#54
Digital Divides, Knowledge, and Empowerment: The COVID-19 Crisis and Black Churches

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the internet’s power to connect people during the current lockdown, including for religious communities. However, many elderly people and those living in rural communities lack reliable or fast internet connectivity. The threat therefore is that the pandemic is widening social divides and hurting specific communities because of wide digital divides. A case in point is the new study by the Pew Research Center that finds that while 86 percent of mainline Protestant churches are offering streaming or recording services online, only 73 percent of predominantly black Protestant churches are doing so.

Fair Count, an organization working to increase 2020 census participation in hard-to-count areas, recently provided internet access support (mostly through hotspots) to 46 predominantly black churches in rural Georgia. This helped increase census participation. It has also allowed many pastors to livestream their sermons on Facebook and thus to reach their congregations during lockdown. Even if parishioners lack internet access, pastors who have access can text parishioners or provide numbers for them to call in to listen to the sermons. Elderly members have thus stayed connected to their church.

Reverend Bo Barber II of Prospect African Methodist Episcopal Church of Forston, Georgia, underscored the important equity dimensions of internet access. The Fair Count hotspots benefit the census and church involvement, but go well beyond. With many students lacking broadband services to do remote schoolwork, families can drive into church parking lots to access internet connection for schoolwork. “Knowledge is power,” said Reverend Barber. “And if you’re isolated, you’re not empowered.”

(Based on: April 30, 2020, Religion News Service article)