Immigration, Faith and Belonging

Dr. Allison Norton is Associate Professor of Migration Studies and Congregational Life at Hartford International University, where she directs the Pastoral Innovation Network of New England and co-directs the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. She teaches courses in sociology of religion, immigration, and multicultural and intergenerational ministry. Her research and publications explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. congregations, the rise of megachurches in West Africa, the transnational dimension of African Pentecostalism, the role of migration on the worldwide expansion of the Christian faith, and the religious identities of the “new” second generation.

Join us as we delve into the fascinating intersection of migration, religious identity, and the evolving landscape of church engagement with Dr. Alison Norton, an expert in migration studies and religious research. Discover insights on how digital spaces, demographic shifts, and multicultural dynamics are reshaping communities of faith in the post-pandemic world.

Key Topics:

• The religious identities of second-generation migrants, especially Ghanaian Americans
• How churches serve as homes and communities for diaspora populations
• Trends in religious participation among youth and the impact of globalization
• Virtual church: engagement, multitasking, and participation metrics
• The rise of "multiple belongings" and congregational shopping
• The impact of demographics on mega church growth in Africa
• Clergy mental health and wellness during and after COVID-19
• The significance of trauma, loneliness, and relational health in pastoral life
• Practical implications of online worship, accessibility, and hybrid models
• Trends in clergy part-time vs. full-time wellness and city-wide church collaborations

In this episode:

• Dr. Norton discusses her research on the religious motivations and identities of second-generation Ghanaians in the U.S.
• The role of church as a community hub for migrants displaced from ancestral contexts
• How digital worship participation is measured and understood, with surprising findings on multitasking
• The concept of "multiple belongings" and how church shopping can foster ecumenical relationships
• Demographic influences on the growth and decline of religious groups globally
• The evolving mental health landscape among clergy, including burnout and relational loneliness
• The enduring impact of virtual worship on church life and future considerations for ecclesiology
• Encouragement for communities to foster mutual care, connection, and flexible belonging

Timestamps:

00:00 - Welcome and introduction to Dr. Allison Norton
 02:45 - Understanding the religious identities of second-generation migrants
 05:11 - How church serves as a place of belonging for diaspora communities
 08:20 - African megachurches: demographics and growth trends
 11:42 - Research insights on virtual worship participation and multitasking
 16:57 - Online engagement, distraction, and theological implications
 21:56 - Accessibility and convenience in digital church models
 26:31 - Multiple belongings and church shopping: ecumenical opportunities
 33:43 - The impac

Podcast Disclaimer:

Please be aware that the opinions and viewpoints shared on this podcast are personal to me and my guests, and do not represent the stance of any institution.  This podcast aims to present findings for open discussion and dialogue, inviting listeners to engage critically and draw their own conclusions. While the content serves informational purposes, it is not a substitute for professional advice. Thank you for joining me on this journey of exploration and conversation!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:08

I'm so pleased to be joined today by Dr. Alison Norton. She's an Associate Professor of Migration Studies and Congregational Life at Hartford International University, where she directs the Pastoral Innovation Network of New England and co-directs the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Alison teaches courses in the sociology of religion, immigration, and multicultural and intergenerational ministry. Her research and publications explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on US congregations, the rise of mega churches in West Africa, the transnational dimension of African Pentecostalism, the role of migration on the worldwide expansion of the Christian faith and the religious identities of the new second generation. Hello, Alison. Hi, great to be here with you. It's so lovely. You've got to be the most communicative podcast guest I've had. Straight back, just letting me know that you got my email. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I get to have at least something that makes me stand out from the crowd.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Alison, I I actually just want to understand your work from your what is religious identities of the new second generation? And what what are you finding at about that?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, well, so I um part of my just biographical journey is that I lived as a young person in West Africa in Ghana in my 20s. And when I moved back to the US after being there for a couple of years, I joined a Ghanaian church in Los Angeles. And as an applied researcher, as someone who's really interested in not just doing relic research for Research, but having it be potentially practical and useful for religious communities, I quickly found out that one of the real questions that was just emerging out of the Ghanaian diaspora experience was how do we pass on the faith to the next generation, our American-born children and their children? And so that just sort of started a research trajectory for me that was just sort of, okay, these are the questions coming out of this community. How can I use my skills as a researcher to help collect some data to provide some insights in what's going on? And so I did focus groups and interviews with um second-generation um Ghanaians in the US and just tried to figure out more about their religious journeys and their relationship with the church. So that's kind of how that came to be. It's fascinating. And what did you discover from that piece of work? Yeah, um, I would say that one of the things I uncovered is that oftentimes I think religious leaders and parents both point to the other as the one that's primarily responsible for faith formation. So parents say, Oh, it's the church leaders that should be doing religious education with my kids, and clergy say, No, it's the parents that should be doing faith formation with the kids. And one of the things that I found is that it's just both. In the spiritual autobiographies that I heard, you know, young people were talking very much about both of these areas being really formative in their own spiritual trajectories and journeys.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

