Study: Religious Attendance Dips Slightly After Pandemic
The study found the share of U.S. adults who generally say they attend religious services at least once a month dropped from 33% in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, to 30% in 2022.
ICU: A Community Lament
Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell offers us a poem as tribute to those who have had their lives changed by the pandemic. The struggles have been different for health care workers, parents, pastors, teachers, teenagers, the immunocompromised, service workers, and more.
Celebrating Ash Wednesday in a Pandemic? There’s an App for That
There are filters that blur “imperfections” in photos and filters that turn lawyers into cats on Zoom. Now there’s a filter to help Christians safely display the very visible Ash Wednesday mark on social media.
For Churchgoers During the Covid-19 Pandemic, a Deadly Lesson from the 1918 Flu
To gather or not to gather has been the question at the forefront of the minds of today's religious leaders and their church members. During the 1918 influenza pandemic that ultimately killed 50 million to 100 million people, different answers to that same question resulted in
Martin Luther’s Pandemic Advice Goes Viral — 500 Years Later
Luther's advice was the subject of a lunch-and-learn session hosted Friday on Zoom by Good Shepherd Church, a congregation in suburban Naperville affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
To Cope with Pandemic, Americans Choose Binge-Watching TV Over the Bible
When it comes to coping with the stress and uncertainty of a pandemic, most Americans are turning not to God, but to TV. That’s just one of the findings of a Pew Research Center survey released Friday (Aug. 7).
Learning to Color
A friend sent me a card in the mail. Tucked inside her note was a folded coloring sheet. She had already colored half of it and asked me to color the other half, then return to her. I was instantly smitten with the idea.
Historian Says 1918 Pandemic Shows Churches Can Survive Shutdowns
As churches across the country avoid in-person worship services, a historian and sociologist of religion in American life sees parallels to a previous pandemic. Historian John Schmalzbauer draws encouragement from the fact churches survived the 1918 influenza pandemic as the coronavirus outbreak continues.
A Pandemic Billy Sunday Could Not Shut Down
Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” In that spirit, it is worth remembering evangelist Billy Sunday’s face-to-face encounter with the great influenza pandemic while conducting a revival crusade in Providence, Rhode Island.