In addition to its focus on chaplaincy and spiritual care, the Lab is beginning to explore questions about the spiritual infrastructure of the future. In the United States, growing numbers of people are not religiously affiliated and growing numbers of congregations are closing— but this does not mean religion is dying, any more than the death of Blockbuster signaled the end of movie watching in the United States. Instead, how people engage enduring questions surrounding spirituality, religion, and life’s existential questions is changing and Lab staff are engaged in efforts to understand and interpret it.
Lab Founder and Director Wendy Cadge offered an overview of these changes in a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in June 2023.
She has also written about related themes in The Atlantic and the Boston Globe. The Lab’s work supporting people who are not religious was featured in a recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Current projects also explore what is ending in the legacy spiritual and religious infrastructure (e.g., local congregations and theological schools) and what is emerging around spiritual innovation.
Shifting Religious & Spiritual Delivery Systems: Closing Congregations
Signs of struggling or closed congregations are easy to find — for rent and for sale signs dot properties and groups like Bricks and Mortals in New York City have started to support the repurposing of religious buildings. Case studies abound but are there patterns to church closures? Are the patterns the same for Christian and non-Christian congregations? What factors influence whether closed congregations become high-end condominiums (like in much of greater Boston) rather than community centers or affordable housing? And how do the people — congregational leaders, city officials, real estate professionals, and others — negotiate these transitions and transactions? As the fraction of people in the United States who are religiously unaffiliated continues to grow, closures of churches and other sacred spaces with long-standing histories are likely to continue.
This project – currently focused in greater Boston – is exploring methodological approaches for tracking and analyzing the closing of local congregations. We view these closures as part of larger changes through which the delivery systems or mechanisms through which people engage with spirituality, religion and other existential aspects of life are changing. This project aims to build an approach to thinking about these closures as part of the changing spiritual infrastructure that creates opportunities and challenges for actors ranging from the public to religious leaders, architects, community leaders, planners and the state.
In 2024, the IACSS Closing Congregation Working Group launched to address the social scientific implications of this trend; you can read more about their work here.