And in particular, was there anything that was found to come out time and time again? Were there any particular activities or routines that families and churches had?

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, one of the things that came up time and time again in almost every single interview I did is um church as home and church as family. So they talked a lot about, you know, I grew up in the church. I was born into the church, my aunties, uncles' family, right? This sort of this broader community, um, which I think is a lot about the story of immigration and displacement. That in in places where you're growing up removed far from your parents' ancestral community, the church really takes on a much stronger role, I think, in serving as a place of home, a place of belonging, right? A lot of those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah. I did pick up one of the slides that I was hearing you share, and you you talked about um well, I think we will get to it, but one of the things that you said is assuming that English is a like if we can all speak language, that means we're all there's a you know, I think you use the word or my AI note taker used the word we're all assimilating into the into the culture. Is it kind of like we assume that people are assimilating into church culture just because we speak the whole the same language? Um, is there anything in particular that translates into migrants feeling like church is home, church is belonging? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Well, I think one of the real questions that we're looking at right now is what's going on with young people and religious identity. If you look at all in in the news, you'll see all these stories popping up. Like the Catholic Church is seeing large converts from young adults. Um, you know, this the sort of story of what's going on, it seems like young people are are coming to church more. And I would say if you look carefully at the data, I don't think we see a huge picture of sort of religious revival or young people all coming to the church. But you do see some different things happening with Gen Z. And so I think, you know, one of the things to pay attention to is we've told this story for a long time, it's been the story of the rise of the religious nuns, right? That it wasn't so much about faith transmission as it was disruption. And and so I think really paying attention to how this differs for the children of immigrants, for um, for the children of religious but not Christian faiths. So, you know, if if we take a careful look at Baha'i and and Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim faithfulness, right, it's gonna look a little different. And I think part of that is is being able to take a careful look and dig into the data a little bit more and say, how does this story of assimilation differ, right? It's not a single story, it's not a single pathway. But if you look at the experiences of young people, they have a sort of multitude of trajectories, and a lot of them come out of their you know experiences in life.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Faith transmission versus faith disruption. So I'm assuming faith transmission comes from you grow up in a particular family and they tell you the faith and you practice the behaviors. What's faith? Am I right? Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah. What's faith disruption?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Yeah, I mean, sometimes this is religious switching. So you might grow up as a Catholic and then decide later in life that you want to be a Buddhist, right? So there's a switching that happens where you still maintain a religious identity, but it's not the one of your parents, right? It's not the one that you were born into. What we've seen more increasingly in the US and many parts of the world is a disruption where it's a loss of religious identity, right? So it's I grew up as a Catholic, and then I reach adulthood, and then I choose to identify as a person with no religion. So I that's what I think of as that kind of disruption.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So understanding that, really getting underneath that and listening well to why that might be happening. That's really interesting. About a year and a half ago, my husband and I went to Kenya. It was our first time in Africa, and we were blown away by the movement, the church movements over there, and also learning that it's a very young continent, uh, I guess in terms of people, people group ages. What's some of your interest in in the rise of mega churches, role of what's your interest in, or what are you seeing in Africa?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, well, I will say that demographics matters, right? So you you talked about your experience in Kenya and like wow, this is a really youthful country. And I think that's something that um when we think about these broader trends and how people are choosing to identify religiously, what's happening in churches, we don't often think about demographics, but demographics matter. So if you just look at the US and you say, why why don't we have you know children in church? Why aren't there young people in church? Well, part of this is that we don't, our birth rates are so much lower, right? So Christians aren't giving birth to a lot of children in our in our in our country. And so I one of the things that I I would just sort of say is when we look at the experiences in different parts of the world, we we need to pay attention to what's going on. And I would say that one of the really striking findings over the last few years from global studies out of the Pew Research Center is really looking at some of these generational stories where it's not decline, it's not less practicing of religion over generations, but increase. And there's only two countries in the world that they study that show this, and one of them is Ghana, which is where I lived in West Africa, that younger generation Ghanaians, by some of these ways that we measure how to be religious, seem to be more religious than their grandparents. Now, that can get a little tricky. It's like how you measure these things also matters, right? Like, would you count grandma, you know, in the village, her her view of religion, would you measure it the same way as um, you know, an urban-centered 20-something professional in Ghana, right? So how we measure these things matter. And I don't know that the 20-somethings are more religious than grandma, but it does say something, right, about the way in which religion matters in the in these contexts where you find young people who are pairing their professional trajectories with their religious trajectories. They're seeing the church as a place of belonging, of support, of encouragement. Um, they're not leaving that behind, but seeing as aligned with, right, these other priorities in their life.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Um, when you were in uh Houston, I heard you present some things. And feel free to redirect the conversation if what you presented was only a tiny aspect of what your work is. But I really was very interested in what you were seeing in a post-pandemic online digital space. And there are a couple of things that you said that um piqued my interest. So can I understand the data that you had? Are they from New England or is it from the US broadly?

