A looming ‘tsunami’ of church closings is poised to remake America
Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade.
Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/01/us/church-closings-christianity-crossroadsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
235 replies
This is a "tsunami" in the same way that the eradication of polio was.
Hope my state legalizes weed cafes so we can get a 3rd place worth going to.
Would be a lot nicer than a church.
Good, the majority of churches have changed from social gatherings to political rallies, especially in smaller communities. Rural America is going to die out with the baby boomers and they have no one to blame but themselves for constantly electing these old assholes.
As a Christian...yeah. Yeah this!
The Church is supposed to be neighbors looking out for each other and studying in each others' homes, and gathering as a community, not superstar collisseums of tens of thousands (those won't be closing huh lol) or concert venues or monolithic "Everybody listen to this one guy who read the same book we can read but we should do everything he says." hierarchy clubs.
They opened their hearts to the rich, the far-reicht grifters, the hatemongers, and pushed Jesus right out in the process. Driven by greed and pushing a worldview of greed, is there any wonder why people are tightening their purses as they get robbed left and right by the false idols they elect?
Or the rise in hostility (not violence mind) to the religion. I used to have a live and let live policy but seeing how many will wrap themselves in the flag with a bible saying they know Jesus while excluding everyone else killed that.
I wish there were something like community centers to replace the void they'll leave behind. As a kid we had rec centers with game rooms and courts and stuff. I remember getting a computer lab and thinking it was the coolest thing.
Obviously not the exact same anymore but something similar. I do believe people are becoming lonelier and isolated because of the pandemic and the rise of social media.
Yeah, it'd be awesome if these could be community centers. Local worshipers could still even request the space on occasion!
Replacing them with smoke shops and carwashes and cash advances or a Subway isn't the net positive we'd hope for. =\
I've heard this referred to as a "third space", a place not home nor work where people can hang out and not be hassled for not buying anything. Like parks and libraries.
They're quickly disappearing. :(
I've seen some churches becoming breweries, I think it was in Germany or Sweden.
I like that idea, just a space people can exist together. I wouldn't mind my tax dollars going to that.
Good
They didn't follow their own texts (apparently this Jesús guy is too liberal). Were too selfish and cowardice to call out their own for literal monstrous acts. Judged and played god for political gains. Protected the powerful at the expense of the weak. All while crying victimhood and intentionally trying to bring about armageddon.
Action meet consequence. No one wants to be in a canabalistic death cult except fascists and they aren't going to give you money. They are going to rob you.
If only I was confident enough in America to believe it was the Christian Nationalists tending towards closing down.
Thoughts and.. nevermind
Maybe don’t let a crazy regime appropriate your religion for their use to dominate the world?
In Amsterdam, there's a very nice old church that has been converted to a leather club.
Near my house in England, there's a big church hall that was sold off by the church and is now still a community center, but with a couple professional offices in part of the building. The building now seems far less derelict (the church hadn't been giving it the level of maintenance it needed) and it's being used much more as a result.
The problem is america doesn't have nice churches
Sure we do, they're mega churches that are tax exemption scams and don't do anything to help people but help take away their money.
I mean the nice Gothic buildings
I don't think The Church was a church before, but maybe you're talking about a different one?
Could've been an underground church in the past when times were spicy.
Otherwise just pick Paradiso; that also was a church.
is it a nice leather club?
The guys standing outside were definitely sporting plenty of leather. They looked like they were having a good time. It's not my scene so I can't vouch for what goes on inside. I also don't know if the leather thing was a one-night-a-week theme or if it's always on.
Anyway, I just looked it up. It's called Club Church and, appropriately enough, it's on Kerkstraat (Church Street) in the city center. If you ever drop in, please come back to share your experiences.
I would say "good", but I'm sure this will somehow not affect megachurches
Yea this was my first thought.
Anecdotally, in my area (rural, 25ish miles from a mid city) many of the old-school but liberal-ish protestant denominations seem to be withering.... Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist etc.
The storefront Baptists are doing just okay, and the metal-shed-building mega or wannabe mega are booming. New Life etc
This is not a particularly great trend imo.
The ongoing schism in the Episcopal church, also not great.
It'll probably increase attendance at (and payments to) the megachurches as the smaller community churches close and people who can't face life without a church look for a new place to go.
Waow church capitalism
Less churches = less pastors (especially youth pastors) = less children being raped. At least i hope that's how the math works out.
Always time to become a Scout Leader!
If the rapists are still at large, they'll find other opportunities. That's unlikely to improve the statistics.
