Thousands of churches are closing across the U.S.

[PureX]

My position is primarily based on the professed positions of multiple churches on specific topics. They don't make their views secret, and anyone can access their websites to read for themselves.

It may be more productive to ask people about their stance and why they hold it instead of assuming that they were "fed" anything.



Not all social unity is good. Being united under a banner of hatred, intolerance, and tribalism is far worse than being divided because a sufficient number of people reject such things.

I realize that many churches have done good for society more than they have caused any harm, and they're not the ones I'm discussing here. I'm talking about the likes of fundamentalist Protestant and Southern Baptist churches whose dogmas are laced with hatemongering.

I agree that religion failed us by acquiescing to this kind of bigotry. And by not helping us see the immanant danger of materialism and capitalism. But your whole take on, and complaint about community churches is based on just the last few decades and the most notorious examples. When they have been around for much longer, and have held our communities together in doing so.

NOW days some of them have become extremely intolerant, and radicalized, and vitriolic, which the news media plays up endlessly in the cause of capitalist greed. But there are still churches that are not that way. Many, in fact, which you seem not to recognize. Though I agree that only a few have been willing to actually act against that kind of poisonous bigotry.

Again, I am not making excuses for religion's failure. But I'm not going to ignore it's value, either. Or the cost of losing it.

 

[Kenny]

We're better off without the toxic poisons they spread. We're better off without the Hell doctrine. We're better off without an intolerant and blood thirsty god.

In my scriptures, we would just say, "God still loves you and still has the antidote to all poisons.

Romans 5:6-8
The Voice

6 When the time was right, the Anointed One died for all of us who were far from God, powerless, and weak. 7 Now it is rare to find someone willing to die for an upright person, although it’s possible that someone may give up his life for one who is truly good. 8 But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us.


Of course, all in context of my signature.

 

[Kenny]

Most people do not want to live this way: like dumb animals competing with each other for survival and status. But somehow in all these many centuries we still haven't learned how to rise above it. And in that, religion has definitely let us down. Even your comment offers no hope or insight. Only accusations and threats.

I think the answer is found within your statement and its the very thing that Jesus had a problem with... that being... "religion".

Religion binds where relationship looses. Religion is about control through rules and regulations whereas relationship is about love and forgiveness.

Sometimes we end up worshipping the object instead of loving the person. Community is about relationship and can be propagated through a family of families that can be called "The Church". But when "The Church" stops being a family of families, it looses its power.

So what I did is I simply kept the relationship alive in my life by following and loving Jesus in man instead of exalting man and forgetting Jesus.

I hope I made it clear--my expressions can get muddled sometimes.

Love never fails.

 

[Kenny]

v

A significant number of churches never reminded people that they were a "united community of human beings" unless they checked certain boxes: not in a same-sex relationship, not politically liberal, not cisheteronormative, and, in some cases, not of any ethnicity or skin color but white (e.g., Southern Baptist incidents of racism). Instead, such churches fostered hatred, division, supremacism, and seeds of science denial that sometimes contributed to attitudes that have actually killed or made people severely sick people ever since the pandemic started.

I won't say that it's good news that so many churches have closed because I'm sure at least some of them were accepting and benign, and we also don't know whether what will replace them for the former attendees will be any less harmful. However, I'm not going to mourn this news either. A lot of these churches made their bed with harmful, hatemongering rhetoric and are finally having to lie in it.

You are quite right. If we read the TaNaKh, we find that even the Israelites flowed back and forth from loving God and then not loving Him.

But there was, and is, always a remnant .

And indeed, some churches lost their light and closed, but others are growing letting people come with messed up lives and finding transformational power through a relationship with Jesus that provides power for life and living and change.

I also find that many who point the finger at the "hate mongering people" also become hate mongering people in their own rhetoric. Jesus mentioned that, I think.

Of course, there are other viewpoints as per my signature.

 

[Kenny]

I'm talking about the likes of fundamentalist Protestant and Southern Baptist churches whose dogmas are laced with hatemongering.

I have found that even those can vary within themselves.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I agree that religion failed us by acquiescing to this kind of bigotry. And by not helping us see the immanant danger of materialism and capitalism. But your whole take on, and complaint about community churches is based on just the last few decades and the most notorious examples. When they have been around for much longer, and have held our communities together in doing so.

NOW days some of them have become extremely intolerant, and radicalized, and vitriolic, which the news media plays up endlessly in the cause of capitalist greed. But there are still churches that are not that way. Many, in fact, which you seem not to recognize. Though I agree that only a few have been willing to actually act against that kind of poisonous bigotry.

