Content analysis of khutbahs read in mosques in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Religion is a belief system that includes metaphysical elements, the sacred, or the idea of God as a supernatural force, and offers believers a lifestyle in certain patterns. This belief system, which is thought to have existed together with human history, has a very close relationship with social life. Religion is very effective and functional in certain issues in social life. These topics are; such as social control, social integration, mentality building, socialization, identity building, preservation and transmission of culture, legitimization, structuring and regulation, organization. In this study, the relationship between the concept of khutbah and the Covid-19 epidemic, which emerged in China in 2019 and spread throughout the world in a short time, has caused radical changes in many areas of our social life. The aim of our thesis is to analyze the position of religion in coping with problems in the face of an extraordinary situation such as the Covid-19 outbreak, through "khutbah" in the context of disaster sociology. The scope of our study consists of 123 khutbah from the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 published on the official website of the Presidency of Religious Affairs. In this study, the qualitative research method was adopted. The topics mentioned in the khutbahs were divided into categories by creating codes and subcodes, and the relevant topic mentioned in each sermon was placed under these codes, thus obtaining monthly and annual numerical data. Then, these data presented in tables were analyzed using the content analysis method. In our study, it has been observed that the Presidency of Religious Affairs uses the khutbah, which is one of the communication tools used by the Presidency of Religious Affairs to reach a large segment of society, as an effective means of notification; that a significant amount of contact is established between the events on the national and world agenda and the contents of the khutbah; that agenda items belonging to other social institutions such as health, family, education, and security are conveyed to people through khutbah; and that in extraordinary situations, the functions of sermons such as legitimation, social awareness, social integration, mentality construction, and meaning are directly and indirectly utilized.