Except at churches the parents bring the children to the rapists, often don't believe the children, and the entire organization will then protect the rapists and ostracize the victims and their family.
So certainly less cushy and safe hunting grounds.
I keep thinking about all that property and buildings already there and people being hungry for third spaces and how I could start some kind of movement that was like open source for software but something for third spaces and done as non-profit.
Something that could host things like makerspaces, quilting groups, book exchanges, swap meets, reading clubs, game day/nights, still rent out for meetups and even weddings/wakes, things like that.
Seems to me that people are dying for third spaces that don't involve having to cough up money just to be somewhere that is not home, school, or work.
And many people don't want to be involved in a church per se.
I mean, churches already can do this.
Instead of being the boring place you have to go on Sunday, they'd do what you're talking about.
Who wants fellowship in the most uncomfortable setting there is?
Cool it with all the pious bullshit, unpucker ye olde asshole and maybe some people might drop in. I cannot think of a more obsolete entity than the current church. Boring, stodgy, judgy, unpleasant. Big fucking surprise nobody is interested.
I think it'd be incredibly hard to have them revamp things from the inside. Suppose a pastor/minister/preacher wants to do something like that and subtract the "branding" of churches being really boring, stodgy, and often problematic (pedos)? Might be really tough to pull that off, and they'd still be a church in the end. I think most people would still nope out.
I'm thinking of using the same locations and turning them into some kind of super community center. Maybe even combine it with low-cost daycare and being a nexus of after-school activities. It's mostly just a pipe dream, but honestly, I think the right kind of effort/people doing this could have this sweep the nation, under some kind of commonly-recognized naming/branding.
Especially after social media, Covid lockups, AI psychosis, etc...I really do think people of all ages have a real thirst for a physical third place where everyone could find their thing and just be in meatspace with others.
I always see Meetups that lose their location due a business closing or moving or no longer having an employee from the Meetup working there, etc. This could be another way something like this could fill the gap - offer that space for rent at deep discounts such that Meetups could afford it. Add in things like food drives and pantries and bingo nights, etc... to round out the calendar so there is always something to do, and it won't seem to be some anemic thing of the past.
Reverend Richard Coles seems like the kind of guy to actually do this but I only know him from panel shows with rude jokes.
I've talked to plenty of chuchgoing people that would rather have the church die out than have it change.
Finally some good news
Agreed, except this is mostly going to be small community churches and not the predatory megachurches that are much more problematic.
Yes and no. Small churches still produce large numbers of folks who disbelieve in science and medicine.
As more people abandon organized religion, perhaps more of them will decide science is peachy. Maybe. Possibly.
I wish I could share your optimism, but I've seen the closing of smaller and generally more liberal churches in my area lead to a percentage of their congregation migrating to a much less accepting megachurch.
It's frustrating.
And they'll get their "science" from quacks like RFK Jr's cronies. If they could be conned by fundies, they're going to be marks for any other snake-oil salesmen they come into contact with, though there might be a vanishingly small percentage of them who learn from their experience and stop being such flagrant suckers.
Reading between the lines in the article, it's the more agreeable ones that are closing. Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, to some extent Catholics. The ones that are thriving are your batshit insane Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal types. So don't get too excited from the headline, the worst of Christianity will always survive.
and there in lies the rub, broad support from their communities for their bat shittery.
They'll become less and less mainstream hopefully. Get the assholes out of schools.
This is exactly what I see in my area
The ongoing schism in the Episcopal church is also a tragedy.
Storefront type Baptists are doing just okay, and Catholics have drifted to majority hispanic by now.
Steel-barn / Christian Rock megachurches are expanding
uplifting news!
Finally, some good news in the US.
It won't be the churches that most need to close. The quiet little church that feeds the local homeless people will close while the Trumpist evangelical megachurches with the hate-spreading, abusive, grifter pastors will be fine.
The mega churches are pretty famous for "stealing sheep." They're a bit like country clubs were but for poorer folks. They've got facilities and sports clubs and daycare, but offer a degree of
segregationseparation from the general population.Yep. The Wal-Mart of religion
Take over small town drive out locals then raise prices
They are running them like businesses, treating beliefs like marketing, and wondering why nobody is interested.
Boomerslop
They’re also famously not feeding the local hungry or taking in the needy, like when they lock the doors during hurricanes and other acts of God. If they do go on missions, it’s both just a fund raiser and a chance to convert foreigners to wash their other evil acts in public view. They’ll make pamphlets and videos and awards for themselves for their good deeds, which Jesus expressly said not to do.
