to sample different things. It makes orthodoxy, I think, a little bit harder to maintain.

Technology in general sort of can create more space for individualism, if you will, for people to find little niches and subgroups. And we see the negative side of that with conspiracy thinking and stuff like that. But it also allows people who might – in a community of 100 – feel like they can't speak up, to go online and find out that there's a lot of other people like them. So it does open certain doors on that front.

We have this enormously religiously-diverse country, and yet we have a couple of biases in Canada. And one is that you can't talk about religion, that it's somehow dangerous or volatile. We've been taught to sort of stray away from the topic — we remain illiterate.- Brian Carwana

A lot of the work you do is in the area of religious literacy. And I'm really interested in your big picture view of that as well. If I just say the phrase "religious literacy" in the context of Canada, and talking to and about Canadians, where would you say we are?

Oh, it's such a good question. We are not in a good place. We are one of the most religiously-diverse countries on the planet. People think the United States is religiously diverse, which it is. But most Canadians don't know that we have – proportionally, we have about twice as many Buddhists, two and a half times as many Hindus, four times as many Muslims as there are in the United States. And with the Sikh community, probably 12 to 15 times as many Sikhs. So we have this enormously religiously-diverse country, and yet we have a couple of biases in Canada. And one is that you can't talk about religion, that it's somehow dangerous or volatile, which I don't think is really true. And so since we are illiterate – we've been taught to sort of stray away from the topic, we remain illiterate. And we're doing this at a time when our country is more and more diverse in our boardrooms and our schools and our neighbourhoods.

Well, you've touched on something really important there – the idea that fear is a part of this. So what's a good way to ask a question? What's a productive way to open that conversation if you don't want to be stuck in religious illiteracy?

Oh, it can be small things – I mean, something simple, like maybe the person belongs to a tradition. And you just say straight up, "I don't know much about your community. Can you tell me something about it?" Maybe you find out they have a religious holiday. Holidays are wonderful. "What's the religious holiday? What were you celebrating? How did you celebrate? What sort of foods do you eat or what practices do you engage in? What daily practices are there, weekly practices?" Almost anything. My predecessor, J.W. [Windland], he liked to say, "Everybody likes to tell their story." 

And the truth is, if you just open the door, it will – honestly, it's a great way to connect with people.

This interview had been edited for length and clarity. Written and produced by Kevin Ball.