Brad Arnold, lead singer of 3 Doors Down, took a few minutes during the band’s set on the Summer of ‘99 tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania, to tell the crowd that Jesus loves them. 3 Doors Down is not a Christian band, but Arnold nevertheless led the people attending a secular concert to repeat the words, “I am the one that Jesus loves.”

“You are loved, you are enough, and you will win. Not only can you win, but you will win,” Arnold said. “You’ll always be enough for one reason—that’s because Jesus Christ loves you. Jesus Christ loves you so much that he made you just the way you are, just the way you’re standing there right now.”

Brad Arnold: ‘You Are Loved’

Brad Arnold is a founding member of 3 Doors Down, a band from Escatawpa, Mississippi. The band formed in 1996 and is known for a number of hit singles, such as the enormously successful “Kryptonite,” which helped their debut album become certified 7x Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Other hits include “Loser,” “When I’m Gone,” and “Here Without You.”

RELATED: Brian Welch of Korn Says God Led Him Back to the Band

On Aug. 23, 3 Doors Down performed with Finger Eleven and Creed at Hersheypark Stadium. A video captured by YouTube user Shannon Dusing and verified by PennLive News shows Arnold introducing the song, “Away From the Sun.” He told the audience that he tries not to speak too much during shows but “something was put on my heart two years ago to start speaking about.”

“Away From the Sun” is “probably my favorite song we’ve ever done,” said Arnold, “because I feel like I can identify with this song more than most of our songs.”

The lyrics to “Away From the Sun” read in part:

It’s down to this
I’ve got to make this life make sense
Can anyone tell what I’ve done?
I miss the life
I miss the colors of the world
Can anyone tell where I am?

‘Cause now again I’ve found myself so far down
Away from the sun that shines into the darkest place
I’m so far down, away from the sun again
Away from the sun again

Many people feel as though they will never be enough, said the lead singer: “This world surrounds us by a message that we’ll never be good enough, we’ll never be strong enough, we’ll never be beautiful enough, we’ll never be rich enough, whatever the case may be, and certainly that we’ll never win.”

Arnold mentioned that social media promotes such messages, which are “driven down our throats every day,” including the idea that “nobody really, really loves us.”

“My friends,” said Arnold, “I just want to take a second to tell you that that’s an absolute lie.”

A man has been arrested and charged with second degree murder in connection with the arson perpetrated at St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Athens, Tennessee, on Aug. 15. After the fire was extinguished, the body of 69-year-old Linda Buchanan was found in the wreckage.

Investigators later determined that Buchanan died before the fire was ignited. 

On Friday (Aug. 23), authorities arrested Kyle Jay Hickox and charged him with Buchanan’s murder. According to a police report obtained by WZTV, Hickox allegedly killed Buchanan before setting the church building on fire. 

Police indicated that security cameras captured Hickox in the area several times on the day the church was set ablaze. 

RELATED: New Mexico Man Sentenced for Possessing Pipe Bomb on Church Playground

On that day, Hickox was caught on security footage running across the property of the nearby Athens YMCA and then onto the property of Tennessee Wesleyan University (TWU). After Hickox entered a maintenance building at the university, a maintenance worker confronted him. 

Hickox reportedly told the worker that he “would get God’s water” before running toward St. Mark AME Zion Church. Roughly 10 minutes after entering the church, Hickox was again caught on security footage running across the YMCA property in the direction of TWU’s soccer field. 

At one point, Hickox could be seen having removed his shirt, which was now wrapped around one of his hands. After he arrived at TWU’s soccer field, he could be seen hosing himself off. 

When investigators later searched Hickox’s home, they found the clothes they believe he was wearing on the day of the arson and murder. They also discovered blood on Hickox’s shoe, and the blood was later found to match Buchanan’s. 

On the webpage where Buchanan’s obituary is published, someone close to Buchanan remembered her as “always such a loving, caring, gracious woman.”

RELATED: Kentucky Pastor Helps Police Save Suicidal Man, Then Prays With Officers

“She has taught many of us who had really harsh childhoods and she never gave up on me,” the person wrote. “She was like a mom to 90% of the kids in Athens. She was just so amazing.”

(RNS) — The African Methodist Episcopal Church announced a settlement agreement with a number of its clergy who had sued the denomination, accusing it of mishandling their retirement funds.

