The First Congregational Church (FCC) of Madison is currently celebrating its Make Kindness Contagious campaign thanks to its recently formed Reimagining the Church Committee. Committee member Mary Olson-Scudder is leading this effort by bringing her considerable skills and knowledge to the forefront as the church seeks to oppose hatred and bigotry, while also offering compassion for people living in isolation.

Mary is a PhD, the founding director of the Institute for Dialogic Practice, and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She is a family therapist, psychotherapist, educator, researcher, and writer who has found a true home among the FCC congregation, where she puts her training and education into direct hometown practice.

“I feel my background as a therapist has really been essential,” says Mary. “Loneliness is an underdeveloped concept in terms of mental health. It correlates with physical health problems and mental health challenges and dire societal manifestations like violence and addiction.”

After hearing about other municipalities across the country that were implementing similar programs, Mary made her kindness pitch to her colleagues at the FCC.

“I originally brought this idea to the Reimagining Church Committee and I said, ‘I think we can do this in Madison.’ I wrote a proposal, and it really caught on and everyone got really excited in the committee and in the congregation,” says Mary. “Our first step was to put a giant banner in front of the First Congregational Church that said, ‘Make Kindness Contagious.’ And this just triggered a groundswell and organically evolved. People just started bringing their own resources and interests to the project, and it coalesced around the Kindness Week. It attracted all of this creativity that I had never imagined when I first thought of it.”

“I have an extensive background as mental health professional as a researcher, and I have international experience in this. So, I am bringing all of this into my participation in the church,” she continues. “This is what I write about and think about. I work with families, and my interest has been in doing relational work because that is where the healing begins, and then I was kind of serendipitously given this wonderful opportunity with the church to have an influence in my own community.”

According to Mary, the new initiative at the church is seeking to oppose the continual rise of hate and intolerance. Mary says the new program is also designed to help those dealing with loneliness, which can make individuals more susceptible to negative social influences.

“Fostering a culture of kindness is one way to oppose hate. I’ve studied mental health practices in the Nordic countries, Finland and Norway, and they have a particular emphasis on one aspect of mental health work, and that is trying to promote social networks. When I was working with the church group, I drew on that experience,” says Mary. “I was also reading the work of our Surgeon General [Vivek Murthy]—and I am also writing a book on loneliness and mental health—but I was reading Murthy’s book called Together, and he has made the epidemic of loneliness his chief public health agenda and declared it a public health emergency. So, this was all kind of incubating with me, and I thought maybe it would be appropriate for us as a church, post-COVID, to address loneliness and social isolation in our own midst. Murthy’s work also described unique outcomes in communities that had put in place programs that had reduced loneliness and social isolation with marked real word consequences.”

Mary says the program has resonated both with the congregation and at the Chocolate Festival and Kindness Café, an event held last weekend marking the exciting initiation of the campaign. The effort was aided by a grant via a connection with the Yale Divinity School and the Lilly Endowment organization.

“The First Congregational Church has been such a wonderful way to enter this community. I was very honored when I was asked to be part of the committee. It really has been an opening for me,” Mary says. “One of the great things about Madison is that it’s a very cohesive community. I thought a project like this could radiate through the schools, the social services agencies, and the different religious organizations because it’s not just the First Congregational Church that is involved—we have support from the local synagogue, and this project is a stand against everything that has to do with hate and discrimination. It really has developed beyond the church. We’ve brought together more than 40 businesses and the social service agencies. The response has been really phenomenal. The church has just blossomed. Our ministers, Todd and Sarah Vetter, have been so supportive, and I think the congregation has been really happy on a number of levels. It has given us an avenue for doing something constructive in the community and reaching out to the community, which is one of the things we wanted to engage in as a church.”

“One of the things my research in Finland and Norway taught me is they have a more advanced mental health system there. They make overcoming isolation essential to their treatment of severe mental health problems, and that made a big impression on me because it less explicitly addressed in the United States, and it’s a great interest of mine,” Mary adds. “There is a lot of research that reveals there is a real correlation between loneliness and isolation and mental health challenges. I really think a campaign of this type can have a very positive affect on our community. In my work, one of the things I’ve discovered is that when connections go up, symptoms go down.”

Mary says the committee is planning other events across the calendar year, including a kindness mural project this summer, as well as guest speaker events.

“Our plan now is in early summer to engage an artist and also hopefully engage young people to create a mural for downtown on the theme of kindness. We are also hoping to bring in speakers,” Mary says. “We really want to address this topic of loneliness and social isolation in Connecticut and also more broadly. So, it’s not just Kindness Week where we’re one and done.

For more information about the campaign and how you can participate in the Madison Kindness Campaign/Make Kindness Contagious, visit the FCC website or call Kevin Kane at 860-929-8541. The FCC also hopes to soon have a social media presence where residents can get updates on Kindness Campaign events and programs.