Again, I am not making excuses for religion's failure. But I'm not going to ignore it's value, either. Or the cost of losing it.

I did recognize in my posts that many churches have done a lot of good for society and that the harmful ones don't constitute all churches. I'm not sure where you got the impression that I'm talking about all of them as if they were the same.

 

[Debater Slayer]

You are quite right. If we read the TaNaKh, we find that even the Israelites flowed back and forth from loving God and then not loving Him.

But there was, and is, always a remnant .

And indeed, some churches lost their light and closed, but others are growing letting people come with messed up lives and finding transformational power through a relationship with Jesus that provides power for life and living and change.

I know various religions provide value to some people, and that's perfectly fine as long as everyone is afforded the freedom to live however they want. It's only when any group or groups try to impose their way of life on others or foster hatred against them that problems happen.

I also find that many who point the finger at the "hate mongering people" also become hate mongering people in their own rhetoric. Jesus mentioned that, I think.

That's true of some people in any group, yes. Are you saying that this applies to my own comments, though? Because I don't see criticism of a subset of churches as hateful. Rather, I find it necessary to push back against certain beliefs and dogmas.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I have found that even those can vary within themselves.

The variation doesn't mean that some problems—such as propagation of hatred and misunderstanding of other groups—aren't present in many fundamentalist churches even if they disagree on multiple issues. Some also remained open at the height of the pandemic, refused to observe preventive measures due to denial of science, and contributed to spread of disease and loss of life, which was another major fault.

 

[Kathryn]

Well,, this makes me even more grateful that my church is packed every Sunday.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

This is actually very bad news for us all. As our churches have long been the heart and soul of our local communities.

Regardless of how you feel about religion, churches have been our community centers, recording births and deaths and marriages and reminding us on a weekly bases that we are a united community of human beings that share in each other's good fortune and suffer each other's heartbreaks. Everyone knew each other and had to look each other in the eye each week at church. And there would be a cost to those that behaved selfishly toward others as everyone else would know.

But that's mostly all gone, now. We're just a bunch of isolated, selfish, individuals looking out for #1. With no sense of community or responsibility toward God or anyone else. "One nation under God?" Not hardly. Now we're just one nation under the yoke of our mutual greed, fear, and selfish stupidity.

You can have community centers and alike without it being a church, you know...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It may be alarming, but not surprising if one reads the Bible. It’s a major indicator we are in the last days close to the removal of the church composed of born again believers in Christ, before the tribulation period and the return of Jesus Christ to judge the earth. According to the scriptures, apostasy and people falling away from faith is foretold to occur first.

Here we go again.

Prediction of the end number I-lost-count.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Are we? Because it's clearly not looking like it.

If I compare the societal health indexes of secular humanist countries with low levels of religiosity, they perform a lot better across the board then countries with high levels of religiosity.

We're becoming dumb animals ripping and tearing at each other for our survival, and for status. I agree that religion has failed us in the face of industrial strength commercialism. But the sense of unity and community that they were able to provide is a severe loss.

You say this, but can you demonstrate this with actual statistics?
Note "statistics"... I'm not interested in anecdotes.

And why couldn't a sense of unity and community be accomplished through other means then religion (which, btw, only works in building community among the like-minded members of the club - and even then).

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Again, I am not making excuses for religion's failure. But I'm not going to ignore it's value, either. Or the cost of losing it.

I'm simply not convinced of the claimed losses.
Community building doesn't require religion.

So while community building was / is certainly part of religion... it doesn't require religion.

 

[PureX]

Well,, this makes me even more grateful that my church is packed every Sunday.

It's not about the numbers, though, so much as it's about the sense of community. If they all walk out the door and go right back to competing with each other for material survival and status then the church has done nothing but provide them an excuse to ignore the poison that's going to destroy us. And there are a lot of churches like that. And a lot of people like that.

 

[PureX]

You can have community centers and alike without it being a church, you know...

We could, but we don't. And whenever anyone tries that it doesn't work. Selfish individuality has been ruling the culture for many decades, now, and the result is the loss of churches, community oriented social clubs, and a sense of unity and common well-being. The greed and competition of capitalism and the selfishness as a virtue that's incessantly peddled by commercial advertising has divided us all against each other in an endless struggle for material survival and heiarchical status. We all live in a perpetual war with one another over everything we need to live. A war that few of us want but none of us seems to have the wisdom or courage to stop.

The loss of our churches is just another on a long list of glaring symptoms of our collapse as a supportive, cohesive society; into chaos, greed, and stupidity.