The settlement, which must still be approved by a judge, came Monday (Aug. 26) as delegates to the AME Church General Conference are meeting in Columbus, Ohio, for their quadrennial meeting that concludes on Wednesday. Prior to and during the meeting, AME Church members were calling for action after the former director of the Department of Retirement Services, the Rev. Jerome Harris, and others were accused in a 2022 class-action litigation of a total loss of $90 million.

“The agreement reached today demonstrates the Church’s ongoing commitment to its clergy and the determination to hold those truly responsible accountable,” Douglass P. Selby, the AME Church’s general counsel, said in the announcement. “The prayer of the Church is that this settlement, and the reforms to which the Church has committed itself, will help to close a painful chapter in the denomination’s history, and begin the path towards healing and recovery of faith and trust among its members and in the systems of the Church.”

In a separate statement, Selby noted that the settlement agreement applies only to the clergy members’ litigation and not to a separate suit the historically Black denomination filed against Harris, who was accused of embezzling money from retirement accounts. In May, Harris died suddenly of a heart attack.

“The total of the settlement is $20 million,” Selby added. “This is a partial settlement subject to approval of the judge in the class-action case.”

William Rivera, senior vice president of litigation at AARP Foundation, which assisted in the litigation involved in the proposed settlement, hailed the step in the legal process.

“Church employees who served their community for years deserve the retirement funds they were promised,” Rivera said in a statement. “This agreement marks an important step to address the financial harm caused to thousands of people by restoring the funding they depend on.”

At the time the suit was filed, Rivera said, “nearly 5,000 pastors, church elders, and other employees” were affected.

In recent interviews, AME Church members told RNS they were waiting for the denomination, which dates to 1816, to achieve its stated goal of “making participants whole” after many were left with only an estimated 30% of their money in their accounts.

Those members included a longtime AME minister who is “on loan” with the United Methodist Church, pastoring in California at age 78 in part because she is paying down educational loans. A recently widowed Chicagoan who learned several years ago that her husband’s annuity had dropped precipitously told RNS, “I want a check.”

AME Church officials, in their settlement announcement, repeated their pledge to do all they can to restore the retirement money.

“Despite the emotional and financial strain on both sides, the Church and the Plaintiffs have come together to reach a settlement that provides immediate restoration of some funds and creates a pathway for the Church and Plaintiffs to restore the balance of the lost retirement funds,” the announcement reads. “The Church has committed to seeking full restoration for all plan participants and sees this contingent settlement as a big step toward that result.”

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Following the Angelus, his weekly prayer service at the Vatican, on Sunday (Aug. 25), Pope Francis criticized Ukraine’s decision to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has historically been tied to Russia, saying that Christians should be allowed to pray freely and that churches should not be abolished.

“In thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray, because those who truly pray always pray for all,” Francis said after the prayer service.

Francis stated that “a person does not commit evil by praying” and urged Ukrainian leaders to “let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their Church.”

RELATED: Ukrainian Ambassador to the Vatican Believes a Visit by Pope Francis Would Promote Peace

“Please, let no Christian church be abolished directly or indirectly. Churches are not to be touched!” he said.

A day earlier, on Ukraine’s Independence Day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed into law a long-debated bill outlawing churches affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. While the UOC has denied having any ties to the Moscow patriarchate since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the church has been suspected of promoting Russian propaganda.

Ukraine’s security service has accused the UOC of acting as a platform to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine and says its churches are havens for spies. The organization has launched criminal proceedings against at least 100 UOC clergy members, with 26 already sentenced.

FILE – The Monastery of the Caves, also known as Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of the holiest sites of Eastern Orthodox Christians, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

A study conducted in April by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 83% of Ukrainians felt that the government should intervene in the activities of the UOC, while 63% supported banning the church altogether.

After some two years of discussion, Ukraine’s parliament overwhelmingly passed the law by a vote of 265-29 on Aug. 20. Religious groups with ties to Russia were allowed nine months to sever their relationship with Moscow or leave the country.

The spokesman for the UOC, Metropolitan Klyment, told journalists after the bill was passed that the ban “will only discredit, including internationally, those who will try to do this,” and compared the policy to the Soviet takeover of church properties in the last century.

The majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians, but following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Kyiv and All Ukraine led his loyalists to form a new denomination, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In 2019, the spiritual head of the global Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, officially recognized the independent church.

