Communities of Practice: Aging, Emergency Management, and Churches in Rural Clackamas County, Oregon

As the population of the United States ages, questions arise of how to best care for older adults in daily life and emergency situations. This research looks at the daily activities of churches to see how they affect everyday and emergency care practices. As a collaboration with Clackamas County government, I researched the relationship between churches and care through participant observation and interviews during the summer of 2024 to understand congregations’ support for older members, the role of church congregations in emergency management, and the implications of the decline in religious participation alongside aging in the United States. I found that congregations create networks of assistance and communication that could help emergency management and senior social services. I explore the relationship between belief and action in one congregation, and then interpret the implications of church-related benefits in an increasingly irreligious context. I end with suggestions for how governments can appropriately make use of these findings.