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So it's uh it's the US, it's a national sample. Okay. So the data that I was referencing was collected in late 2024 from an attender survey. And so we surveyed people who do attend religious services in the United States, and we had over 24,000 responses and then weighted that data to make it representative of attenders across the US. So it's a pretty robust sample and really gave us some wonderful insights into questions that people often don't know the answers to. Things like what are online worship virtual attenders doing while they're streaming the service, while they're listening to the podcast, right? What are they with what are they doing? Um, so this survey just gave us a lot of insight into these questions that it's hard hard to know what's going on in the other side of the screen in virtual worship. What are they doing? Yeah, okay. Thank you. I set that up well. Thank you for asking that. Um okay, so not surprisingly, about two-thirds of them say that they're multitasking. So they're doing something else while they're worshiping. Okay, that didn't surprise me at all. I also think though, that if we ask this question in a face-to-face service, that we would also see people saying that they're multitasking during a face-to-face worship service. Think about the ubiquity of us, you know, using our phones to send a quick text or answer an email or make out our grocery list, right? All of all of these things. But one of the things that surprised me is that very high percentages of them are participating along with the services in a meaningful way. They are praying along, over 90%, right? Praying along with the service, singing along. I think it was about 88% singing along with the service. So it surprised me to see that it's not so much a story of passive watching as it is about a level of participation and engagement. That surprised me a bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

The school principal in me wants to tell those, I think 64% who are multitasking and saying that's not real, you shouldn't be doing that. But being the open-minded researcher that you are, how do you see that?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, I mean, you know what? I see it as indicative of the world we live in. I think that you know, you know, just my my own life. I think about how often I'm sending an email, watching a television show, talking to my child, feeding the dog, all of these things at the exact same time. And I just think that's the world that we live in. We live in a world of a of divided attention. And we can say that that's bad or or try to work against it, or we can also say this is this is the way we've structured our lives. And so doesn't it make sense that church also reflects that reality? And I think it raises new questions for church leaders. What does it mean to create opportunities for engagement for online people, right? For the virtual worshippers, don't just assume that they're passive. How about you bring them into meaningful opportunities for volunteering in that space? Meaningful opportunities to participate, because a large percent of them are doing that. So I think then it it sort of shifts the nature of the conversation when you ask the question, how can we increase their participation? instead of just saying, how can we decrease their distraction?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Love that. I must admit, because you probably wouldn't have seen this, but as you were presenting this, a number of us around my station where I was, we kind of all confessed to what we were doing when we were multitasking, you know. I mean, you know, what is multitasking? Is it okay to eat your breakfast while you're watching an online service? And one lady said, actually, I go to Costco into the service. But I think you're right, because even my 20-something children in university, 90% of their university life is online. And so they're doing multiple things as they are listening into the lecture. However, it's interesting over dinner they will have their favorite lecturers because the lecturer keeps them completely engaged and is able to utilize a variety of things to keep them participating in a non-punitive way. You know, there are some lecturers who will say, Well, you know, I'll be taking attendance before and after. But I think they admire the ingenuity of a lecturer to acknowledge that this is how they are consuming the lecture, but at the same time figure out a way to keep them together. So maybe that's what I'm hearing from you is we want to look at it that way, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