CIA supported movement to counter act Liberation Theology of the last century is how this became what it is today
It sounds like lots of people are interested...
Be that as it may, I absolutely do not view religion (Christianity or any other faith, abrahamic or otherwise) as a positive influence on this country or the world in general.
If we’re just talking about the US and Christianity (such as it is) here: the fact that so many people have been so easily and readily swept into the ideological sphere of evangelicalism and Christian Dominionism is one of the primary cancers that is destroying the social and political fabric of this place. I’m talking about not just about mega churches, but small town evangelical preachers who’ve gone round the bend and are now full theoated Nationalist Christians, with all that that entails these days (my uncle turned into one of those a while back - we are not on speaking terms). The fact that “normal” Christians appear to be perfectly content to cede ideological control and leadership to a dizzying combination of white nationalists, end-times enthusiasts, tech-magnate neo-feudalists, and profit-gospel MLM scam artists is just… well, there’s a whole fucking section in the Bible about how all of that is a bad idea, but nobody in the cult is reading that, and no “normal” Christians seem to have made much headway at all in getting those people to understand what the religion is supposedly intended to be about.
Very well stated, and matches the resounding feelings quite well.
I can't speak to 100% accuracy of this interpretation but I find this article on what Jesus said about churches interesting. https://www.christianwebsite.com/what-did-jesus-say-about-church/
What makes you feel they're happy?
Repeal churches tax exempt status and most of those megachurches will implode practically overnight. Remove their ability to effectively grift and most of them will move on to a more profitable scam and the ones that are left will be far less dangerous with less money to throw around for bribes.
Thank you for understating this. So much of Lemmy is just hard black and white but there’s so much grey in between that people (myself included) often miss.
One of my friends used to belong to a church that provided them with housing for her and her husband. This was over 20 years ago though. Not sure if the church still offers services like that for those in need.
Megachurchs often don't outlast their founders. Many if the early ones are closing now
Also mega churches tend to have a lot of drama by those running it. I’m thinking of hillside or is it hillsong, but there are many others. And mega churches are also huge, meaning that many people are impacted and many people post about it.
Anyone remember Ted Haggard? Talk about some drama....dude was one of the most influential evangelicals, then, whoops, turns out he was up to a lot of "sinning".
Younger folk see the grift.
IIRC, it's mostly that mega-churches are taking over.
It's the smaller (ostensibly) community focused ones that are dying.
The might be getting the larger share of a dwindling pool overall. The percentage of Americans that are xtian has gone down a lot.
From early 90s being ~90% to ~63% around 2022, anyway. That's quite a tidal shift.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-religious-composition-has-changed-in-recent-decades/
The bigger the grift the closer to god - or something like that
A lot of older folks, too. A lot of people used to go to church for the social aspects, but today, everything is about grifting more and more money, and people get tired of constantly being tapped for money.
Also, a lot of people don't like their church ordering them to vote for evil pedophile traitors, or they'll go to Hell. The first time my pastor told me that I had to vote for Trump, would have been the last time he ever saw me.
But that didn't happen to me, because I know better than to welcome Zombie Cannibal Death Cults into my life.
To quote Frank Zappa: "Tax the churches. Tax the businesses owned by the churches."
And then, for the ones that do actual charity work, have them run the charity separately from the church, under the same rules as secular charities, with regards to taxes and reporting.
Absolutely. There is no reason for these predators to be tax exempt.
I am more than okay with churches being tax-exempt provided they stay strictly away from politics. But they don't, so tax away!
What? No, they should pay taxes regardless of anyrhing. There's no good reason they should be exempt at all.
The compromise was that they get no voice but pay no taxes, if they pay taxes they get a political voice
Thomas Cromwell got there way earlier.
Scamming too much out of communities on the weekdays to keep bringing in that sweet weekend scam money too.
Churches should pay taxes like the rest of us.
Let’s start with billionaires. Then work our way down.
Churches are literally billionaires hiding behind Jesus
Por qué no los dos?
Because as it is we can’t even do one.
I figure let’s tackle billionaires to gain some momentum.
No kidding. Where I live in the Midwest that isn't particularly religious, most churches have like an insane amount of labs they're not using. Tax them to the ground.
Good point. The maker's spaces that take these places over should join some tax advantaged organization before going in and fixing them up.
I want to buy up a megachurch and turn it into a to something that serves everything the Victorian bullshitters despised.