The split deepened the religious dimension of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and gave Moscow Patriarch Kirill, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, cause to defend Russia’s invasion, describing it as a holy war. In the territory that Russian forces occupy in eastern Ukraine, they have attempted to dismantle the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Demi-Leigh Tebow appears to have an idyllic life in many ways, yet, like many people, she has had to learn some difficult lessons and at times has struggled with her Christian faith. The former Miss Universe and Miss South Africa winner spoke on “The 700 Club” to Terry Meeuwsen of challenges she has faced relating to her identity and the problem of evil.

“I think a lot of people can relate to the fact that we root our worth, our value, in maybe something that didn’t last, something that was temporary,” said Demi-Leigh Tebow, who is married to former professional football player and former professional baseball player Tim Tebow. 

Demi-Leigh joined Meeuwsen to talk about her new book, “A Crown that Lasts: You Are Not Your Label,” which released on Aug. 13. She acknowledged that while not many people can relate to being a pageant queen, many can understand what it’s like to put their identities in something that fails them. 

“That really is what this book is about,” said Demi-Leigh, “how we can root our identity in something, maybe someone more specifically, that is never changing, that is fixed, that’s always trustworthy, and that’s bigger than ourselves.”

Demi-Leigh Tebow: ‘First and Foremost To Love God

Demi-Leigh Tebow (née Nel-Peters) is a South African model and beauty pageant winner. She married her husband, Tim Tebow, in January 2020. The two are outspoken Christians and advocates for vulnerable people, including children with special needs and children trapped in human trafficking.

Demi-Leigh told Meeuwsen, who is herself a former pageant queen, that because she is from South Africa and was unfamiliar with American football, she was unaware of Tebow’s football career but knew him as the “Night to Shine” guy.

RELATED: Tim Tebow’s ‘Night To Shine’ Celebrates 10 Years of Sharing God’s Love

Night to Shine, which is sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation, is a prom-type experience celebrating people with special needs who are ages 14 and older. The Tebows first met because Tim invited Demi-Leigh and her sister, Franje, to Night to Shine. Franje suffered from cerebellar agenesis, which is a rare condition where the brain forms without a cerebellum. She passed away in 2019 at the age of 13. 

“Franje’s life was so significant and so special,” said Demi-Leigh, who added she does not believe she will fully understand the purpose of Franje’s life until she meets God and sees her sister again in the afterlife.

“That was a hard thing for me to accept,” said Demi-Leigh. “It was hard for me as a teenager, especially, to work through, you know, ‘Lord, why is this happening to my sister? Why can she not been healed?’”

Best known for her roles on “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “The Middle,” Patricia Heaton hasn’t backed down from her faith and wholesome values throughout her Hollywood career. She recently sat down with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit to talk about her successful career in Hollywood and uncompromising faith.

“I don’t see any separation from my spirituality and my acting because I feel that God put that in me,” said Heaton.

Patricia Heaton Uses Her Platform To Stand Up for Her Faith and for Israel

Patricia Heaton is using her platform for more than just receiving awards. She’s adamant about upholding her faith, drawing others to God, and standing up for Israel. In an interview for PragerU, Heaton opened up about her success, struggles, and passions.

Heaton described her upbringing in a devout Catholic family. “My mother was one of 15 children. I have 100 first cousins on my mom’s side,” she said, sharing about her mom receiving a medal from the Pope as the Catholic Mother of the Year in the United States. “My sister’s a nun. We ate fish on Fridays. Everything. Rosaries,” Heaton said.

Heaton shared how she talks with God throughout her day and often wondered how others in Hollywood make it through each day, each week without a strong relationship with God.

“I went to the showrunner, and I said, ‘I just need to tell you I’m pro-life.’ And another person said, ‘That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,'” said Heaton.

Heaton married actor and director David Hunt more than 30 years ago, and together, they have four grown sons.

Placing a priority on your marriage, something fairly uncommon in Hollywood, “actually improves the way you focus on your career,” Heaton said. “You know you have a solid relationship at home and that no matter what happens to you in show business, you have a person who’s there for you.”

“When you have children, it breaks open a chamber of your heart that can only be opened by children,” Heaton said, explaining that having children “gives you another well of emotions to dip into for your acting.”

Heaton found herself no longer acting to advance her own career but to “fight” and provide for her growing family and pay for their kids’ education.

Heaton was nominated for dozens of awards and won many, including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for “Everybody Loves Raymond” in 2000 and again in 2001.

But after the pandemic and writer and actor strikes, Heaton found herself adrift. She was also no longer a full-time mom, something that had provided identity and anchored her.

“It’s been very challenging,” admitted Heaton. She remembered telling God, “You need to tell me what you want me to do because I’m bad at making choices, and I’d rather just wait on you.”

