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.
Great news! Maybe we can finally tax these cults as well.
Considering scientology has their tendrils in a fair bit of Hollywood, that might actually backfire on government coffers. If they demand their members strike, the film industry is going to be in for pain.
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.
shocked Pikachu face
Person 2: Why don’t we literally do what Saudi Arabia / Iran does but Christian
I remember when someone (was it on Pharyngula?) coined the term “fatwa envy”. And maaaaaaan, did that really summarize it just so much. You can tell that some NatCs are downright jealous of what their conservative Abrahamic cousins can get away with in other countries.
I chuckled that the window in this meme was stained glass, instead of the highrise like it usually is.
I was pretty happy to see the Atlanta church mentioned in the article who appears to be opting for the third option!
The United Methodist Church in my town is similar. However, the American UMC just had a schism, where all the homophobes left for their new denomination.
And nothing of value was lost
It’s weird how history rhymes - see the formation of the Southern Baptists…
Pit of vipers closes due to insufficient snakebite volunteers.
chef’s kiss
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.
The mega rich that run them are the fundamental issue.
As always.
And yet, somehow, they still make all the policy in this country.
A very vocal and very active minority I guess.
Crazy that it takes the church shitting down for them to actually follow gods message of giving to the poor.
There’s shit down everywhere!
it’s shit turtles all the way down
They are working behind the scenes to push women back into the kitchen and stoking white nationalist rage.
The internet is killing God but giving birth to a new age of conspiracy theorists.
So, not much has changed.
Agreed. I welcome this, but I will withhold being optimistic that it means that it is because critical thinking skills are proliferating throughout the population…sure, it should be, because for decades now we have the ability to easily debunk really stupid claims nearly instantly, there are a lot of people making a lot of money pushing complete nonsense at people with algorithms now…
If I were to guess at the real reason it’s because, well, there is a lot of entertainment that church is in competition with: games, streaming services, social media, sportsball, reality TV and so on…and face it, attending church is generally dull as dirt.
Or the membership of individual churches is increasing, while the number of churches is declining. Reverend Bob’s Drive-Thru Church of Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus on a Jet Ski is probably doing roaring business.
Ha ha, the jet ski really paints a picture. The Righteous Gemstones did have those ridiculous monster trucks, but I don’t remember a jet ski!
They feed on gullibility and a craving to be pushed around by authority. Sadly, those aren’t going away anytime soon.
Theist’s are killing god.
I pray to God everyday that i can live long enough to witness the day humanity completely abandons religion. Inshallah🙏
You will never witness this. God Emperor Leto is the Holy personification of Shai-Hulud and the Orange Catholic Bible is the only truth in the deep dark known Universe. The only faith humanity shall ever have constantly at its side is war.
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.
45% is considerably higher than I expected. I thought it would be closer to 10-15%.
Membership is not the same as attendance, and it’s WAY less than the number of people giving financially.
I was a preacher at a 1200-member church that had weekly attendance around 150-200.
And based on the demographics of the area, we received less than 1% of the annual income for those who did attend regularly.
The thing about churches is that they don’t require payment of any kind, and kind people will dedicate time and effort in a very loving way that is inefficient, when what we really need is cash.
My go-to example is the quilting ladies who spend 40 hours each on handmade quilts using expensive materials to give to the poor. It’s extremely kind and their work is exquisite, but with the money spent making those quilts for 20 people, we could buy blankets, a couple weeks of food, and new clothing for 50 full families.
The thing about giving money, though, is that it feels impersonal to the person giving the gift. This is also why the poor should be taken care of through taxation. Taking care of people’s basic needs shouldn’t need to feel intimate and spiritual - it should be routine and boring.
My go-to example is the quilting ladies who spend 40 hours each on handmade quilts using expensive materials to give to the poor. It’s extremely kind and their work is exquisite, but with the money spent making those quilts for 20 people, we could buy blankets, a couple weeks of food, and new clothing for 50 full families.
Yeah but those ladies feel better about themselves, which is what religion is about not helping people.
Those ladies justifiably feel good for sharing their time and resources to help others. Fuck anyone who thinks kindness isn’t laudable.
The tragedy of it is that their kindness on its own isn’t enough because of greater societal issues that shouldn’t have to be addressed by private charities, including the church. The church shouldn’t have to be a food bank and disaster relief organization. It shouldn’t have to weigh the value of gifts based on how they’ll address the basic human needs of the community.
But in so much of the country, the church makes up the entirety of local social services. In small towns, you have a police department to handle crime and the church to handle everything else.
