Religious Services in the Age of COVID-19: Results From a Recent Survey (Part 1)
About two months into the pandemic, I launched a survey of churchgoers, asking about their experiences with the church. The results of that survey are described in an earlier series of articles here on Mosaic. After looking through the results of that survey, the Siburt Institute partnered with the Pruett Gerontology Center to launch a new survey in early October on the effects of COVID-19 on religious congregations. A total of 744 people responded to the survey and attended church at least a few times per year pre-COVID. Of those 744 respondents, 12.1% attend a Church of Christ, 21.2% identify as Roman Catholic, 8.7% percent attend a non-denominational church, and 6.6% are Southern Baptist.
In terms of basic demographics, a little over half (52.5%) identify as female. The age breakdown shows that 22.8% of respondents are 18 to 29 years old, 26% are 30 to 44, 25.5% are 45 to 60 years old, and 25.7% are over the age of 60. The majority of respondents have completed at least two years of college. Over half of respondents are working at least part-time, with another 18% retired, and 8.2% not working due to COVID-19. Over half (52.8%) of respondents are married with another 22% of respondents who are single, never married. In terms of where respondents live, 14% are from Texas and the rest are fairly evenly divided between 43 other states and the District of Columbia.
Now, let’s talk about what these respondents have experienced over the last seven months. Over two-thirds (76.1%) of respondents reported that their congregation moved to some form of virtual meeting, 16.7% continued in-person meetings, and the remaining 7.3% reported that their congregation either stopped meeting altogether or had some alternative such as a drive-in church or other outdoor gatherings.
How did virtual gatherings go? How satisfied were respondents with various aspects of the virtual worship service? Overall, respondents reported being satisfied or neutral about the various aspects of virtual church. Fewer than 10% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the following: technology use(7.6%), changes to the service times (6.6%), praise/worship time (8.0%), or the content of the sermon or message (5.2%). Slightly more people were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the sense of community provided (16.3%) and the ability to connect with others (21.5%).
Of the respondents whose congregations moved to virtual-only, 60.1% had resumed meeting face-to-face in some capacity, while 39.9% were still virtual-only as of mid-October. Of the respondents who reported that their congregation had resumed in-person gatherings, 28.7% reported that they had not attended. For those whose congregation has resumed in-person meetings but they themselves had not yet gone back (about 95 people total), 40% said that they didn’t think it was safe to return to large gatherings, 26.3% said that they or someone in their household was at higher risk of complications from COVID-19, 7.4% had had work conflicts, and 9.5% preferred the flexibility of the virtual gathering. About 17% selected the “other” option and wrote in an answer. Of these, several just missed church that day because they overslept or got busy, several reported that they hadn’t attended yet because of a lack of children’s church or childcare, some failed to RSVP in time, and one respondent said that the church leaders had encouraged those over 65 not to come because they are more “vulnerable.”
For the most part, people reported that they attended virtual church gatherings about the same amount as they attended pre-COVID.
So, how have in-person services changed in response to the pandemic? Here I am combining those respondents whose congregation remained in-person plus those whose congregation moved to virtual and then began meeting in-person again. Very few respondents (10.8%) said that nothing had changed, and they tend to be in smaller congregations in parts of the country that had not experienced high rates of COVID-19 infections. The two biggest changes reported were physical distancing (58.8%) and masks being required (50.5%). Additionally, many respondents reported smaller numbers of attendees (36.7%) and canceling classes for children (24.7%). Other changes included shorter services (22.2%), eliminating some parts of normal worship (17.3%), eliminating or reducing the amount of singing (17.4%), holding services outside (14.7%), encouraging but not requiring mask-wearing (14.7%), and having members RSVP for a church service to ensure space for physical distancing (11.7%). Some churches also added additional services (6.7%) or moved services outside (14.7%).
For those who said that their congregation was still only meeting virtually (a total of 220 respondents), we asked why, and 32.3% said it was due to state and/or local government restrictions, 50% said that their church leadership felt it was not yet safe, 7.3% said that the decision came about from the results of a survey.
Of the respondents whose congregation had not resumed meeting in-person at the time of the survey, the vast majority reported that they were very much looking forward to a time when they can gather together (80.9%), felt anxious about attending larger services (68%), and believe that church will have to look different in the future (74.6%).
There were many more questions asked in the survey that deserve their own post, so stay tuned for future installments.