Over here, an abortion clinic. And here we have the needle exchange. On the east end there’s a gay bar and sex dungeon in the basement. (We didn’t really have to make a lot of changes to the basement.) second floor is a children’s library (it was important we placed that one as far away from the basement as possible since….well, trauma from the previous tenants). Psychotherapy is offered on the weekends. In the annex we have a furry menagerie and then the grey room.
In the field out back we have a solar array and charging stations in the parking lot. We also added a bus stop here so those without cars can still come in for low-income food assistance on sundays.
What’s the grey room? Oh it the most sinister room of all. All the complaints we receive from Christians are fed into a paper shredder. Their phone calls also just go to a speakerphone in that room. Nobody mans the grey room. It’s where Christians BS gets ignored entirely.
I love your idea. Please make room for a Planned Parenthood clinic.
https://theonion.com/planned-parenthood-opens-8-billion-abortionplex-1819572640/
EVERY LIFE MATTERS!! I mean, I don't want any of them, and I don't care where they go as long as they're born and it's someone else's responsibility. /S
Around my area megachurches are just in industrial buildings. Its not tough to imagine a small manufacturing shop replacing any one of them.
Hell yeah
Turn them into homeless shelters or community centers so they can actually help the people!!!
Shouldn't they have already been these things? Im no Bible pro but I feel like Jesus would have wanted that.
You would think right…
One of the many failures that have led them down this path.
sieze OLSTEENS OPULENT church and turn it into a shelter.
That thing could house so many people but he wouldn’t even open it up for a hurricane. Barf.
is this still true of the mega churches?
Repurpose them as community centers
Probably not
My wife's is one that is. They've got no new blood coming in and a pastor that was intentionally sabotaging them, driving their most dedicated and supportive members out. No attempts at community outreach or retention. Also our state conference literally cares about money more than the god they supposedly serve.
They just got told that they can either sell the church and parsonage, keep some of the money from its sale to bring to the church they'll merge with, or the conference will shut them down, sieze the property, sell it, and force them to merge with the other church anyway, but without the money.
It's no wonder people have been bailing for decades. Totally sounds like something worth being a part of and associated with, right?
Yeah... sure.
My thoughts exactly... They'll pull, "Well, we didn't get as much as we expected... You still owe us... And there's a penalty for... Plus we had to pay for..."
Southern Baptist?
Methodist
Some churches teach positive things and perform useful services for the community. Most don’t, and many are actively harmful. Really they’re all harmful as they teach people to believe in absurd things with no evidence and that the harder you believe in their inane supernatural views, the better of a person you are. Also, to blindly trust authority, the pastor. If we could get rid of the churches that teach people about “demons” and indoctrinate them into conservative politics, that would be great.
The churches that do the most good are the ones that primarily serve and strengthen their surrounding community.
I’ve known a church that does this and people love it, although they still protected the rapist pastor’s son from consequences.
*pastor's rapist son
Why not both
Just one of the weird rules of the language that none of us understand but we all intrinsically know.
the harmful ones are the evangelical ones, and the televangencial churches. the small denominations usually are not part of that mainstream.
Still, evangelical churches have 60 million members in the US, or slightly under a quarter of US adults.
I drive by three empty old churches every day and about ten fully functioning ones complete with a huge tax funded metal sided auditorium/gym. They don't pay taxes but they sure do spend them.
There is a difference between tax funded and tax exempt. I say this because we should be specifically asking that the tax exempt status for religions be removed from the tax code.
If you don't understand then let me explain. The church is tax exempt and the facilities they have built are tax funded. Hope this clears that up.
Thats not how tax funded works. Tax funded is when the gov uses tax money to pay for something. What you are describing is paying for something using tax savings from tax exempt status. If you supported a bill banning tax funded religous buildings, I don't think it would stop anything currently happening right now.
I'm sure you wont understand it but here it is.
I don't need your flawed opinion. At the time when it first got started in 2005 I was working part time for a company and we went in and wired several of the metal barn style buildings with ethernet and wlreless. Everyone involved knew where the money came from. It came from the government in the form of a grant or as I like to call it welfare. Every President since then has supported it and trump has made it all about christian white haters.
So if I assume those building you speak of were paid for by the grants the link mentioned. What are theynused for. Cause the grants are to pay an organization to provide social services.
If you pay an organization with tax money to provide a service, assumably with some profit built in. And they use the profit to build a building... you are stretching to call is tax funded. And my point holds up to this. A ban on tax funded religious building would not legally ban this.
