News
Friday, August 6, 2021
Pandemic Past, Pandemic Present: Masks and Social Distancing
By Andrew Gardner, PhD Last week, the Center for Disease Control updated their recommendations for combatting the new Delta variant of the coronavirus. New data suggests that while vaccines are still highly effective against severe disease and hospitalization from t
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Hartford Seminary Receives $5 million Lilly Endowment Grant
Hartford Seminary has been awarded a five-year, $5.3 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to fund research into how congregations are changing, innovating, and establishing new ministry practices as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research (HIRR) will
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Pandemic Past, Pandemic Present: Church is Cancelled
By Andrew Gardner, PhD In March of 2020, congregations across the United States made drastic and abrupt changes to their worship services and programming, shifting from in person gatherings to digital gatherings via Zoom and Youtube. One survey found that from March 8 to March 22, 2020, 84% of
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
How Have Congregations Adapted to the Covid-19 Pandemic?: Findings from the FACT 2020 Survey
By Patricia Tevington, PhD How have congregations adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic? Well, one way to answer this question is to ask them! And while we plan to do that systematically over the next five years, we do have some early insights into how churches have responded to Covid-19.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Clergy after a Year of Pandemic Adaptation: Innovation, Creativity, and Burn Out
By Allison Norton, PhD In August 2019, Hartford Seminary launched the Pastoral Innovation Network, a two-year cohort of 20 Mainline clergy across New England. The primary purpose was to gather the most innovative, early-career clergy in New England and provide them with the cross-denominat
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Anticipating a New Season: What Will a Post-Pandemic Faith Community Look Like?
By Scott Thumma, PhD It is absolutely clear that the global pandemic has accelerated the pre-existing patterns and long-term trends that existed prior to Covid-19. As a Seminary professor, I have for years been encouraging, even imploring my students to prepare to address these challenges. How
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
What Are We Learning About Post-Covid Church?
By Scott Thumma, PhD The short answer is not much yet! Since our research project is just in its early stages, and unfortunately the pandemic is still with us, many of the implications for faith communities are still speculative. However, because we have been collecting and tracking many of th