The Religious Landscape in Bulgaria and Lithuania: Spiritual Resilience and Religious Practice among Academic Youth during COVID-19 and the War in Ukraine

This article examines the spiritual resilience and religious practices of Bulgarian and Lithuanian youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis includes two periods of ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Lithuania and Bulgaria between 2022 and 2024. The study aims to: analyse the manifestations of religiosity during the COVID-19 pandemic, using content analysis of scientific literature; and present the manifestations of religious and spiritual practices that emerged from an analysis of empirical ethnographic data. The results of empirical data reveal that social distancing and adaptation to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the need for religious practices and changed the expression of these practices. In conclusion, faced with the threat posed by the pandemic, academic youth have resorted to various survival strategies in the form of both traditional religious practices and alternative spiritual practices that allow them to maintain hope, meaning, emotional stability and spiritual resilience.