That's right. And and I think clergy are doing this, but it's also um challenging when you are the extreme generalist, right? All of the the clergy that I talk to, they're they're generalists in a way that hardly any other career is, right? And so now they have to sort of figure out how do I become the tech expert, the virtual worship expert. Um and so a lot of times this can feel overwhelming. But our research has shown us consistently um from 2021 through now that it's really virtual worship that's probably the largest enduring pandemic-related impact affecting congregations. This this is not something that went away after lockdown periods. It has endured. And so you still have the vast majority of congregations offering some form of virtual worship. We still have clergy, our latest survey from the end of 2025, still have clergy saying, you know, my success most successful initiative over the past few years, virtual worship, right? So clergy are ready to engage the space. I just think that sometimes we come with our preconceptions of sort of what's going on on the other side. And sometimes, you know, it's sort of like, is this worth my time and effort? And I think our data would say it is worth something, right? It is worth thinking creatively about how we can engage online audiences. And, you know, overall, the virtual participants, if you look at them as a group, um, about, you know, little more than a quarter of our attenders engaged online, right? Not exclusively, but in but in some way. And I think that they are less involved and and committed to their churches by some markers, like the amount of money that they give, right? Um, their their attendance level. But there are subsets of that group that are very highly committed. You think about particularly how this affect is related to age. So the oldest online attenders are often the most committed to their churches, because they're usually people that are homebound or face difficulty in travel, but they're still very committed to their church, to their community. So they're still giving regularly, they're showing up every Sunday in the virtual space, even though they're not there in person. So they're different segments, right, of this group of online folks.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

So, do you think from your data, what are the things that have improved or enhanced our congregations through the through the digital and virtual space?

SPEAKER_00 18:35

So we've talked about accessibility. I mean, accessibility is a big one. And so that is, I think, something that the pandemic for some clergy became an eye-opening moment just to think about health, accessibility, like some of these broader things that are not just important in a COVID world, but are important in any world, right? Any world that we live in, these things are important. They just rose to prominence in some ways. So accessibility is one. I will also say um that the number kind of one factor that people reported is why they chose online was convenience. And so you ended up getting parents with young children, often in that hybrid space where they would both worship online and worship in person. So you think about the challenges of raising a family and young children and all of the competing priorities on your time. So having the opportunity for a parent of young children to have the convenience of going online means that they're more likely to be involved in some way. Otherwise, they would probably just not go at all, right? In in person. If there was a week they were traveling for a sporting event or something else in their kids' lives. So that factor of convenience, I think, is another area that shouldn't be discounted because it's meeting people where they are and sort of their needs that they have as they think about their priorities and all of their commitments they have. Another one I would say, and just this enduring impact on the virtual side of things has to do with virtual giving as well. So one of the things that we've known for decades is that churches that offer forms of online giving have higher per capita giving. And so it's also related to that convenience of making it easy for people to give. And the pandemic did lead to an increase of churches shifting who maybe previously only had opportunities to give in person on a Sunday morning, now embracing e-giving. And I think that has a real financial benefit to churches. Our our data would would show that.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

As a psychologist, and do you consider yourself a sociologist? Is that your discipline? In between anthropology and sociology, I'll take either one of those. Anthropology is like my new favorite thing to promote. I think we need to take an anthropological view on the issue. There we go. You know, I may have my views as a Christian as to why we meet in person and a biblical worldview of that. Do you ever get that tension though as you're presenting your data of going, but what does it actually mean to be a gathering? Shouldn't we be meeting in person, face to face? Are we just promoting consumerism if we give in to convenience? Do you ever encounter that as you're presenting your data? Mallory, all the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

