As concerns mount about America’s “loneliness epidemic,” some religious leaders have sought to market themselves as a potential cure. An academic and a rabbi co-wrote an op-ed in The Boston Globe last year saying as much. “While this epidemic of loneliness is unprecedented, our approach to solving it doesn’t have to be,” they write. The op-ed writers bristled at the notion that religious groups’ role in addressing the problem is no more important than secular institutions like fitness centers.
But how do we know? Religion as the fix for the loneliness epidemic strikes me as undertheorized.
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