Remembering (and forgetting) COVID-19 in Britain’s religious-secular landscape

Abstract

As in many nations around the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact in the United Kingdom, and numerous efforts have been made to begin memorialising the lives lost to the virus. This article focuses on how such initiatives relate to the interplay of religiosity and secularity in contemporary Britain, arguing that the marked decline in affiliation with Christianity has impacted memorialisation of the pandemic in important ways. Looking at four remembrance initiatives perceived to hold national significance, I argue that religious-secular plurality has fed into a varied and creative memory culture, but that an absence of clear centre-ground in the processes of remembering may also contribute to powerful forces of societal forgetting.