Dr. Nancy T. Ammerman is Professor of Sociology of Religion in the Department of Sociology and School of Theology at Boston University. A longtime member of the Congregational Studies Team, she is Project Director of StudyingCongregations.org
If ‘congregation’ implies gathering, March 2020 created a seismic shift that has fundamentally altered congregational life. If we are able to return to pre-pandemic habits sometime soon, which of the new habits will remain?
Thinking about that question will require the sort of careful assessment long-time congregation watcher Jack Wertheimer has offered in a recent essay, “How Will Synagogues Survive?”. He comes to his wisdom by asking good questions and gathering good data.
Are you teaching about congregations in an upcoming semester? Just curious about existing data on congregations? Check out the crowd-sourced teaching library assembled at the Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture. It includes instructional materials developed by its researchers and participating scholars for use in the classroom. From college syllabi and instructional…
Studying congregations always means paying attention to the different ways people are involved – especially the differences between men and women. Now, researchers at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, are taking that question to a new level. They want to know how those patterns differ in Christian groups…
There are a lot of congregational studies going on these days! The Lilly Endowment (sometimes known as “The Church’s One Foundation”) has been making a raft of grants for the study of thriving congregations. You might want to explore the descriptions of the work that is happening near you. Another project that caught our eye…
For all the emptiness and chaos, this is also proving to be a time of creative reassessment. Many religious leaders are discovering the benefits of sharing insights with each other, and a number of organizations and programs are helping to make that possible. At the Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) at USC, the…
