A recent Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who belong to a house of worship has decreased by around a third since the turn of the century. The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion at all has nearly tripled over the last two decades. Yet, religious communities can be powerful forces for belonging, equity, and social change.
In this session, we’ll look at the Jewish community as a case study of how religious communities can combat these downward trends by leveraging the tools and frameworks of social entrepreneurship. We’ll look at how direct support of social entrepreneurs and “intrapreneurs” in religious communities can generate new innovations and solutions to the challenges of relevance, inclusion, equity, and accessibility, ultimately spurring a renaissance in American religious life.