The pandemic shined a bright light on the digital divide among congregations. Students of congregations specifically, or service organizations more broadly, already knew there were wide  disparities in the adoption of technology, but as congregations made the rapid switch to virtual platforms in March 2020, the differences became glaring.

The Polis Center’s Religion and Urban Culture 2.0  project was designed to describe and analyze congregational adaptation to many broad social changes, with communication technology as one very important change. But we could not have known how central this technology would become to our research. We have been observing virtual worship and conducting our interviews via Zoom, so even our own research methods became part of the digital story we need to tell. Read more here.

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