All the time. Uh it and and and it's in our data, not just when I present it, but even in the data, you know, themselves, because we get clergy who specifically say that they know that the virtual option is a preference for part of their community. They know and increases their reach. I mean, they use that terminology a lot, right? It expands our reach, um, that they could reach people that otherwise they they couldn't. And at the same time, there's this sense of loss, or even sometimes a sense of threat. Like because we're offering virtual, that's threatening our in-person engagement. So they'll say things like, you know, the people have just gotten comfortable worshiping online, they've gotten used to it. And so there is, I think, some grieving there a little bit. And I can certainly understand that it's very different to preach to an in-person congregation compared to preaching to a hybrid congregation where you have, you know, both in-person and online. So I hear that a lot, but I also see strong embrace as well. So you have clergy that maybe came into this not having the skills, but have said, look, this is a real benefit to us. What if we go in open-minded? What if we embrace it? So you see multiple kind of views on virtual worship. But I think it's important to know it's still enduring. So even the people that have a sort of pragmatic or a slightly dismissive approach still tend to do it, mostly because they say, our people want this, right? Our people want this, and so we'll we'll keep doing it because they say they want it.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yeah. I suppose it's holding that appreciation that change happens, and if we can understand what's underneath the change. I mean, there was a time when we'd all watch free to pay TV, and now, you know, hardly anybody does it. Anymore, you know, we're all watching at least four to six episodes in one hit through streaming. It's understanding those shifts and also understanding, I suppose, that the generations coming up that this is what they're growing, this is how they're formed, this is their only worldview that they're seeing. So that's I think that's in an interesting tension to have. I don't know that we have the answers, but I guess what I'm hearing from you is whether or not we wrestle with it one way or the other, it is happening.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah, it is. It is happening. And so I think you can you can come out whichever way you want on that. But if you're still continuing to offer it, it's worth thinking about the theological reasons, like why, right? Why the the broader sort of ecclesiological questions around like what you're saying, what does it mean to gather? What does it mean to gather as the church? And so having those those kind of conversations and not only think about the practical side, but think about these foundational elements around purpose, around mission and vision, around the theological rationale, right? To kind of tie that in with the practical side of virtual worship.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

In your presentation, you mentioned multiple belongings.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

I'd love to get you to explain that. Yeah. Um, so building off this idea of the availability of virtual worship, the availability of online worship, we were sort of curious if this led to an a sense of increased opportunity for what you might call church shopping, uh, a sort of risk-free way that people might participate in multiple churches. And so we asked about this, and it was something that's not usually asked in surveys. So again, it was like a kind of exciting finding for us to think about. And we did find that 46%, almost half, 46% of attenders said that they were regularly participating in other congregations outside of the church that they they were, you know, answering about in the survey. And this was a little bit surprising. I mean, that think about half of people saying they regularly participate in multiple congregations. And so I think one of the things that I thought about there is that it's not just though about the online reality that 36% of them said they do this regular participation in person, right? In person. They do this regular participation in person. So it's not just about a virtual engagement. For many of them, it's we're we're attending multiple churches. So thinking about how this might, you know, kind of turn out. So many people go to a Bible study at one church, go to a Sunday morning worship at another church, send their kids to a youth group at a different church, join a book club at another church. Another church, yeah. So you think about these ways which these multiple belongings are just part of the lived experience and reality for so many Christians. And this, I think, also helps clergy ask new questions, right? So, what does it mean if our starting point for partnership with other congregations isn't at the top level, but it's already happening at the grassroots, right? That our members, our attenders are already engaging in these networks of connection and community in perhaps ecumenical ways, right? That is a very grassroots way to think about the possibilities for partnership, for collaboration in ministry at a time when many clergy feel strained, right? They feel the tension strain to try to kind of do it all, um, where the reality is that their people actually don't see them as the one to do it all. They're they're going in other spaces, right? And building out the richness of their spiritual and their religious life in ways that transcend their their local church congregation. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

So it's almost like if looking at it from um a community, not just of within a church, but who are the churches around you? How are congregants and even inviting their friends? So even this week, I discovered you know that there are people in our church who are really benefiting from going to another church in a d in a different denomination within sort of a five-kilometer radius. I don't know what that is in miles, maybe like three miles or something radius. But bringing one another along and bringing friends along, and that's for a variety of reasons. It may be more accessible for a friend to get there. And maybe in that particular church there aren't steps, or you know, the particular demographic is is welcoming for their friend, whereas, you know, the church isn't. So that's an interesting view of actually looking outside and seeing how we can partner with one another to serve the the broader community. And you're finding that people, you said about half of people are doing this anyway. And it's not just about attending multiple services, because I was thinking, how are they finding the time? Yeah, just do so many church services. It's actually just participating in the life, whether it's volunteering or social activities.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Right. That's right. I mean, you think about all that churches do, it's it's it's programs beyond a Sunday morning worship service, right? So there's a lot of activities and programs, it's community involvement and outreach, educational opportunities, right? There's a whole range of things that churches do. And I think the thing that I would say that maybe helps clergy see this in an appreciative way. I I think you could look at this and say, you know, if people are dividing up their time among multiple churches, that means less time for me, right? Less time for for my church, less commitment, less volunteering. Our data don't show that. Okay. Our data show that for this group that has this multiple belonging or multiple participation model, it's not an either or. It doesn't lessen their commitment to that church. It seems like they're just people who just need more, right? They have a sort of approach that says, I'm not gonna just shop at one grocery store. I'm gonna shop at three grocery stores to get all the ingredients that I need for my religious life. So I'm not just gonna do this one church. I love this church, but I also love to listen to the podcast sermons from this other church. And I also love the book group, right, at this other church, but it doesn't necessarily mean a lessening of their participation, right, in in their in their main church, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Is there a particular age group or is this across the board? Do you think this is happening?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