Heaton felt she needed to make a few changes. She engaged in a Bible reading plan where she read the entire Bible in one year. Heaton also gave up drinking.

She recognized that when she was in a “place of discomfort,” it was “very easy, just like crack,” to turn to alcohol. She’s now celebrating six years of sobriety.

Heaton created the organization Oct. 7 Coalition (O7C) to “be visibly and vocally supportive of the Jewish people, of Israel’s right to exist, and to fight anti-semitism,” she said.

“Our Savior’s biological family—the Jewish people—are being murdered. We need to stand for them,” she said. “I believe every Christian, in particular pastors are going to be held accountable.”

O7C equips pastors to help educate their congregations on the importance of supporting Jews and Israel and practical ways to do so.

Heaton explained that it’s more than joining a political party; it’s about coming together for a common purpose. “We have to get our of our silos,” she said.

With more than 2,000 views, the interview is reaching fans of PragerU as well as Patricia Heaton.

A convicted felon who pleaded guilty to possessing weapons on the property of a New Mexico church has been sentenced to more than four years in federal prison. Nathan Wallace, now 41, was arrested in May 2023 after a sheriff’s deputy found him on the playground at East Mesa Baptist Church in Las Cruces after midnight.

In Wallace’s bag was an 8-inch galvanized pipe containing gunpowder, along with a multi-meter device, batteries, red and black wires, a motion sensor, a fuse, a shotgun shell, and two syringes filled with heroin. Investigators later determined that he had an operational pipe bomb.

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said Wallace’s arrest was not related to two unsolved bombings at Las Cruces churches back in 2015. The FBI continues to investigate those incidents.

Operational Pipe Bomb Found Near NM Church

When questioned in 2023, Nathan Wallace said he didn’t have electricity and rode his bike to East Mesa Baptist Church to charge his laptop. In response to a question about what was in the pipe, he told the deputy, “It’s not drugs, it’s gunpowder.” Wallace also claimed the explosive materials and drugs in his possession “were randomly placed inside his backpack.”

RELATED: 4 New Charges Brought Against Former Michigan Pastor in Child Sex Abuse Case

According to the arrest warrant, Wallace admitted to being a heavy user of meth and said he had used that night. He also told authorities he wasn’t allowed to possess the materials, due to his criminal history.

A judge released Wallace on the day of his arrest. Two months later, he was spotted outside a Las Cruces public school on a weekday. Wallace said he had wanted to plug in his devices; authorities found no explosives or weapons on him that day.

Previously, Wallace has pleaded guilty to shoplifting, forgery, possession of explosive or incendiary device, possession of explosive or incendiary device conspiracy, and receipt, transportation, or possession of a firearm or destructive device by a felon. Federal law prohibits felons from handling or possessing firearms or ammunition.

On Aug. 23, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Mexico announced a 52-month sentence for Wallace. After serving his sentence, Wallace will face three years of supervised release. The federal prison system has no parole.

New Mexico Pastor: ‘We’re Pretty Well Protected’

After Wallace was arrested last year, Stephen Kovach, interim pastor of East Mesa, told reporters that the church’s neighborhood is a “fairly impoverished area as far as people.” He added, “We run into people that are troubled, and we try to help them.”

Christian leaders are continuing to react to former President Donald Trump’s softened stance on abortion after vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance indicated in an appearance on “Meet the Press“ Sunday (Aug. 25) that Trump would veto a bill imposing federal restrictions on abortion.

Trump himself made waves over the weekend after saying in a post to Truth Social on Friday that his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”

On Sunday, Vance sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker and spoke about Trump’s desire to “end this culture war over this particular topic.”

When Welker asked if the Trump-Vance campaign could commit to opposing a federal ban on abortion if elected, Vance responded, “I can absolutely commit [to] that.”

“Donald Trump has been as clear about that as possible,” he added. “I think it’s important to step back and say, ‘What has Donald Trump actually said on the abortion question and how is it different from what Kamala Harris and the Democrats have said?’”

“Donald Trump’s view is that we want the individual states and their individual cultures and their unique political sensibilities to make these decisions, because we don’t want to have a nonstop federal conflict over this issue,” Vance went on to say. “The federal government ought to be focused on getting food prices down, getting housing prices down—issues, of course, where Kamala Harris has been a total disaster.”

“So I think Donald Trump is right. We want the federal government to focus on these big economic and immigration questions,” Vance said. “Let the states figure out their own abortion policy.”

