The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

About Darren M. Slade, PhD

Darren Slade is President of the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR.org) and is General Editor of the peer-reviewed academic journal, Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERMjournal.org). Dr. Slade is a theological historian, systematician, and critical rationalist philosopher from Denver, Colorado. Specializing in historic-speculative theology, theoretical metaphysics, and the socio-political development of religious belief systems, Darren's academic publications include topics ranging from the philosophy of religion, ancient Near Eastern and Second-Temple hermeneutical practices, church and Islamic history, and the psychology of religion.

Get Darren's Newest book, The Logic of Intersubjectivity, at 33% here:
https://www.gcrr.org/product-page/the-logic-of-intersubjectivity

Is your pastor at risk of dying from Coronavirus? See our research findings! National Survey on Clergy Covid Deaths

As the second wave of Covid-19 was rising in late 2020, we were hearing persistent rumors that more U.S. clergy were dying from Covid-19 than the general population. We at FaithX wanted to know if these rumors were true and if so, why? Online searches revealed no research on the subject. Nor could we find any readily available data on clergy Covid deaths from denominational offices.

So we partnered with researchers at the Global Center from Religious Research (GCRR) to do some research of our own: a slice-in-time survey of Covid-related clergy deaths in the U.S. from January 1 through June 30, 2021. Obviously, this would not be an exhaustive study, but we did hope it would kickstart discussion and “prime the pump” for future research on the subject. We surveyed 16 major Christian denominations in the United States and published the results in the peer-review academic journal, Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM Journal).

Our research revealed some interesting findings, including a strong reluctance by many denominational leaders to even participate in the study at all. Indeed, there were strong political polarizations that surfaced and resulted in some religious leaders (abusively) shaming and condemning us for even asking the question. The research also revealed that the Northeast had the highest recorded death rate compared to other geographical regions in the US, which is not surprising since that’s where the pandemic first started. If you would like to learn more, simply click the button below for the full SHERM article or continue reading this blog post for a short synopsis of the major findings.

Read the Full Article
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FACT 2020: How Congregations Have Changed in the Last 20 Years

by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

The organization, Faith Communities Today, along with 21 other Christian faith traditions, just released the results of the largest national survey of congregational trends in the United States. Spanning two decades of research (from 2000‒2020), the “Twenty Years of Congregational Change” reports findings from interviewing 15,278 congregations among 80 separate denominations and religious groups.

What’s significant about this particular survey is that it tracks multiple levels of change within American congregational life during both the pre- and early COVID era, much of which was predicted by the FaithX Project and its groundbreaking “Religion Singularity” research.

Continue reading to learn about some of the major highlights and results of the survey.

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Total Christian Clergy Deaths Resulting from COVID-19


by Darren Slade, PhD – FaithX Director of Research

Over the past year, the FaithX Project, in partnership with researchers from the Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), conducted a study to answer one very important question about clergy deaths:

How many Christian “clergy” members, from all denominations and traditions, died as a result of the COVID-19 virus?

While the study can only provide estimates and statistical probabilities, the research is finally complete and the preliminary numbers are in.

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Adapting to the Covid New Normal: Has Online Church Giving Gone Down?

By Dr. Darren Slade,
FaithX Research Director

This discussion on the difficulties about online church giving is the third post in our ongoing blog series, Adapting to the Covid New Normal, where our research director, Dr. Darren Slade, will provide a deeper research base for the posts we are publishing on congregations and Covid-19.

Dr. Slade will describe the research and Ken Howard will provide a pastoral perspective.

In a previous post entitled, “When You Can’t Pass the Offering Plate,” Rev. Ken Howard dispelled a number of myths about what it was going to be like for congregations to give and collect donations during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, Ken suggested that online church giving would not decrease the amount of money donated simply because people are unable to attend in-person church services or that the impersonal nature of online giving will give people an opportunity to skimp on their tithes. In this blog post, we will go through Ken’s myths to see what the current research is saying about giving online to churches.

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Adapting to the Covid New Normal: Why Online Worship is Not Enough

By Dr. Darren Slade,
FaithX Research Director

This discussion on why online worship is not enough is the second post in our new ongoing blog series, Adapting to the Covid New Normal, where our research director, Dr. Darren Slade, will provide a deeper research base for the posts we are publishing on congregations and Covid-19.

Dr. Slade will describe the research and Ken Howard will provide a pastoral perspective.

In a previous post entitled, “What We Learned from Our Experiment with Online Worship,” Rev. Ken Howard discussed finding creative ways to hold worship services online during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an experimental case study, Ken partnered with the Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which held an online service that reached 51 people on Zoom and 900+ on Facebook Live. What he originally learned now has some parallels with the latest research on congregational life during the Coronavirus crisis.

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