Your pretty antagonistic to someone who litterally wants the same thing as you. I just want to be sure people are rallying around something that will actually achieve the goal. I want religious organization to recieve no special treatment compare to any other. Removing their tax exempt status is the goal with the biggest impact. Entirely getting rid of the office of faith based ... is also a great goal. And I support doing that too. Banning tax funded structure for religious organizations wouldn't do anything.
Think about it. They could sell the land and buildings to a charity they control that rents the church back to them. Then get the grants to build the gyms and such. Their core finances are still under a religious organization, but the buildings are technically owned by a non-religious organization.
lol. I'm not reading that. There is no amount of discourse that will get you to quit being so obtuse and out right confrontational. You have to be either a troll or some god botherer who doesn't like that they are getting welfare.
Good to know your true colors.
You are making a good point, and providing at least somewhat of a source for your assertion is great.
But your delivery sucks. You would be more persuasive with less abrasive.
I understand his anger in general. They just doesn't differentiate freind or foe when they vent their anger. That said, I explained in a direct response to them how it's still not technically tax funded. They actually alude to that when they say "everyone involved knew where the money came from". The organizations used loopholes to indirectly pay for those building. Those loop holes would ensure they are not technically tax funded. So a ban on tax funding religious buildings wouldn't apply.
I'm not trying to convert anyone. I just put the information out there as it is.
Edit: If it abrades then it its hitting the mark.
In other words, your opinions and your words are useless
"dire" forecast? I couldn't think of anything more optimistic than church closings.
In my rural hometown a Christian church, whose small building was the model of old-timey church architecture, closed and sold the property to some kind of glass artist who lives there and uses it for a studio. Huge improvement and a boon for the arts.
Near me in the PNW a small off-brand Christian church shut down about 5 years ago and the building, which is modern and ugly, was converted to a homeless shelter for people with chronic diseases. It's hard to think of a more socially-positive conversion and it always warms my heart to walk by there and say hi to any residents who happen to be about. You can tell how grateful they are to have a roof overhead. This whole region is peppered with tiny Xian churches and the sooner they're bankrupt and converted into something pro-social, the better.
The church putting its weight behind Trump has turbocharged its own demise. Good fucking riddance.
The churches that put their weight behind trump are doing perfectly fine. The churches that are dying are the moderate churches that focus on traditional church stuff, helping neighbors, that type of thing. Megachurches that preach killing gays are doing great.
Trump is only about as unpopular as Bush was in the last couple of years of his presidency. The church also put their weight behind Bush and they seem to have survived.
Jesus never went to church.
He did go to the temple.
What did Jesus do at the temple?
Debated the Tohrah with the pharisees and scribes.
And one time, healed a man's withered arm on the Sabbath.
Also flipped some tables.
Based on the modern definition, sure
Church are the people, this is just property with a steeples
And Christians only have themselves to blame. Who wants to join this crazy fucking cult with all these people who are constant victims of everything and who don't even follow the tenants of their religion or the man that the religion is actually fucking named after?
None of this is surprising.
I grew up Catholic but no longer practice and I don’t really miss church services. However, I attended a fairly charismatic church with a very involved congregation and that sense of community is very difficult to find outside of a church.
This is one of those things that churches have figured out. You need to have in real life community. For churches it's part of their culture. A lot of secular groups haven't put this together yet. Humanists are one group that have.
This why some people have trouble leaving religion. There's no meatspace community for them. This is why we need people in these secular groups to start building community centers. It means starting out small, but there is a human need for meatspace interaction and social support.
100%. I miss the communal gatherings more than the brimstone.
Exactly same. Plus I moved around a lot. I am trying to create a social net around my family, but it’s really not the same thing as a community. That sense of entering the church and being welcomed even if you didn’t know the people there… I really miss it
In my experience that only happens if you toe the line. I'll never forget the people telling me I'm going to hell because my parents are divorcing. People being ostracized for watching Star Wars. I remember the children of the church's higher ups being monsters that never faced consequences. I remember being made to go to anti abortion rallies.
I remember a gay friend (20?) being never allowed alone in the same room as a mutual friend's younger brother (14?). Waiting in the lounge prior to services? Make sure there's a chaperone before you use the restroom. This wasn't because the friend was any danger, it was to avoid the appearance of impropriety. So weird.
Start a group that’s not a church!
Ya know, a group of actual good and nice people
"…biggest fears is that their country will become more like Western Europe…"
We should be so lucky. We wouldn't need to fear the closure of American churches as a loss of community aid if the hyper-rich parasites weren't sucking away all our money. I'd rather see help for my fellow citizens coming from all of us, not small groups invested in spreading belief in their invisible sky-daddy.
