Faith leaders across the US have turned to virtual tools, through which they offer individual counseling and stream services, homilies, and text studies
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News : Tweets: @bernstein , @dbnewsjournal , @katherinemiller , @algemeiner , @katherinemiller , @dbnewsjournal , @atossaaraxia , @bernstein , @vanvocations , @bernstein , @bernstein , and @buzzfeednews Tweets: Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : For every 80,000 new cases of COVID-19 found in a country, online searches for prayer double. But houses of worship are (largely) closed. How are religious communities coping? My story: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @dbnewsjournal : “They know if they need anything we're here,” Watkins said. “If I can connect people to Christ, they can do that from wherever they are.” https://www.news-journalonline.com/ ... Katherine Miller / @katherinemiller : This definitely worth reading about the similar struggles, innovations of rabbis, pastors, imams as they try to continue their ministries online https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @algemeiner : Across the US, people are turning to religion, according to a Pew Research Study on the impact of the coronavirus. The survey found that of those who regularly attend worship services have replaced in-person attendance with virtual attendance. https://www.algemeiner.com/... Katherine Miller / @katherinemiller : “'It was surreal,' Gerson told BuzzFeed News, ‘To be looking into a congregation of empty chairs.’ But there were more participants in the Zoom services than Gerson usually sees in the crowd on a Friday night” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @dbnewsjournal : As the coronavirus has sickened more than a million people across the globe, those seeking refuge and perspective in their house of worship are finding locked doors. They're instead having to connect with their faith leaders and congregations online. https://www.news-journalonline.com/ ... Atossa Araxia Abrahamian / @atossaaraxia : Joe's new story on religious services and COVID-19 has some incredible anecdotes! https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : New by me: I talked to faith leaders around the country about the way they're using online platforms to try to keep their communities together https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @vanvocations : Virtual Parish Unleashes Young Adults In Vancouver, the shutdown of Catholic life has spurred Father Paul Goo and some Catholic young adults to brainstorm how to create new opportunities for Catholic prayer, worship and fellowship. https://www.shorturl.at/qLMP0 Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : Online religious services: Not immune from angry commenters! https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Joe Bernstein / @bernstein : Among other things, COVID-19 may prove financially ruinous to Black churches https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... @buzzfeednews : Faith leaders across the US now have a common challenge: how to build community without physical connection during the coronavirus pandemic https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Joe Bernstein's reporting lands two weeks into the broader shift the desk has been tracking since mid-March, when the pandemic first produced a surge in online community building. The new detail here is scale of demand: BuzzFeed cites a pattern where every 80,000 new COVID-19 cases in a country doubles online searches for prayer, just as houses of worship close their doors.
What makes this more than a human-interest story is where it points. The same crisis that pushes pastors to streaming and virtual counseling also feeds platforms built to serve churches digitally — most notably Gloo, whose later profile revealed ~245M profiles on Americans used by 30K+ churches for crisis-targeted outreach.
First-order effects
- US faith leaders move counseling, services, homilies, and text studies onto streaming and video tools immediately, making digital fluency a job requirement for clergy who had none before closures.
- Congregants cut off from physical worship shift prayer and pastoral contact online, with search behavior tracking case counts rather than the liturgical calendar.
Second-order effects
- Church-technology vendors become gatekeepers: as congregations standardize on external platforms for outreach, vendors like Gloo accumulate behavioral data on millions of Americans in personal crises, converting ministry relationships into targetable ad inventory.
- Adjacent ritual industries face the same forced migration — the death industry already adapted to livestreamed funerals and ancestor ceremonies, and support communities found virtual sessions surprisingly workable, as AA members reported about online meetings.
Third-order effects
- If crisis-era habits hold, religious participation partially detaches from buildings, and the institutions that thrive are those pairing clergy with data-driven outreach — a structural consolidation of small congregations around platform intermediaries.
- A privacy reckoning follows: spiritual and counseling interactions routed through commercial tools create sensitive datasets held by companies rather than congregations, setting up the kind of scrutiny later applied to Gloo's profiling operation.
The trend: The pandemic is pushing intimate civic institutions — worship, mourning, recovery, marriage — onto commercial digital platforms faster than any deliberate strategy would have, leaving data intermediaries where congregations used to stand alone.