More churchgoers shopped around with different congregations during the pandemic. Some made a church switch. What factors led to those church shopping decisions?
By Aaron Earls
While many types of shopping were limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, one type became more prevalent—church shopping.
At the height of the pandemic, in October 2020, researchers Nicholas Higgins and Paul Djupe surveyed American churchgoers. They found more than a third (35%) reported visiting another congregation in person or online in the previous six months, according to their report published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. That would indicate a higher-than-normal amount of churchgoers who at least explored other churches. A pre-pandemic study from Pew Research found about half of Americans (49%) said they had looked for a new congregation at some point in their entire adult lives.
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