When pressed on whether Trump would veto a bill banning abortion at the federal level, Vance said, “I think I’ve been very clear he would not support it.”

“But would he veto it?” asked Welker. 

“Yeah, I mean if you’re not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it,” Vance said. “I think he would. He’s said explicitly that he would.”  

RELATED: Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock Praised, Criticized for Saying ‘We Are All God’s Children’ at the DNC

As clips of the interview began to circulate on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, a number of Christian leaders reacted to Vance’s remarks. 

(RNS) — A dispute with the federal government over how to count employees, mixed with some bad timing, could cost a small evangelical Christian college more than $7 million.

Gordon College, founded north of Boston in 1889, is suing the Small Business Administration after the agency denied a request to forgive a loan made under the Payroll Protection Plan, which was aimed at preserving jobs during pandemic shutdowns. While millions of PPP loans have been forgiven, some employers, like Gordon, have run afoul of SBA rules and found themselves with debt they did not expect to repay.

“We had every reason to expect the loan forgiveness portion of the program would be fulfilled when applicable,” school officials said in a statement to RNS.

Gordon’s lawsuit reveals some of the confusion that accompanied the PPP program, which was hastily passed in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, and began distributing money before the rules governing those loans were finalized. More than 11.5 million loans, amounting to some $793 billion, were made under the program.

In mid-April 2020, according to documents filed in a federal lawsuit, Gordon applied for a PPP loan. According to the program’s rules at the time, Gordon alleges, if the school kept paying its employees during the term of the loan, and didn’t lay them off, the loan would be forgiven. There was one catch: the loan program limited its benefit to organizations with fewer than 500 employees.

Gordon had more than 500 employees at the time, but that number included student workers and part-time staff. After talking with their legal counsel, Gordon decided to count employees using a “full-time-equivalent,” or F.T.E, model of counting, common in academic settings, and submitted a loan application.

Under that model, Gordon had 495.67 employees.

The school’s loan application, submitted on April 15, 2020, was approved a few days later, according to court documents, and by April 23, the school had the funds in hand.

Three days later, the SBA clarified how to count employees, telling them to use a head count approach.

“For example, if a borrower has 200 full-time employees and 50 part-time employees each working 10 hours per week, the borrower has a total of 250 employees,” the SBA advised.

When Gordon applied to have its loan forgiven in 2022, the SBA turned them down, citing that new guidance. Gordon countered by saying the headcount rule was published after their loan was approved and should not apply. “SBA has determined that the borrower was ineligible for the PPP loan,” the SBA said in a letter dated April 12, 2022.

Gordon, in its statement, said it had “spent the entire amount on its employee payroll expenses to keep faculty and staff employed and avoid extensive short-term furloughs or layoffs.”

(RNS) — It all started when Carlos Whittaker received that perky Sunday morning iPhone notification summarizing his time spent on his handheld screen in the past week.

Seven hours and twenty-three minutes on average per day. 

Whittaker, an author and former worship pastor, did some quick math and realized that number translated to nearly 100 full days a year. If he lived to be 85, he’d have spent a decade looking at his phone. While most of his work centers around his social media community, his “Instafamilia,” he knew something needed to change.

Whittaker messaged Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist with nearly 3 million followers on TikTok, earning him the nickname, “America’s most popular psychologist.” How much time, Whittaker wanted to know, would he need to take away from all digital devices to effect real change in his brain. Amen quoted him close to two months.

Using a screen-free Sony camera to document the journey, Whittaker ditched his phone and spent two weeks with Benedictine monks in the California desert, two weeks working on an Amish farm in Ohio and three weeks with his family, both at home in Nashville and on a trip to Yellowstone, all free from any connectivity.

From his experience came a new book, “RECONNECTED: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human.” RNS talked to him about his journey and his book. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You got your start as a worship leader for churches like Hillsong. How has your worship evolved over the years?

For a long time, I was a “professional evangelical.” I went from worship pastor to signed worship artist, touring and playing shows. Now, I rarely even speak in churches anymore. I just love going to church with my family now. Worship looks like what I’m doing now: worshipping with people that don’t believe like me, holding my own and having a blast doing it.

Your ah-ha moment came when you saw how much time you were spending on your phone. But why a desert with Benedictine monks? Why Amish farmers?

