As faith communities in the United States grow increasingly more diverse, many churches are turning to the shared parish, a single church facility shared by distinct cultural groups who retain their own worship and ministries. The fastest growing and most common of these are Catholic parishes shared by Latinos and white Catholics. Shared parishes remain one…
The Huffington Post posted an article outlining the complications historically Spanish-speaking congregations have in adapting to new English-speaking generations. For many of these second- and third-generation immigrants, their religious lives were tied to their second language, which caused some difficulties. Vanessa Pardo, a 20-year-old from South Florida, reports, It was never a faith of my…
From 2014-2017, the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) undertook a three-year project that was focused on questions related to whether, and how, competition and various elements of geographic place may lead to creative innovation and religious change within congregations and other religious organizations. The project also includes a comparative component with Seoul,…
The Alley News is a very local newspaper, based in the Phillips Neighborhood in Minneapolis. In 2014, they published an account and explanation of St. Paul Lutheran Church’s “Notes of Growth and Change.” This looks a lot like the basic facts people would want to have about their particular churches for a congregational timeline. The…
An article from the York, Pennsylvania Dispatch outlined how two churches used ceremony and ritual to merge. Trinity and Fourth United Methodist churches were set to merge, but instead of a more traditional merging ceremony, the planners opted to bring in a particular ritual common to weddings. From the article, At 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the…