Shifting Moral Values

Shifting Moral Values

Church attendance has been a social staple in American culture since the founding years. This is probably because “religion is an important component of people’s lives in the U.S. and about 80% categorize themselves as following a religion (Pew Forum, 2008).” “Religious beliefs are remarkably salient in the United States” according to Sherkat and Ellison (1999). Therefore, church attendance has historically been a regular practice for many Americans and people who come from religious families often feel expected to attend church.

The story is told of a young man who, while attending college, became disenfranchised with the religion in which he was raised and began determining his own belief system. His reflection started in a religion class as he listened to a professor explain about having a drug problem when he was a child. His parents “drug” him to church, he said in jest. This resonated with the young man, and he began to resent being forced to attend services when he was younger. It made him feel that to be accepted by God he must attend church. This made church attendance feel more like a requirement than a choice. Many people feel similarly. Some even feel that whether one attends church determines whether God accepts them as being good, “moral” Christians. Unfortunately, this has become a problem as morality and church attendance have become intertwined in the minds of many. Habitually missing church can be viewed as a lapse of morality as “frequent church attendance is often used as a generic measure of religiousness” (Wright and Wisecarver, 1993).

With many churches hosting their weekly services online, since the COVID pandemic began, some Christians have changed how they attend church. The “new normal” for attending church may be ushering in a shift in moral values. This shift in morality has to do with how people feel about attending church in person now that gathering restrictions have limited church attendance and increased online worship experiences. It can be argued that if attending church in person is the “morally correct” thing for religious people to do some may see the lack of church attendance as a lapse in morality. If this is true then the opportunity given church attendees, due to COVID-19, to stay home and watch church services online has enabled church goers to feel differently about how they attend worship. This must be true as a Gallup report states that “the most dramatic result (of the pandemic in religion) has been the exceedingly quick shift of religious services from in-person to online worship” (Dein, Loewenthal, Lewis, and Pargament 2020), which continues even after the number of COVID-19 cases have started to decline.

Most religious people consider attending church in person a requirement but since the pandemic they have seen that they can miss attending church in person for months and remain spiritually healthy. This is unusual because many leaders in the Christian Church teach that God will not bless the believer who does not attend church. Following this reasoning it could be thought that the restrictions placed on congregations to avoid gathering in person would have a negative effect on church attendees. However, one Gallup Poll research group investigated the impact of religious groups on personal health. They tested the theory that COVID-19 will cause a loss of faith but discovered that “the COVID-19 crisis has enhanced spirituality and religion for many Americans and aided to cope with anxiety and depression (Newport, 2020).” The expectation religious people have of themselves to attend church in person has changed thus shifting morality when it comes to some religious obligations. This has opened many up to the idea that maybe attending church in person is not necessary to be accepted by God and experiencing church online is a viable and acceptable option for their religion. This “new morality” is a direct result of how COVID-19 has impacted religion in America and changed how church goers think about attending church in person. Of course, church attendance is not the only thing people have started to think differently about since the COVID-19 pandemic.