Good.

Great news! Maybe we can finally tax these cults as well.

As churches decline we're losing what is, essentially, a free communal space. Church was a place where people built community.

We need to replace it with something, not just cheer because a shitty religion is dying.

Boardroom meme:

Boss: Church attendance is down. What can we do to turn this around?

Person 1: discreetly move pedophile pastors around to hide their proclivities?

Person 2: assure the congregation that we still hate gay people

Person 3: follow the teachings of Christ and show love and charity to our neighbors regardless of who they are

Person 3 is thrown out the stained glass window.

Pit of vipers closes due to insufficient snakebite volunteers.

churches are closing

Good

Leaders warn of the risks

The risks of what? The risk of not returning to the dark ages where we damn near all believed the imaginary writings of goat herders and killed for that?

Thanks, no thanks, I love that risk.

Some churches repurpose their land to survive, like Atlanta’s First United Methodist Church, which is building affordable housing.

That's something more churches should do. They always preach about "helping the poor" but most don't give a fuck.

The small churches that are more likely to actually be charitable and are more likely to be inclusive will shut down. The bigot-run megachurches will be just fine.

Crazy that it takes the church shitting down for them to actually follow gods message of giving to the poor.

And yet, somehow, they still make all the policy in this country.

Interesting that they can't stay afloat financially, because they don't pay taxes.

The internet is killing God but giving birth to a new age of conspiracy theorists.

So, not much has changed.

I pray to God everyday that i can live long enough to witness the day humanity completely abandons religion. Inshallah🙏

Oh no! So, anyway...

From what it seems to me, the megachurches are doing okay. It's the more traditional denominations that are suffering. Overall religion might be on a decline, but certain sects are flourishing. One silver lining about some of the megachurches is that they're led by a strong personality and once they're gone, the whole organization putters out. They're more organized around an individual than a theology.

Mega churches are still going strong though. There definitely needs to be a way (other than taxes because separation of church and state is impt) to get churches to spend that money back in the community, but instead it just ends up enriching the owners and investors. If there was anything which needed an anti-corruption intervention.

45% is considerably higher than I expected. I thought it would be closer to 10-15%.

Goes hand in hand with a similar story I heard about a month ago regarding a shortage of pastors. Apparently it's so bad, quite a few have to lead sermons at multiple churches and many simply skip some weeks. Also less trained people taking up the role, whatever that means anyway.

Honestly, get ratio'd, cultists.

Heaven isn't real

“Nobody wants to church anymore!”

Government grifters and charlatan faith leaders have completely debased the idea of 'Christianity' over the past few decades to the point where most people associate Christianity as some joke religion that no one really takes seriously.

Personally, I see anyone who proclaims themselves as Christian as a liar, bigot, narcissist and someone lacking in empathy for others. Sure you can tell me about Jesus Christ but I associate anyone who claims him are just paying lip service to the religion and that they are just psychotic sociopaths who are only interested in power and money.

I don't mind Churches dying out because they've basically destroyed their own religion themselves.

Unfortunately, humans are a dumb species that rely heavily on wanting to believe in something so once this religion dies out another one will take its place and repeat the process. It's been happening for thousands of years so I don't think we'll stop that tradition any time soon.

Hallelujah!

I have a better idea. Seize the land and assets of the churches. They haven't contributed their fair share of taxes, so the land belongs to us.

Next seize the homes and bank accounts of the pastors and clergy and the holy rapists (or whatever they call themselves). Indict them in international courts for crimes against humanity. Offer them plea deals for them to work in their seized homes that are now converted to public housing.

Congrats to Buffalo, it sounds like things are looking up there.

In my area (WA state) there was a small-ish Xian church (the one-storey building was probably <2000 sq ft and cheaply built - the steeple-ish thing (w/o a bell of course) blew off in a windstorm once)) that shut down a year or two ago and was boarded-up. It's been repurposed as a homeless shelter that specifically serves people with serious medical problems. The change has greatly improved the 'hood.

People here are arguing for the (gate-kept) community that Xian churches once offered in the US. By "gate-kept" I'm referring to the fact that Xian churches were, and are, open to only the "right kind" of people. I'm sympathetic to the need for community, and have even looked around locally for what's on offer from Xian or Xian-aligned/compatible organizations, but haven't found any that promote an ideology that isn't based on superstition and that don't demand that I defer in all things moral/ontological to a human power hierarchy within the church. One whose authority, such as it is, is based on "it's in the Book".

Hard pass on that. I'll find my community through volunteering and possibly, one day, through fraternal orgs, though I've found the ones around here (Masons, Rotary, &etc) are still hardcore on gatekeeping themselves, despite being on the wane just as much as Xian churches are. If you think you'd be most comfortable in a Xian-churchy sort of context, but are politically and socially "liberal", the UCC seems pretty inoffensive, though they still (at least locally here) carry on about "worshipping" invisible deities all the time. The Unitarian Universalists (uua.org) seem the least offensive of any old-timey church that I've encountered and it has a certain appeal to me for its association with New England and with 19th-century intellectuals like Emerson and Thoreau. The local UUs have had a local schism in the past five years, with the historical church taking a politically rightward lurch and another UU church spinning-off it but seemingly being more preoccupied with how their church is controlled (no more all-powerful pastor-types, only collective decision-making allowed) and less with charity and community. Finally we have Unity here (unity.org) which has potential for community, but where weekly service addendees seem to be almost exclusively elderly, so I wonder how much longer it will be a going concern?

I'm hoping that someday we get a Satanic Temple that meets in-person here. I could definitely see myself joining that. The Church of the Subgenius (https://www.subgenius.com/), praise "Bob", would suit me well too, and I already own a copy of the Sacred Text, but they don't meet in person AFAIK.

Psh. Until trump’s project’25 handlers make church attendance mandatory for citizenship.