Churches close their doors as fewer Americans attend
Churches close their doors as fewer Americans attend
Churches faced with empty pews are fighting to keep their doors open, while former houses of worship are being converted into bars, clubs and luxury condos.
Summary
Churches across the U.S. are grappling with dwindling attendance and financial instability, forcing many to close or sell properties.
The Diocese of Buffalo has shut down 100 parishes since the 2000s and plans to close 70 more. Nationwide, church membership has dropped from 80% in the 1940s to 45% today.
Some churches repurpose their land to survive, like Atlanta’s First United Methodist Church, which is building affordable housing.
Others, like Calcium Church in New York, make cutbacks to stay open. Leaders warn of the long-term risks of declining community and support for churches.
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.
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.
Good riddance.
Now the religious companies that remain are all merging together or being bought out by larger religious companies. They change their names to some douchey name that sounds like a shitty christian rock band and franchise. Somehow they're still allowed to be non-profits despite being so much for-profit.
Good! Fuck 'em!
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!
fucking good.
Good
Good.
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.
“Nobody wants to church anymore!”
At least there's some good news!!!
And some are forced to sell off the massive amount of prime real estate they were totally going to build churches on and not pay any taxes on the profits....
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.
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.
Best news I've heard all day
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.
Permanently Deleted
FINALLY! You guys start to get secular state!
We still have to deal with Putin's "200 churches" bullshit.
Safer for the kids
thank god
Churches that shut down don't get burned down.
The church is nothing but a tool of opposition. Glad to see it have less influence.
If a church can't be supported through its active membership, it should close. Better no church at all than one sold out to the world, making money from investments and forgetting their true purpose.
Kids can sleep easy tonight. The cult is dying.
Hallelujah
but if they don’t get 10% of everyone’s income how can they afford to reallocate and protect the offenders??
Should have been burned down, but nothing will ever right the wrongs religion inflicted against the human species.
Should be noted that the Roman Catholic Church required individual parishes to give their churches and the property on which they stand to the church. If a parish refused, they faced excommunication. It's all about raping kids and a money grab all the way up.
And they say there’s no such thing as good news.
Sad that public spaces are disappearing but relying on funding from the ultra wealthy has been the death knell for christian churches.
Too bad its not baptist.
praise whatever!
In my hometown, we still have over 10.
Finally some good news!! Closing the doors to a cult is a good thing.
Reading some of the comments here on this thread, I feel the need to remind people about the existence of a myriad of different belief systems out there that have nothing to do with Christianity (or the other Abrahamic religions which hold the majority on representativeness).
Luciferianism, Rosacrucianism, Thelema, Goëtia, Wicca, Satanism, Chaos Magick, Umbanda, Kimbanda, Candomblé, Bantu, Vodun, Yoruba... There are many, many belief systems out there that see things differently from the Christianity, many of which are often marginalized and misunderstood by the same people who criticizes Christianity. They're often attacked by Christians ("paganism, devil worshiping, heretical, sinful, etc, etc")... as well as by anti-religion people altogether, as if these belief systems were comparable to Christianity. It's sad to see this whenever this happens. Whenever this happens, I wish these people could know about the existence of these belief systems and ponder about them for a bit.
When people say things such as "imaginary writings", "imaginary gods" and, especially, "religious are bad", they're opening fire not just towards Christianity, but also towards these marginalized and less-represented belief systems.
Sure, Science doesn't empirically "prove" Lilith nor Lucifer nor Nuit nor Stolas nor Hecate nor Baphomet nor Pretos-velhos nor Pomba-Giras, but a bit of empathy towards the marginalized never hurts. It's not something to be scientifically accurate, they (perhaps we?) are just trying to find a sense of purpose and connection without hurting others.
Seems every commenter is a militant atheist. I think this is sad! Christianity gave me a lot in a time in my life I needed it. Christian denominations really need to consider why it isn’t appealing to the next generations and if they really want to continue to mix with anti-science, alt-right, bigoted groups. Many denominations have voted quite progressively in recent years but that’s not enough to make giving up Sunday morning worth it to busy struggling young Americans.
It also seems the way districts are run is nonsensical. My family’s church was run by a phenomenal second career pastor, used to be an engineer, who was quite logical in his approach to Christianity. As someone slowly becoming Buddhist he was very open to my ideas and I enjoyed talking with him. Then they switched in some ignorant selfish pastor who literally destroyed the church causing 50% of the people to leave along with all of their financial support. It took the district almost a year to “send them in vacation”. What the heck!
They need to get a grip or they will die.
