Despite COVID Measures Lifting, In-Person Church Attendance Remains Stagnant
Mask mandates are receding, COVID-19 cases are declining, and more houses of worship are going back to normal — holding in-person services once again.
But attendance at those in-person services has not risen over the past six months, a new report by Pew Research found.
READ: Virtual Reality And Livestreams: How Online Church Will Continue Post-Pandemic
About a third of Americans said they typically attend religious services once or twice a month. Among them, 43% reported their houses of worship are currently open and holding services the way they did before the pandemic — an increase of 14 percentage points in the last six months and up 31 points since March 2021. Only 5% said their houses of worship are still closed to in-person worship, about the same since September 2021. Coronavirus-related restrictions, like wearing masks, are being rolled back in houses of worship.
In March, 67% of Americans who attend religious services reported that they physically attended, while 57% said they attended services online or on TV during that time.
The number of American adults attending religious services in person rose from 13% in July 2020 to 26% in September 2021 and is now at 27%. Over the same period, the proportion of Americans who say they have streamed religious services online or watched them on TV in the past month has decreased from 36% in July 2020 to 28% in September 2021 and now 30%.
READ: Some Churches Take Virtual Worship All The Way, Ditching Buildings Entirely
About 36% have attended services both in person and online in the past month. The survey indicates that 21% may be substituting online attendance for in-person attendance, and 12% of regular attendees said they have attended neither online or in person over the past month.
“While religious congregations as a whole may have experienced a large drop in physical attendance during the pandemic, there’s good reason to believe that virtual attendance is much higher today than it was before the coronavirus outbreak began in early 2020,” the report states.
In a July 2020 survey, 18% of all American adults said they watched religious services online or on TV for the first time. Black Protestants are more likely than evangelical and mainline Protestants to say that they attended services virtually, and all of those groups are more likely than Catholics to say they attended online services.
Camila da Silva is an intern for Religion Unplugged from Brazil. She is the 2022 Arne Fjeldstad scholar at the John McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute at The King’s College in New York. You can find her on Instagram @silva.jornalismo.