I started multiplying the seven-plus hours I was spending, and realized that’s two cycles of the sun a week. Once I made the decision to not look at screens, I thought of places without them: the Benedictine monastery in the high desert of Southern California. My wife’s father was a volunteer in the ’80s and ’90s there, so she made an intro for me. A friend of mine married a former Amish guy, so they were my connection to the sheep farming family in Mount Hope, Ohio. Then I moved back home for three weeks — I mean, anybody can do this with monks and the Amish, but can I do this around my family in Nashville?

How did unplugging impact your spirituality?

It really disturbed and disrupted it. I realized how much (focus) I place on random pastors’ YouTube sermons and podcasts. I was constantly filling my mind with content, but when all that went away, it was just me and my mind. God got really tangled up. The first week at the monastery was like a massive deconstruction and reconstruction in seven days. I had some very deep conversations with monks that shook up my faith a lot and then got to build it back.

When I look at my faith, when I am just consuming, consuming, consuming on all of these devices, that builds a box around who God can be. God got way bigger than I think I had ever pictured he was going to get.

What did wellness look like for you in the seven weeks? Did you pick up any new exercise or spiritual habits?

Savoring is something that I never thought about as a spiritual practice, but I realized pretty quickly that I’ve stopped savoring anything, because we get things so quickly. Multitasking is the worst thing to ever happen to us. I drank coffee out of ceramic mugs for eight straight weeks. It just tasted better. I was able to savor it. Now when I go to a coffee shop, I never get my coffee to go. I’m like, if I don’t have four minutes to sit and savor, you know?

I’d say the second thing is just slowing down. If there’s one thing the monks taught me, it’s to move at what I call God speed.

(RNS) — Most American churches navigated the patchwork of COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings by periodically closing their doors and broadcasting services online instead.

But for almost half of U.S. Orthodox Christians, whose liturgy involves processions, incense, kissing icons and crosses and receiving Communion from a shared spoon and chalice, liturgical services continued for anyone wanting to attend in person, according to a new study of how the denomination weathered the pandemic.

The new study finds that Orthodox churches overall were reluctant to embrace virtual worship compared to all religious congregations. By spring 2023, 75% of all U.S. congregations provided remote options compared to only 53% of Orthodox churches.

Fewer online options likely contributed to the significant drop in Orthodox church participation in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, but compared to other U.S. congregations that are on average 8% below pre-COVID-19 attendance, Orthodox churches had recovered in-person attendance on average by spring 2023.

At the same time, Orthodox churches overall have seen a drop in volunteer participation, from 40% in 2020 to 25% in 2023, compared to 40% and 35% in all U.S. congregations.

The Orthodox tendency to “ignore” the pandemic has produced a “mixed bag,” said research released Thursday (Aug. 22) by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Alexei Krindatch, national coordinator of the U.S. Census of Orthodox Christian Churches. Orthodox churches in the U.S. are more likely than other religious congregations to have gained members during the COVID-19 pandemic, even while struggling with declines in participation and volunteering.

Using survey data from 2020 through 2023, the study found 44% of Orthodox churches remained open during the pandemic, compared to just 12% of all U.S. congregations. Only 31% of Orthodox priests publicly encouraged parishioners to get vaccinated compared to 62% of all clergy.

“They were trying to avoid conflicts,” said Krindatch, the study’s lead researcher, who has published earlier reports on how the pandemic impacted Orthodox Christians.

There is no single Orthodox Church in the U.S. Instead, several jurisdictions — the largest are the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, the Orthodox Church in America and the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese — are administered independently of one another and exist side by side, sharing the same teachings and in full communion with one another. Many Orthodox parishes combine several immigrant groups and their descendants, from Russians and Ukrainians to Arabs and Greeks, as well as converts from other faiths and denominations.

Bishops provided pandemic guidance to the priests serving them, such as whether to require masking or not, often across a swath of states that clashed on masking and lockdown mandates. Priests then chose whether and how to follow or adapt that guidance to their specific circumstances, sometimes casting doubt on the bishop’s authority.

“I figured people are going to make their own medical decisions (about the vaccine),” said one Orthodox priest who participated in the survey, the Rev. Lawrence Margitich of St. Seraphim of Sarov Cathedral in Santa Rosa, California, a parish of the Orthodox Church of America. “I’m the priest. What do I know about that stuff?”

Margitich said his church has grown from about 80 people on a Sunday morning in the pre-pandemic months of 2020 to about 180 people today. To reduce the spread of the coronavirus, in 2020, the church moved services to its outdoor courtyard with an amplified sound system. Then in August 2020, smoke from a major wildfire pushed them back inside.