From the article: "There are recent signs that the gradual decline in church attendance has leveled off. For the first time in 25 years, the number of people attending in-person worship in the US has increased."
The article also says that about 100 million people (30%) attend a weekly service in the US nowadays. They talk about the heyday of the mid 20th century where 50% of Americans attended a weekly service. The population of the US in 1950 was 150 million. So that's 25 million more people attending church today.
So why are all the smaller churches closing? The article (and possibly the PBS doc) fails to place some of the blame on the congregation capture of mega churches and how politics has driven people into these behemoths. I know that is what's happening where I live in the South. They have a large sanctuary and expand that with an enormous online presence. How else can we have more Church goers and less churches?
And those mega churches are the evangelical assholes that don't even know their religion at all, and get into politics.
Nature is healing
Maybe someone can clarify this, but it seems like the biggest arguments for why Church closings are bad thing is that outreach programs and charities "die with the church". Food pantries and shelters can (and do) exist outside of the church or religious setting. You don't need a clergy to form outreach programs or shelters, so why would church closings be detrimental to this?
Americans don't want public services because white racists don't want any of their tax money possibly benefiting black people, so private charity haphazardly does things like food banks and homeless support. They also use to force you to attend sermons
Sure, it's notionally possible, but churches provide structure and organization for it. For every one secular food pantry there are ten plus run by a church. And if you shut the churches down, it's not like there are suddenly going to pop up dozens of secular food pantries in their place.
Church attendance and giving dwarf any other form of charitable donations, and is therefore a hard thing to replace. Most people I know who go to Church regularly are giving 10+% of their income to the church. Of my friends who don't go to church, I don't think I know a single one who's charitable donations for the year top $5k, and for most it's sub $1k. And I live in a pretty high income area.
It turns out that having mandated charitable giving leads to higher rates of charitable giving, and this gives these institutions the bankroll necessary to do things like run soup kitchens and shelters.
The only other source of money for this is the state, which notoriously underfunds and mismanages this type of work, so churches are filling that gap. So the best case scenario, if all the churches close, would be if the state raised everyone's taxes to get extra funds to offset the loss of that charity. But it turns out that that's not a politically savvy move. People hate raised taxes, and most hate the poor. And poor people in general don't vote in numbers big enough to help you win, so you're not even buying political good will there. So if the churches go away, it's not like there's a real backstop that can come fill the gap.
All that's happening is, plain old Christianity is being superseded by tongue talkin' pew walkin' gun totin' MAGA evangelicalism. Hateful, violent megachurches are doing just dandy.
People quit believing in fairy tales and magical sky wizards, people quit paying for the god and pony show.
i think people will stock flock to megachurches, as thiers more people to confirm thier biases.
Then they're not churches, they're hangouts. Entertainment. Keep the morons fed, sheltered and basically entertained and you have the makings of a long running government.
I have been thinking for a while that so so many of these churches sit on prime real estate that they would have to give up if they actually had to pay property taxes. Same with cemetaries. Like, you got acres of land sitting in my city where sfh go for millions of dollars.
The dead have no place here while the living scrounge for housing.
Vacant churches will convert to AI data centers. If they are building the AI God futurists worship (jk they are narcissist and only worship themselves) wat more suitable place to build it but in a church?
Plus imagine the tax breaks.
This is one of the most American sentiments I've encountered. What is the number one feature of successful churches? A parking lot!
I think this says as much about the Americans willing to start going to a new church as it does anything else. What's growing are suburban prosperity gospel nonsense churches with varying degrees of Christian Nationalist subtexts: strip mall churches on the one end, repurposed sports arena hyperchurches on the other. These tell white people in largely white areas that the lifestyle they already live, right down to the fact that they feel most comfortable driving to a pre-fab concrete box, is holy. They get to feel they are safely members of a strong community, and donating to their pastor and the GOP will keep the heathens who would take that from them at bay. The churches understand that people don't inherently want to throw money into a hole, so they offer a combination of services (including simple socializing with "friends") and threats, but they meticulously avoid anything boring or asking people to consider open-ended questions without simple answers. As committed evangelicals, they are also always selling this package.