And the other side of that token is that people shouldn’t have to rely on churches for survival. I’m sure you do good work, and I generally have no grief with (f/ex) the unitarians who also do good community work, but churches (and secular aid orgs, etc.) do not make society on their own and should not take the fall or bear responsibility for the failings of capitalism.
That’s the exact point I’m trying to make.
Our government fails to take care of its citizens, so private institutions, including religious organizations, food banks, and more are relied upon to provide those services.
So when that kind church lady spends $200 and 40 hours making a custom quilt for a poor person, it’s viewed as a waste of resources when so many more important needs for that person aren’t being addressed.
Instead, the government should be providing those services, the kind old lady can just be kind with her gifts Instead of wasteful, and the churches can responsibly spend money inwardly to sustain themselves without doing a disservice to society.
You make the comment “the poor should be taken care of through taxation”. How do you feel about churches being taxed?
I am not religious at all, but I do know a pastor who is very kind, and have talked with him quite a bit. While he believes in God and the Bible etc, he is also respectful and understanding of the times. He believes in abortion, and takes criticism in stride without trying to make stuff up when responding. If he doesn’t know, he will admit as much.
I called out his entire church group in front of him for being hypocrites (I had/have some minimal involvement with them due to my relationship) when they openly criticized another religion and started trash talking them because an extremist did a suicide bombing. They immediately started trying to backpedal and make excuses for what they were saying. There were several other very shitty things a few of them did over a period of several months so I started pointing everything out. They all got silent and the pastor stepped in to appreciate in a manner of words what I said, and told them that kind of response to an event no matter how bad it was, was inappropriate and not representative of an entire group of people.
Ok, so sorry for the back story but there is a reason. Pretty much every church I have been a part of (I grew up in the Bible belt and had religion shoved down my throat growing up) I have seen nothing but hypocrites. One single pastor that I have met, in my entire life, I feel would not complain if churches started getting taxed.
So what is your take on churches getting taxed?
I think churches should be treated no differently than any other non-profit organization. For most churches, that includes tax exemption.
But I also think churches should be audited more aggressively, and that the tax-exempt status be revoked when appropriate. I’ve only seen one church get its tax-exempt status revoked, and it was because the preacher told the congregation to vote for Obama. Strictly speaking, that was absolutely appropriate, but I’d like to have seen it applied equally to all the churches who openly back the other side.
As much as I feel churches should be taxed regardless, I could go along with stricter enforcement of the non-taxable status if it were unbiased and actually enforced regularly. I wholeheartedly agree with you on having that enforcement applied to all sides.
We often see how rules and regulations are easily abused, and the amount of money to buy someone has been shown to be relatively low so actual enforcement is questionable at best. Were it not though, and we were seeing verifiable (transparent) progress on actual enforcement, I would be ok with that status being maintained.
Not that my single opinion matters, but things can work when done correctly and I believe in the right of individual people to practice their own religion as long as those beliefs stay contained within their circles and do not have any influence in policies, politics, communities outside of their own personal choices. Though that is an extremely difficult task to accomplish. People have jobs, and lives, some of which happen to be in influential positions and their choices can and likely are influenced by their personal beliefs related to their religion.
We end up in this conundrum where someone else’s beliefs are imposed upon the masses. To that point, you could also say, well non-religious voices also influence choices that are imposed on people as well, but generally these choices are more about being less restrictive to access to things like medical care or abortions or whatever other myriad of things there are that get voted on. So it’s kind of a double edged sword, but the religious choices are often more restrictive to people’s rights.
The end result often being, we don’t like this thing so we are going to take away your ability to do it, read about it, etc. So no progress is made. This also coupled with rampant corruption and the use of religion by corrupt individuals to reduce education and control the masses keeps leading us down the road we are on, and until we have another revolution or the government is expelled en masse and rebuilt with a younger, educated, less corrupt (hopeful wishing) generation, then we will never make any strong and lasting changes that would serve to help everyone rather than restrict their rights.
It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where people could have their beliefs but mind their own business when it came to other people’s choices.
Thanks for responding and have a great day!
Heaven isn’t real
We have the means to make our own right here, right now but some of us are too greedy to make it happen.
More importantly, in heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here.
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.
IIUC, some are coming from developing countries.
Hallelujah!
Good! Fuck 'em!
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.
Churches should be tax exempt only so far as they are demonstrably charitable. All other income should be taxed. The taxes should go to fund abortion and gender affirmation surgeries.
Mega churches are still going strong though
The worst people still go to church and still run them. I guarantee you 99% of every mega church’s attendance is MAGAts and 100% of their pastors are.