So I I think that with the with the multiple commitments, if I if I remember from our data, there aren't necessarily big age cohort sort of differences in this reality. Although I I would have to go back and look at our young people to see. Yeah, to to kind of look carefully at that. So I I'll have to look a little bit more carefully and come back to you on that one.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah. Anecdotally, I feel like it would be spread because it's exactly what you said. It's the age of, and again, even as I'm saying this, I feel very uncomfortable saying this. But this is how I live my life, right? I no longer shop at one grocery store because we have now Uber Eats and delivery, uh like DoorDash delivery. In one delivery, I can actually get three or four different grocery supermarkets catering to what I need, delivered straight to me. So even I think laterally in terms of, like you were saying, the ingredients that are nourishing me. I actually think laterally, I no longer order even my Uber Eats, it's a thrill for me to see how many restaurants I can gather into one meal. You know, it's possible to have that. You you named a couple of risks, and you may not remember this, and that's that's okay. But you had put that mental health that a large number of percentage of congregants were actually turning to their pastors for mental health reliance, but that 27% of pastors actually felt equipped. So I wondered whether what you were saying in terms of the place of mental health in churches has that changed, shifted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yeah, I mean there's there's something I think kind of fascinating happening when we see this past five years, right? So I I think looking at this in just a you know, a snapshot is not as useful as looking at what are the trends that we see over time. So I'm just gonna hone in on one of those, and and that is actually clergy health and well-being. So what we saw is that early on in 2021, so after that kind of first year after the lockdown period and in the pandemic, we had about 20% of our clergy really struggling, um, saying, you know, that they were really dissatisfied, thinking of leaving their church or, you know, really kind of struggling. But that increased about twice as many, almost 40% a couple years later. So we look at 2023 and we see there's even an increase, you know, in sort of clergy discontentment. Um but fascinatingly, our latest data from 2025 shows a rebound, a sort of reverse on that. And so it makes me think about the kind of things that dressers that clergy have been dealing with over the past five years, that, you know, in that first year they were kind of they could tough it out and they were like, we can keep going, right? We can do this, we're gonna, we're gonna push through. But by 2023, there was burnout, there was, you know, just dealing with these realities for years kind of took its toll. Um, but now we see five years later a rebound. Like that they're actually doing much better in a lot of these markers. And there are some differences. I think another thing that our data really help illuminate is it's not just about their personal practices, all right, around the kind of things that they do for their mental health and well-being, but it's also about their congregational context. So this matters a lot to you. Clergy that are serving in congregations that have high levels of conflict have poorer health and well-being, right? Clergy serving in congregations that are not willing to change have poorer levels of health and well-being. Clergy serving in large churches tend to have better health and well-being. So we, you know, you I think it's really important to think about it's not just about the individual clergy person and sort of their overall wellness. It's very much about a story of context, what's going on in their church. But I would say overall, one of our kind of predominant findings, which is similar from a lot of other research done in this area, when you look at clergy compared to the general population, their overall health and well-being is higher than the general population in the United States. So they do tend to be doing okay. But there's one area that they suffer, and that is in relation to their relational health and loneliness. So clergy are more lonely than the general population in the US. And so also when we look about how that connects to their congregation, clergy that say there's a poor fit between them and their members, right? This is a relational health kind of dynamic. It impacts them negatively. Clergy that um that say that they're not a good fit for their congregation overall, also, you know, not um not strong in their um health and wellness compared to clergy in congregations that say there's a better fit. So I think that's something to really pay attention to, even going into the future, is how do we think about loneliness and relational health for our pastors?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah, and I mean, I think this is my passion, is the context because that mirrors um some of the data that I collected in 2023. In terms of it is the relationship that clergy have with their congregation, but then it spills over into their relationships at home, um, their ability to connect and feel like it's safe to connect and take risks with others, with friends, uh, because that immersive experience of being um a minister is so different from any other um vocation. It's your 360, 24-7, seven days a week, um, and you you can really start to react to those dynamics and it becomes pervasive.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

So, Valerie, I have a question for you out of just your own research and kind of related to this. Did you compare part-time and full-time no-so if you were gonna guess, would would the health and well-being be better for part-time clergy or full-time clergy?

