4 Tactics for Faith Communities to Help Address Social Isolation
A couple of weeks ago, I was having breakfast in a hotel lobby in Omaha, NE, when I noticed an older man hovering over a table where a dad and his two young children were seated. The older man, who had clearly just met this family, chatted with them while they ate their breakfast. After a while, it started to feel awkward, at least to me as an eavesdropper. It felt like the man had overstayed this encounter with strangers, that he hung around too long while the family was just trying to enjoy their morning. And then I remembered an event we co-hosted in September on Faith Communities Fighting Isolation and stopped to think: Maybe this man was lonely.
In 2023, the Surgeon General issued a report on the national epidemic of loneliness and social isolation, noting the severe impact of isolation on physical health and longevity, as well as its economic costs. We've all likely seen the rise of loneliness in our own communities for a long time, but to hear it framed as a public health crisis from the highest levels of our government has been both jarring and mobilizing. This epidemic is perhaps of particular interest for faith communities because the narrative around the decline in social capital over the last several decades almost always mentions the trend of decreasing religious affiliation as one of the drivers. In other words, faith institutions have played such an important role historically as the infrastructure for social trust that declining affiliation with these institutions has had implications for everyone.
But what if faith communities are also a key component to solving the crisis? Faith institutions know a lot about building relationships and community. Now is the time to put that wisdom and experience to work at scale to help solve this crisis. Faith communities can and should be leading on the frontlines.
To explore the role that faith communities can play, we teamed up with Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute to host a conversation with two leaders of faith-rooted innovations that are modeling what faith-led solutions can look like. As Director, Community Mobilizers at the UJA Federation of New York, Sepi Djavaheri oversees a portfolio of programs in the Jewish community to address social isolation, including Isolation to Connection, an initiative that connects isolated and lonely seniors from all backgrounds to needed services by leveraging the relationships and trust built by community and faith leaders. Dr. Sherry Molock is a professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University and a minister. She co-founded HAVEN Connect, a project that leverages the community connections of Black churches to provide mental health support to vulnerable Black youth.
Several important insights emerged from the work of our speakers:
1. Follow lines of trust.
When it comes to mental health and social isolation, trust is an essential asset. In many communities, faith leaders are still some of the most trusted individuals. Dr. Molock is both a minister and a clinical psychologist. She noted that people won't come to her office, but they will talk to her at church about their struggles. They’re more comfortable talking to a faith leader than a mental health professional. Young people, on the other hand, may not see faith institutions as trusted places, so as Dr. Molock points out, it's important to go to places trusted by them and their parents where they are already congregating - maybe a sporting or music event. Nothing substitutes, she says, for hanging out in the community - sometimes with no agenda, just being there.
Of course, there are other trusted people and institutions in our communities, and we should look to them, too. Djavaheri's work is rooted in the Jewish Community Centers, where they have trained connection specialists. But those specialists don't just wait for people to come to the JCCs, they rely heavily on other trusted institutions to help them identify isolated individuals. Librarians know who shows up just to chat with them. Doctors know who makes numerous appointments in a short timeframe. These are potential indicators of loneliness. Seek out trusted people and institutions in a community and you are likely to find people who are lonely even if they don't say so.
2. Nurture purpose.
The decline in affiliation with religious institutions matters not only because houses of worship are places where people gather but also because they're places that root people in meaning and purpose. Both HAVEN Connect and UJA's Isolation to Connection program focus on helping people tap into purpose. It's one of the four pillars of HAVEN Connect's curriculum with young people, along with kinship, guidance, and balance. Young people, and all of us, need to feel like we matter, or as Dr. Molock puts it, "that [our] presence in a room or group makes a difference." Similarly, Djavaheri shared that the role of their connection specialists is not to ask "what's the matter with you" but rather, "what matters to you." People need relationships to overcome social isolation, but even more foundationally, they need a sense of meaning that motivates them to seek out relationships and activities that connect them more deeply to their purpose.
3. Embrace courageous conversation about mental well-being.
While fostering meaning and connection often happens quite naturally in faith communities, the scope of the problem our society faces requires us to stretch further. We have a mental health crisis, and we have to be willing to talk about it before we can help address it. Dr. Molock shared the barrier of stigma they have faced in bringing their program to churches where the message in response to mental health challenges is often just to pray, or where one of the drivers of social isolation for young people–being LGBTQ+–raises theological conflict for the community. We cannot just offer opportunities for connection without also confronting the ways we may exacerbate the problem of isolation. Dr. Molock approaches these barriers from a theological angle, discussing how, for instance, most of the major prophets in the church were depressed at some point. She also lets young people, who are often more courageous than adults, lead the way. She found they were the first people in the church willing to talk about mental health challenges.
4. Build collaborations out in the community.
Both UJA and HAVEN Connect have been successful, in large part, because they spend time in the community, eagerly collaborating with other faith traditions and with secular organizations. The churches Dr. Molock works with often have partnerships with organizations like the YMCA, as well as schools, to support young people in a variety of ways. They’re already getting to know young people in the community. HAVEN Connect also received a significant grant from the American Association for Suicide Prevention, the first of its kind for work engaging religion, positioning faith communities as key players in the larger national effort to prevent suicide. Partnerships are equally essential in UJA’s work. Their connection specialists talk to everyone in the community who is engaging with seniors - from the AARP to Catholic Charities to the local Islamic Center. These engagements help them both identify isolated seniors and build their list of resources to which they can direct such seniors.
Faith institutions, in collaboration with other resources in our communities, have the assets needed to help address this crisis, not just among the followers of our respective traditions, but also for society at large. But to do so, we're going to have to stop thinking only about those who come through our doors, get creative, and open ourselves up to partnering with other faith communities and with secular organizations.
All of us individually can also make a difference, by recognizing that the stranger talking to us for an awkwardly, maybe even annoyingly, long time may just be lonely. In that particular moment, we might be their lifeline. Or maybe, in that moment, as they imbue us with purpose, they will be ours.
You can watch a recording of Let’s Talk: Faith Communities Fighting Isolation here.
Author: Danielle Goldstone
Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash