The Digital Divide, Digital Reluctance and Its Impact on Pandemic Churches

Abstract

The Digital Divide, Digital Reluctance and Its Impact on Pandemic Churches explores how churches encountered and responded to key challenges related to the Digital Divide, a term used to refer to the gap in access and understanding to digital media technologies people often encounter. The digital divide present within many churches went unnoticed in most congregations prior to the pandemic, but was quickly revealed when churches attempted to move their services online. This Tech Trend paper focuses on describing how these classic disparities were manifest in churches and its impact on doing church line. Also, besides complaints about lacking digital resources, church leaders often voiced a more intangible element of personal reluctance towards digital technology. This is the third paper in a series of Tech Trend papers exploring finding from “Tech in Churches During Covid-19” project that is funded by the Lilly Endowment Each papers explores in depth key research findings related to how churches in the American Mid-west experienced during the digital transition from traditional to online worship necessitated by the conditions of COVID-19 pandemic