SPEAKER_01 35:48

What would you guess? That's interesting. Um, does it relate to gender? Um because we tend to find that more women probably tend to have part-time. So if I were to to to put those two variables together and go, there's probably more women, I'd probably say part-timers are probably a little bit better than full-timers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Well, so we find it does it does relate to size. So part-timers tend to be serving in the smallest congregations, right? Which makes makes sense. And our our data would would affirm that that the part-timers have better, better overall health and well-being. And I think part of it is this sort of loneliness relational piece too. Um, because if you think if you're part-time, there's something else that you're doing, right? In the other part-time where the church isn't your only all-consuming reality. Um you have other spaces where you're perhaps forming other meaningful relationships, other sources of nourishment for your for your soul and your body and and you know, your your kind of overall well-being.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Yeah, I think that's really fascinating because it provides you, they have multiple belongings. Yeah, to have the different communities to be interacting with.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

I just think that disrupts the narrative. I think oftentimes people think, you know, if you're a part-time pastor, something went wrong. And I'm like, actually, the part-time clergy that you might talk to might actually say, no, this is not something going wrong, that that things are actually good. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Yeah, my husband is a part-time minister. Okay. For years, for about more than a decade, he and I have been trying to say it's possible we can we can actually have this model. But yeah, we we intentionally have built that that way. Um anyway, I digress. Back to the mental health in churches. Did you have anything that you wanted to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yeah, um, I think just to say that pastoral wellness is complex, right? Just to just to reiterate that it's it's an interaction between the clergy person's own health and well-being, their personal life circumstances, and the church conditioning context. And I think a lot of data that we have doesn't oftentimes researchers don't collect data on the church context, so they're not able to uncover that. And I'd say that's really probably the most valuable part of our research to say these are interrelated. And if you just ask a clergy about their personal practices or sort of their personal circumstances, and you don't understand the impact of conflict in their congregation or the size of their congregation or their congregation's unwillingness to change, right? If you don't actually have that side of the picture, it's a little bit incomplete, I think, to the understanding that you can have on the on the range of factors that affect clergy health and well-being. And I think then it becomes less, you know, it's not always as simple as saying clergy go to therapy or clergy join a clergy support group, right? It's sort of like, wait, what does it mean to step back and say, how does your congregation's thriving relate to your own thriving?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Yeah. And in our practice, so uh as a psychologist, I have a clinic with um a couple of psychologists in there. We've certainly noticed even population changes in the types of inquiries coming in. So I also wonder whether if the general population are feeling more exhausted, more hopeless, more afraid. That's sort of existential fear now, especially with what's happening in the world. Yeah, it's walking in separate from a diagnosis. Like previously, mostly we'd be getting referrals from a psychiatrist or a doctor because it's a pretty clear-cut diagnosis that the person walks in with. But now we have exhaustion, loneliness, existential issues, disconnection. And I sometimes wonder too whether if that's sitting in our congregation and we don't know it and we haven't we haven't understood it well, we may be interpreting the reluctance for change or the reticence to participate as being unsubmissive or you know, sort of disrupting unity. But there may be some real dynamics that walk in, particularly like trauma as well.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

I'm so glad that you said that. Just this past week, I've been doing some qualitative coding from interviews that we've done. You know, part of our research, we have 81 case study churches where we did field work, interviews, focus groups at these churches and in nine different regions across the United States. And this last week, the coding that I was doing out of leader interviews, uh, I had a code for fear. So I was just doing it the inductive coding, just what what themes are coming up? And out of the question of, you know, what is the enduring legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, right? That was that was the question. What's the enduring legacy that you see? Of course, people had a range of answers to this, but one of those answers was exactly kind of what you're identifying, that we're living in a world where the pastors are saying that one of these legacies is fear, that our people are are afraid, right? That we're seeing this enacted in division, right? In in all kinds of ways. So I I would say that some of the stories that we're hearing from clergy would confirm that they are seeing this happening in their in their congregations.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Yeah, um, that that's fascinating. It also stops me to think about it's probably also a quite a trauma-activated world at the moment. You know, it's used to be, Alison, that when I went to the movies, the United States always saved the world. Whether it was the aliens or like these stories told through our movies. Yes, the president of the United States, you know, he's gonna fly an airplane that will take down the alien ship. But you know, the narrative is really different now. And yes it's it's ricocheting across the globe. We're seeing, you know, and trauma activation, there's a large percentage of the world that has grown up in homes where they were abused, assaulted, bullied, there's family violence. You know, I don't know the stats, maybe you know it. How many percentage of our congregation actually come from those backgrounds that maybe come to church for safety and solace? But out there, it's trauma activation. The world feels terrifying, and they're seeing repeated patterns of what they've experienced as a human being, and without even knowing it, they're all disrupted internally and then walking into church, and that kind of has repercussions. I I I think that's just a thought that I have.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Yeah. Well, and we also have just I think greater awareness of religious trauma too. So you also see people coming into church, not just bringing the out their trauma, but also having personal histories with religious trauma.

