Black Churches Play a Key Role in Connecting Rural Communities to Broadband Internet

Early in the pandemic, Black churches often struggled to make the switch to remote services for lack of broadband in their area. Even if a church had the wherewithal to livestream services or hold meetings on video platforms, congregants lacked the connections to take advantage. A 2020 Pew Research Center study showed that while 92 percent of evangelical Christians and 86 percent of mainline Protestants could watch services online, only 73 percent of worshippers in the historically Black traditions said the same. Today in the rural South, 38 percent of Black households do not have access to broadband, compared with 23 percent of white households, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Black clergy and faith leaders in the rural South have been working for years to bridge the digital divide in their communities and congregations, and the Affordable Connectivity Program, a pandemic-era federal program, gave those efforts a boost by offering discounted internet access. But fewer than half of the estimated 49 million Americans who are eligible have enrolled, and now questions loom about the program’s long-term funding by Congress.