The COVID-19 pandemic touched nearly every aspect of American life. Schools, offices, grocery stores, and churches faced daunting challenges in the early days of the pandemic in their efforts to operate while keeping their employees, members, and the broader community safe. For churches and religious organizations, concerns over COVID-19 led many to pause traditional in-person worship services. A recent Pew Research Center study found that nearly one in three churches or religious organizations were completely closed in summer 2020, while others moved outside or online. By March 2022, most were offering some type of regular service, but only 43 percent of religious Americans reported that services currently being offered by their place of worship were back to their pre-pandemic operations.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted religious participation for millions of Americans. In summer 2020, only 13 % of Americans reported attending in-person worship services. This rebounded to 27% by March 2022, but rates of worship attendance were still lower than they were before the pandemic. However, the pandemic did not appear to affect one’s faith, with most adults reporting that their religious affiliation today was no different than it was pre-pandemic.
To better understand how COVID-19 and church closures influenced patterns of religious attendance and identity, the Survey Center on American Life at AEI teamed up with researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago to measure religious affiliation and attendance both before the pandemic (2018 to March 2020) and again in spring 2022. For the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, interviews were conducted with the same people to enable us to measure actual changes in religious behavior or identity.
The results show that religious identity remained stable through the pandemic. White mainline Christians and white evangelical Christians were the two largest religious groups both pre-pandemic and in spring 2022. Unaffiliated adults also made up a quarter (25%) of adults in both periods.

Hundreds of Armenians have marched through Yerevan to mark the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
Those in attendance gathered in a central square, carried burning torches, set light to Turkish and Azerbaijani flags, and paraded in a procession escorted by an orchestra.
Today marks the 108th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, where 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 -1923 by the Ottoman Empire.
Armenians say they were deliberately targeted for extermination through famine, forced labor, expulsion, death marches, and massacres.
While Turkey accepts that many died in that era, Ankara has rejected the term genocide, saying the death toll is inflated and the deaths resulted from civil disorder during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.
The commemoration takes place every year, and it ends with crowds carrying torches to the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex.
Two years ago, U.S. President Joe Biden recognized the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkish officials were angered by Biden’s declaration.

As Pope Francis’s ongoing Synod of Bishops on Synodality wraps up its second phase and prepares for the first of two large Rome-based gatherings, organizers have said a prominent theme in the process has been embracing the church’s diversity.
Speaking to members of the press on April 21, Archbishop Timothy John Costelloe of Perth, president of the Australian bishops’ conference, said, “One of the most important things that we are experiencing on the journey, and that we experienced very powerfully during these continental assemblies, is that there is in fact more than one way of being the Church.”
“I think that’s a very important thing and something that’s emerging as a significant feature of this synodal journey,” he said.
As the synod process goes on, “we’re going into a deeper experience of synodality and in doing that, we’re recognizing and celebrating this reality of great diversity,” he said.
Diversity has always been a part of the Church, but Costelloe voiced his conviction that it is something “we need to acknowledge and more and more to celebrate and to be grateful to God for.”
“I would say that what is happening, both in the ideal world, but also in reality, is that we’re beginning to experience a profound unity, which is not only not grounded in uniformity,” he said, saying, “we all know, unity and uniformity are not the same thing.”

Global conservative Anglican leaders withdrew their recognition on April 22 of the Church of England and Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as its leader, amid disagreements about blessing same-sex couples.
The primates announced the move at the fourth Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which ended this weekend in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali.
The Kigali commitment issued at the end of the weeklong conference reflected a consensus among Anglican conservatives, with a majority from Africa and the Global South.
“We have no confidence that the Archbishop of Canterbury nor the other instruments of communion led by him are able to provide a godly way forward that will be acceptable to those who are committed to the truthfulness, clarity, sufficiency and authority of scripture,” the primates said in a statement.
The primates accused successive archbishops of Canterbury of failing to guard the faith by “inviting bishops to Lambeth (official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury), who have embraced or promoted practices contrary to scripture.”
This failure of church discipline, the primates said, has been compounded by the current Archbishop of Canterbury who has welcomed the provision of liturgical resources to bless practices contrary to scripture.
“This renders his leadership role in the Anglican Communion entirely indefensible,” it said.
The clerics expressed their hard stance during the conference.
Archbishop Ben Kwashi of Nigeria, described as “troubling for many Anglicans” the Church of England’s new move on civil marriages, while Archbishop Laurent Mbanda from Rwanda and newly-elected chairman of GAFCON, told Anadolu the Bible should remain the center of reference.