Spiritually Remote?

Dwindling daylight shimmers through the stained glass and onto the pews of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in State College, Pennsylvania, on a Sunday in late autumn as the sun sets on its 5 p.m. service

Congregants shuffle in and take their seats quietly under the towering ceiling. The 112-year-old church can hold several hundred people, but it won't today.

Only 13 congregants have found their way through the heavy wooden doors.

Carolyn Donaldson, 59, of State College, is one of them – and she said this is actually a good day for the church in the pandemic. Typically, five to seven people...