SEARCHING GOD IN AMIDST OF PANDEMIC INTERESTS IN RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The public interest in religion/spirituality (R/S) during the COVID-19 pandemic was assessed to investigate the pandemic's effect on society's beliefs. Selected keywords in R/S, COVID-19 and non-communicable diseases were queried form Google trend in a five-year interval. Further statistical analysis was done to gain insight from the data. Cumulative normalized search volumes were compared with each other for each year. There is a clear relationship between the search for COVID-19 and R/S keywords during 2020. This relation can be seen as a coping mechanism through terror management, a piece of evidence against the common view of the problem of evil and an agreement to previous religious economy studies. This relation can provide researchers with a unique opportunity to test various hypotheses in psychology and behaviour. It can also attract policymakers' attention to rethink their mental health policy planning and service development during and after the pandemic.