This session highlights three papers that present new quantitative and qualitative findings on religion in the U.S. Papers investigate such topics as how Bahá'í communities has adapted to challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, shifts in clergy persons' sense of agency following the 2024 presidential election, and relationships of religious "Nones" to spirituality and religion.
Using a newly collected dataset of over 12,000 non-religious Americans, and a k-means clustering algorithm, this work devises a new typology of non-religion in the United States. Instead of using the crude categories of atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, this new approach focuses on posture toward religion, views of spirituality, and other relevant factors. Further, this paper will explore how non-religious Americans make meaning in their lives.
This paper will explore how American Bahá’ís in diverse communities throughout the US have adapted to the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. I will present data on hundreds of Bahá’ís from dozens of communities concerning attendance at religious worship and religious education classes, outreach to the community, the shift to online forms of worship and celebration of sacred holidays, and their personal religious practices (prayer, reading holy writings, fasting, etc.) during the pandemic. This data will be compared with Christian churches to see how other Americans in varied Christian denominations coped and thrived spiritually during the restrictions of COVID. Results indicate that Bahá’ís were able to maintain attendance levels at their online worship services and children and adult education classes at rates much higher than churches did on average. Both Bahá’í communities and Christian churches maintained a similar level of community service throughout the pandemic.
The United States’ sociopolitical climate of the past year has likely shifted a clergyperson’s sense of professional agency—sense of being able to freely, safely, and confidently lead a community. A 2024 literature review confirmed that religious leaders are often burnt out and struggling, as individual, relational, and organizational factors compound upon each other, potentially jeopardizing their capacity to healthily and reliably execute their duties. Thus, any additional sense of decreased agency can have deleterious effects on not just the well-being of the religious leader but on the broader congregation and even local community. Drawn from the qualitative transcripts of group meetings with clergy from across the United States, two case studies will elucidate some of the ways congregational clergy have felt shifts in their sense of agency to freely perform their role since the presidential election in November 2024.