Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted traditional religious practices globally, compelling faith-based communities to adopt digital platforms for worship, prayer meetings, and fellowship. Although physical religious gatherings resumed fully after the pandemic, many university students continue to engage in online religious activities. This development raises critical questions about how students perceive and experience digital religious participation and its relationship with traditional physical fellowship. This study explored the lived experiences of Faculty of Education students at the University of Ibadan regarding online prayer meetings and physical church attendance in the post-COVID-19 era. Guided by a qualitative phenomenological research design, eleven participants were purposively selected from among students with experience of both online and physical religious engagement. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. Five interconnected themes emerged from the findings: digital convenience and spiritual compromise, factors sustaining online religious participation, the irreplaceable nature of physical fellowship, challenges of online religious engagement, and envisioning a hybrid model for the future. The findings reveal that while online prayer meetings offer flexibility and accessibility, they are perceived as inadequate substitutes for the communal, spiritual, and accountability dimensions of physical church attendance. The study concludes that a complementary hybrid approach is most desirable among students in the post-COVID-19 digital era
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APA 7th edition
In-text citation: (Fabode, 2026)
Reference: Fabode, S. O. (2026). Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students.
Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society, 14(2), Article 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190
AMA 10th edition
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Fabode SO. Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students.
Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society. 2026;14(2), 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190
Chicago
In-text citation: (Fabode, 2026)
Reference: Fabode, Sunday Oyerinde. "Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students".
Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society 2026 14 no. 2 (2026): 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190
Harvard
In-text citation: (Fabode, 2026)
Reference: Fabode, S. O. (2026). Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students.
Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society, 14(2), 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190
MLA
In-text citation: (Fabode, 2026)
Reference: Fabode, Sunday Oyerinde "Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students".
Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society, vol. 14, no. 2, 2026, 3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190
Vancouver
In-text citation: (1), (2), (3), etc.
Reference: Fabode SO. Digital religious engagement after covid-19: Experiences of online prayer and church attendance among University of Ibadan Students. Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Society. 2026;14(2):3.
https://doi.org/10.20897/apjes/19190