What's dying are the mainline Protestant churches who made the mistake of taking separation of church and state seriously and trying to earnestly engage with their faith. You'll find many of them, even if they're quite socially conservative, are much less sure that they know what their god intends for LGBTQIA+ and nonbelievers, and even if parishioners personally are sure, they will say that kindness and setting a Christ-like example is the best policy because that is the tack their church takes. On the one hand, people of goodwill take from this that they don't need organized religion in their lives even if they're still Christian in some meaningful way, and they'll just show up on Easter or when they have personal spiritual crises. On the other hand, the aggressive culture warriors find it all to be unsatisfying because they want to be told not just what to believe, but that what they already believe is correct and should invoke a literally divine level of privilege.
This is golden, and absolutely true in my experience. All the small churches in my region have been in decline for a couple of decades and the mega church full-theater production prosperity gospel evangelicals are stomping them out. It's a duplicate of the Walmart strategy.
I wanna do like the Scandinavians and turn them into clubs
I'm writing a book and there's a gay/lesbian bar in it that's an old church. It's called The Empty Pew. Wish I could make the fiction reality cause that'd be so dope.
Depends on the church. A crappy building, no. A cool stone cathedral in an urban centre, oh yes.
Like a phoenix.
Straight up gave it the Tony Hawk level treatment
I hope that building's history involved priests or pastors feuding with kids on skateboards.
There's one in Pittsburgh that has been turned into a brewery, it's awesome.
They also burn them for the black metal and whatnot.
We have a couple things like that in LA
Won't someone think of the children?! They aren't going to molest themselves.
I hope some become community centers. People need a third space to meet with others.
What exactly is a community center? I've heard the term a lot, but never really asked. Is it like a dance hall? A rec center? Here in the Midwest it's basically the bar.
The closest comparison we have today would be the library. But imagine if the focus was more on events, hangouts, recitals, speakers, group spaces, cultural exchanges, etc.
Right now libraries are basically filling in the gaps by functioning as libraries and community centers, but some dedicated community centers in addition would increase flexibility for how the spaces can be used.
Ok, thanks. That's kinda what I had in my head. We have one under a different name. It's sometimes used for things like birthday parties, and small concerts. Our city takes care of a lot of community engagement but there's so many people that you don't actually get any community feeling.
Yeah my town does events that might seem cool on the surface until you look inside and realize it's all the chamber of commerce behind everything and literally all of it is to promote local businesses.
Which isn't a bad thing in itself except that A) it's literally every community event in town year-round, and B) the chamber of commerce around here is basically a boy's club for republican business owners who are chummy with the county council.
Anyone who doesn't play their game gets roadblock after roadblock, while their "boys" get basically free license to do whatever. Literally change laws at the snap of a finger and rewrite codes to fast-track changes to the sidewalk and other public infrastructure, just to benefit their businesses. And no community input can stop them.
But if you're not "one of them," then good luck re-zoning an unused lot to build an ice cream shop, or whatever you want to do. Cause they'll give you so many hurdles and draw the process out so long that you either go broke or give up before they even give you permission to put in a driveway on property that you own.
So yeah, I get what you mean about "community engagement but no community feeling."
Gee, I wonder why. They brought this upon themselves for supporting fascists and hating humanity.
"Lord, Lord, when did we see you and not minister unto you?" "Depart from me, for I never knew you."
Hopefully the buildings get preserved and turned into museums and secular third-spaces.
I think it's more than that. Because most churches aren't supporting all that. It feels more like critical thinking is slowly creeping into the part of the population that frequented churches. And also, all the scandals are helping people see that their religion is run by humans, with all the corruption that brings.
Some people don't even believe in religion but they go to church for the community. Or in certain churches, for the culture/heritage. You see that a lot in Greek Orthodoxy.
But if the "community" and the "culture" starts showing an uglier face, like southern baptists supporting maga and zionism, then that "just going for the community" aspect starts to lose value.
If churches were doing the right things, i.e. loving humanity and helping their communities, then I could see people staying even if they don't necessarily believe in sky daddy.
And if there's no abuse happening in their specific congregation, then hearing about it happening elsewhere isn't going to change much for most people.
Yeah. I used to work at a church until earlier this year.
There were basically no people my age or younger (30’s). Maybe like. Half a dozen total, out of a community of 200+ people. The church had this big set of classrooms upstairs that were totally unused because there were only 3-4 families with kids in the whole church community, so they shut down their Sunday School…
Even the main chapel didn’t fill up anymore. One of the oldest churches in the city, so everything had been set up a long time ago assuming that everything would keep growing at the same rate it was back then.
Would they harass a gay couple if they attended?
100,000 churches could close and 100,000 mosques and synagogues could open, and MAGA would still insist the US is a Christian Nation.
They skipped right over the First Amendment of course and got so excited by the Second that they basically stopped thinking.
