kevdonahue

I tried to go back to church. It wasn’t worth it. And now I am worried that this pandemic is an extinction-level event for organized religion. I don’t think I’m overstating the situation.

I was patient through the pandemic. I attended remote Sunday service on Youtube for most of the past year and a half. I watched the remote-only offering, which was shorter than an on-person service. I marveled at the production values and the ability of my ministers to connect through a screen. I jumped into the comments section and said hi. I joined the virtual coffee hours on Zoom.

But I got lost this fall, when it was decided we could return to in-person worship with restrictions. The barriers put in place (proof of vaccination, required pre-registration to attend, extremely limited seating) meant that services were attended by no more than 30 people. That, in a congregation of nearly 300.

Beyond restrictions, the hybrid models seemed to prioritize the TV show side of things and made the in-person version feel distinctly second class. Much of the service was directed over the in-person attendee’s heads and referenced the folks watching from home.

Even worse, one Sunday I attended with an understanding that a guest minister would deliver the Sunday message. He did—from his home. We watched on a screen, after I went through the effort to attend in person.

Later in the fall, as covid hung in there, we prohibited in-person attendance and broadcast the in-person service without people. I can speak only for myself, but it is unfulfilling. Going through all the in-person tropes without actual people there is defeating in a powerful way.

We’ve passed my breaking point. I have no plans to attend in-person or remotely going forward.

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I’m not alone, apparently. This story in the Wall Street Journal lays it out pretty concretely. Church attendance across denominations has decreased by somewhere between 30% and 50% since the start of the pandemic, according to a research firm that surveys religious life in the U.S. That sounds optimistic at my congregation, where there have been no more than 25 people (again, in a nearly 300-person congregation) attending a single service this fall.

My brother-in-law, who attends a nondenominational, evangelical Protestant congregation in Maryland, says the leadership in his church is asking how many of the 4,000 pre-covid members are still on board. “We’re not sure if we’re a 4,000-person church, or 3,000, or even 2,000,” he says.

I am concerned that post-pandemic life will split into in-person and remote models, with the remote workers/worshipers effectively first class in terms of accommodations but second class in terms of support. While the “remotes” will participate, the in-person co-horts will gobble up the promotions and positions of prominence in their respective communities. Meanwhile, virtual church members will increasingly reduce their contributions as they question why they should support an expensive (and to their mind, unnecessary) physical presence, while remote folks will scale back their efforts to match what they perceive to be a lack of reward and opportunity. I don’t think any of this is churlish or selfish; it’s a natural consequence of the situation.

There is an expectation that many religious congregations, across denominations, will not survive this shift to a hybrid model. Honestly, I think this is an extinction event for many a religious community. As I discern my next steps, I will advocate for a religious community that prioritizes in-person worship. Absent a huge change in covid’s trajectory (say, a variant that makes even vaccinated co-mingling a deadly risk), that’s where I’ll be.