 

[Rival]

The idea that historically people attended church in droves is a fantasy. It is mainly underpinned by Protestant churches because these churches are structured around lay participation. In other words, the service cannot go ahead if no-one attends it, because it is primarily based on preaching and homilising etc. This is why many have the idea of church as a moral arbiter constantly threatening about hell and asking you to pay tithes and whatnot. This resulted during the Protestant Reformation when some (not many by any means) wanted more lay participation in the church.

Prior to this, within what we now call the Catholic (and Orthodox) Church, lay participation was not needed at all. The Mass (it's not a service) was and is based around the Eucharist, which in Catholic theology is a sacrifice and needs only priests and deacons generally to perform it. This alongside the fact that historically and even for around a century after the Protestant Reformation people would not regularly take the Eucharist/Communion and were known only to take it at Easter and sometimes Christmas. In all, historically most people at church were just observers. Nearly all the call and responses were done by the clergy, with the laity only joining in at certain short parts and sometimes even this seems negligible. The purpose of the Mass is the sacrifice and this does not necessitate an audience. Even in the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer, 1549, most of the call and response was still between clergy, not clergy and laity.

Thus, most people historically have attended church irregularly, and more pious Mediaeval and Reformation Era writers regularly complain that on Sundays people are in the tavern or simply lying in bed, or some would even rather work. This alongside the fact that many just lived too far away from a local church.

For centuries the preferred method of worship for lower classes/peasants was in small chapels along roads, in rural areas etc. where they would make offerings to saints, often the Virgin, but also frequently to healing saints for more pressing concerns. They could not read so they preferred statues, pictures/icons, beads, ropes etc. as aids to prayer and devotion. This is still extremely common pretty much wherever one goes.

Thus, the idea of going to church and participating and being severely moralised to is a Protestant innovation generally and not representative of historic church attendance. In England after the Reformation people were fined for not attending church, so obviously this fudged the numbers. The Mediaeval church had no such fine system, albeit long term lack of attendance could be punished.

So what we are seeing here is merely the norm. As usual, people prefer private forms of devotion for their more pressing needs and don't particularly enjoy being preached at.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

We could, but we don't.

Perhaps that is because you never had a need to, since your churches took care of it.

We have community centers of all kinds in a typical Belgian village. Churches have been empty here for quite a while.

And whenever anyone tries that it doesn't work. Selfish individuality has been ruling the culture for many decades, now, and the result is the loss of churches, community oriented social clubs, and a sense of unity and common well-being. The greed and competition of capitalism and the selfishness as a virtue that's incessantly peddled by commercial advertising has divided us all against each other in an endless struggle for material survival and heiarchical status. We all live in a perpetual war with one another over everything we need to live. A war that few of us want but none of us seems to have the wisdom or courage to stop.

Perhaps this is a problem with general American culture and mentality?
Because the rest of the secular west doesn't seem to have this problem. At least not to such an extent as you are claiming it is in the US.

Anyhow... seeing as how this isn't really an issue in secular countries in Europe with very low levels of religiosity... I'm inclined to say that this issue isn't triggered by a decline in religiosity.

The loss of our churches is just another on a long list of glaring symptoms of our collapse as a supportive, cohesive society; into chaos, greed, and stupidity.

You have yet to demonstrate that the decline of churches is a bad thing or a symptom of a bad thing.
So far, I have just seen claims that it is so.

But like I previously said... societal health indexes from around the secular world, show that low religiosity does not at all necessarily correlate with bad society. In fact, these statistic show an opposite correlation. Generally, the lower the religiosity in a free secular society, the higher the societal health.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Those mega churches became popular because they are not a community. They offer the pretense of being a community without having to actually be in one. You can still screw your neighbor and go unnoticed among the thousands that show up there. It's all empty ideology with no actual responsibility. Those are a symptom of the fall, not the cause. Capitalism and consumerism are the cause.
Small religious cults have come to fill the vacuum for those few among us that still really want to be part of a community. That excessive intensity is required these days to maintain group cohesion in a culture that has so thoroughly and successfully divided us all against each other. .

Plus it's a place to send your kids, while drinking free coffee and perusing the gift shop.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Well,, this makes me even more grateful that my church is packed every Sunday.

I was interested in Catholicism previously, and read that it is seen as a sin to miss mass and there are required days. Could that be part of the reason the pews are packed? Just curious.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

In my scriptures, we would just say, "God still loves you and still has the antidote to all poisons.

He was the source of much of that poison. And doesn't matter anyways, according to his book I have done the unforgivable.