unknown 42:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Um, and so what does it mean to pastor, you know, someone who is there, right, is showing up in some capacity, but is bringing not only this external sort of trauma, but also very personal religious trauma to you.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Yeah. Now we're almost at the end. So I want to make sure that we've got all the juicy bits of your work, at least in relation to congregation and clergy.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Is there anything else that you you feel like you'd really like to mention to our you know, maybe I'll just go back to something I briefly mentioned on how we see in in 2025, just we just closed a surgery survey in December. So this is this is you know a few month-old data that we saw this rebound when it comes to clergy um wellness in a lot of ways, and and and and a lessening of their discontentment with with their work in ministry. I would say one interesting thing that we're seeing is a rebound in a lot of markers. So when it comes to numbers of volunteers, right, percentage of volunteers in in your congregation, when it comes to your finances, when it comes to your attendance, we we've seen this kind of you shape happen, right? And in all in all of our graphs and charts, where we had our 2020, then there was a dip, 2021, 2023, 2020, right? And 2025, we see this rebound back up. So I think that's an important, you know, kind of consideration to say this has been a challenging time in this post-COVID reality. But it seems in our data from our national surveys here in the United States, that that there is, we're in a moment here five years out, where there is some rebound, right? Where there is some some hope. And so I think kind of paying attention to that, what's going on now is I think an important question. Where are we seeing sites of hope? Where is where are we seeing some you know, narratives emerging where we're seeing a a rebound in this trajectory?

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Yeah, it's fascinating. So we have a National Church Live survey that is sent out nationwide every five years. And this year is a survey year, so it'll be interesting to send you some information about what we are finding on this side. You are? Yes. So stay tuned. Um if if nobody sends you the update, um, I'll make sure I'll do that. Um, just to close off our session, in thinking about communities of belonging, um, this is going to be a huge question, but I wonder if you'd be able to just give us a piece of encouragement from your work. Um, in thinking about belonging, clergy need their congregations, congregations need their clergy, but also this is a highly movable. Place that we live in. Newcomers, digital migrants, people coming in, going out. When you look at the data yourself, how do you encourage yourself? What do you say? Aha, but look at this. This is encouraging. What would that be? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Well, I'll go back to my recent exercises in qualitative coding and say, um, I've been coding something that is, it is encouraging. It's the answer to the the questions around, you know, what is what is the thing that you love most about your congression? So we ask about the challenges, but we also have a more appreciative, appreciative answer. And one of the predominant responses there has to do with care, connection, and community. So over and over again, we're we're seeing clergy saying the most important thing, right? The the kind of most meaningful aspect of what I see happening in my church community over the last year is that we're showing up for each other, that we are places of connection, we are places of community, we are places of family, we are places of care. I see those words over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Care, connection, and community, and it's mutual. It's making friends and being friends with one another and not just in one direction. Oh, when does this when does this paper come out? When do we get the whole of this analysis?

SPEAKER_00 46:23

So we have a whole lot of reports available on our website, covidreligionresearch.org, right? So we've been producing reports for the last five years. We have a tremendous amount of data, reports available there. And then in um the next month, we will have our latest report out of this 2025 data.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Amazing. That'll probably be when the episode comes out as well. So I look forward to getting that and linking that in with the episode. Also, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I've really benefited and found it to be engaging and challenging in some ways for me to hold my presumptions and judgments and just understand the trends. I'm really thankful for your time today. Oh, I've I've so enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

You are a wonderful conversation partner. So thank you. Thank you.