Xtianity is dwindling in the U.S. But even if 100% of the country was xtian it would not change the fact that we were founded as a secular nation.
And nothing of value was lost.
I hope that more of the bad ones than the good ones close.
It’s a net positive either way. If religion didn’t exist neither would Fox News
Unfortunately their people are being snatched up by evangelical mega churches.
There is a church in my town i have been trying to buy for years, maybe this will finally put it into my hands.
That just reminded me that there's a local church building for sale near me.
For $1.5 million. In SWMO.
That's about what you'd get if you sold your single family home in Los Angeles. (Not you in particular, I'm thinking of folks who bitch about California taxes and regulations)
It's not even a new-ish building. It is right in the middle of town though, and it is kinda big.
I think if someone is turning a church into a home, big and old is good. It will probably piss off the neighbors but these are McMansion-type people in the first place.
the south still pretty religious, i think this "tsunami" is going to be region dependent
Yup, they’re building several new churches near me, and I’m in the ‘burbs in Texas.
People become cleverer? Or do they find some even more degenerative activities than religion?
Just confess your sins to grok.
grok spits out, CP instead.
All my sins are < 1.0, so I'm fine.
Facebook?
I heard there is resurgence of religion but it looks like it's not enough.
Not sure where that might have showed up. Looks like it was about 63% xtians in 2022 (down from roughly 90% in the early 90s) and estimated to be about 62% now (depending on poll).
I think I've read the decline that was happening - where it was roughly 1% decline per year for many years - has mostly leveled off.
Ironically, trying to disappear Hispanics from the country may serve to drive the percentage of xtians down further.
I've suspected it was just propaganda the whole time, though maybe that was more wishful thinking. Like there was a shift that I noticed on reddit after the API change, as I just stopped logging in and contributing anything but continued lurking some of the drama subs like AITAH.
Before, religious references were either very overt (like people telling someone they are going to hell or need Jesus or something, using their religion to either attack or virtue signal) or habitual (common sayings with religious roots, like "omg" or anything about blessings, which doesn't really indicate religiousness so much as being raised around religious everyday references).
After, I'd see these random bursts of people casually dropping references to their religion, more subtle than the previous overt references but also more overt than the previous habitual references. They just didn't feel organic to me and I suspected that they were attempts to bring back Christianity as the default in group. No idea if it was that or if the change was just coincidental, but I worried that there might be a real trend back towards religiousness.
Lots of affordable housing and land soon to be snapped up by the elite for their passive rental income.
They should be claimed by the municipalities and converted to secular third-spaces. Book clubs, arts and crafts, board games, etc.
What a great idea!
…ok
Reap what you sow
God is dead and we have killed him
In the words of the Prophet Reznor, "Your god is dead, and no one cares."
Also, Reznor/Bowie: "I'm afraid of Americans.....god is an American...."
I've had that song going through my head the past few days, and now I also have Heresy in my head, LOL.
Well, we created her in the first place, so it seems appropriate.
Trump will just make a State Church, where everyone is welcome. As long as they’re CINO straight white men.
Good.
God has abandoned us so we abandon Him
at long last.
I’m an atheist and I attend a universalist Unitarian church and it’s wonderful, not all churches are equal.
itt: people who have never heard of uu's
Not an atheist then. I'm a vegan but I have a Sunday roast once a week.
Have you looked into UU?
Or worse actually, you're just an enabler. "I know you're wrong and cover up terrible crimes but you let us get together once a week and that forgives everything."
Lol, no. It's the epitome of brown-bag bring your own religion: if you tell a UU they're wrong, you're already wrong:
Atheism is a perfectly valid "individual spiritual quest" in all its forms, and UUs respect it as such. Educate yourself.
Lol k.
From the sounds of the article, if churches were merely able to be asked like any other secular organization in the US to comply with ADA rules, they wouldn't be in this situation, and separately from that perhaps would have more sympathy if they paid some level of taxes!!
And unfortunately those church local charities are the only thing thing keeping a huge number of Americans from literal starvation.
What about Unitarian Universalism?
What about it?
🥳
crossroads is also where they make deals with a demon.
It’s no coincidence that today church and state are no longer separate. I wonder how this will all play out.
US might become a force of evil in the world!
Looks like the cia backed Christian psyop was successful. They got people to worship the false idol. So God, you done playing with Beatles yet? We could really could use an intervention.
Adonaiyahwehjehovahbob ain't listening, spark breath (reference to your username)
Alright.
Take me to snurch
Take me to earth