Especially when the pernicious effects of religiosity are based on two things that are very much tied to these numbers- the clout that comes from “representing” a large swathe of the population, and the money that comes from having lots of regular members. Both of these things were used to amplify a large and negative influence on political discourse for generations.
However, as people stay away in droves, both of these things vanish. A church that speaks for a shrinking minority of the population has a shrinking claim to authority, and fewer people to shake a plate at will pay for fewer private jets, fewer mansions, and fewer political contributions.
After all, as any good shepherd will tell you, if you don’t have a flock, then there’s no fleece.
No real cause for rejoicing. The religious tendency to abhor/fear uncertainty, sexuality, and mortality still remains, even if physical religious attendance goes down.
Look how easily a religion like QAnon has popped up out of nowhere (and will be with us for decades). And there were plenty of non-attending people among the QAnons anyway.
If it’s not a church grabbing their brainstems of these bipedal primates and leading them by the amygdala, it will be some ideology or some populist.
True enough. Humans seem to have an endless supply of willingness to fill their emotional voids with nonsense, and to calm their fears of the unknown with irrational conclusions.
I think you’ll find that the vast, vast majority of churches are not enriching anybody.
I think the main argument to made against them (financially) is the inefficiency in doing social good largely due the costs of maintaining so many discrete buildings across communities that are only used once or twice a week. If churches used school auditoriums, or shared buildings between congregations, that would be a lot more money that could be used to do good.
Except that’s not the case, for most churches. Many have stuff going on for much of the week. Most catholic churches have mass daily, a local Baptist church around the corner from me does a weekly food bank. They host choir practices, function as general community centers, some are voting locations, etc. This is especially true in rural parts of the country that has little public infrastructure or in urban areas where public space is getting eaten into by private profiteers. Whether that should be the case with regards to public space is another matter, but churches act as a third space in many communities, out of necessity. If you want to blame something for that, it’s down to neo-liberalism which is constantly eating into anything that’s “public.”
Well, that and the fact that so many of them in the US. regularly cross the line between church and state to endorse political candidates or public policies. Stripping them of tax exempt status would very quickly encourage religious denominations to consolidate and sell off their real estate holdings in a way that steadily declining memberships isn’t doing (being magical thinkers by nature, a lot of religious leaders probably subscribe to an “if you build it, they will come” fantasy).
Outside the States, where the ability to fall back on tax breaks isn’t as strong and where state-provided community services are much better, the decline in religious participation is reflected in a lot more church buildings being sold off and then replaced or re-purposed for more useful and/or lucrative functions. The multi-unit condo conversion projects never seem to work out, but I’ve seen them turned into concert spaces, market buildings, shopping arcades, municipal community centres, etc.
The problem is that those deciding to become “unaffiliated” aren’t becoming less reactionary secular humanists, they’re just finding different groups to join that don’t classify themselves as religions. Those are the folks that are more likely to become even more radicalized by hanging out with others for whom wing-nut churches aren’t considered to be conservative enough to hold their interest.
This is a curious framing and subsequent reaction. It would be more accurate framing to say “It tells them that you do not understand the substance, and since you are only interested in the appearances of things why should they listen to you”. And “Free to work on the substance” sounds… good? Why use an unflattering lawyer analogy to describe them as unconcerned with appearance in favor of substance, when the truth is that’s backwards anyway? Would that more christians were working on the substance instead of furiously and sincerely swimming laps in the shallow end of the spiritual pool.
Criticism can fall on deaf ears just as much out of sincere belief as cynicism (actually maybe in that regard a lawyer analogy works). Charges of hypocrisy and contradiction simply signal that you don’t understand, because contradiction lies at the heart of their spirituality.
The other reason they’ll laugh is why would they listen to someone who isn’t in good faith on their side? It’s the same dynamic that happens in this community; someone inside the tent pissing out is given far more legitimacy in community self-criticism than someone outside the tent pissing in, even if making a basically similar argument. Why would they listen to outside criticism, which coming from sinning liberals means satan is trying to lead them astray. They’re concern is not for this world but the next, which is kinda the whole problem but makes it easy to ignore grounded secular criticism.
That is a problem, but reactionaries and hatemongers are going to do their rotten thing no matter what. Better that they don’t have a physical and moral infrastructure to support them and give them a sense of a supernatural being’s approval. Religion has provided these types with a haven and sheen of superficial respectability (and tax breaks) for far too long.
Is there some firm number on how many do this? Actually endorse candidate or policies? I’m aware of high-profile pastors who do this, but I don’t know that I’d have thought it was common.
Most of the churches I see are more along the lines of what @Mindysan33 writes:
I’m up the street from a Presbyterian Church, a Baptist Church, and a Methodist Church. Those are the ones with their own buildings. There’s a (Spanish-speaking) group that rents the local no-longer-used train depot, another Korean group that rents mall space, and a non-denominational group that rents a building. That’s just within a mile. Of those, I’m guessing there’s one that could be endorsing stuff, but that’s based on my own biases, not any real knowledge. Otherwise, the six near to me (four close enough to see) are constantly doing something. Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday services, food banking on Fridays, other meetings as well. The Baptists are adding on to their already-massive church, replacing a big section destroyed by a tornado two years ago. They run a K-6 school, as do the Methodists. Always busy.
I saw Rob’s framing differently. The evangelicals obviously don’t care about “substance” in the sense of the core values of the gospel, but they do care about substance in the sense of preserving their institutions, making as much money as possible, and in pushing forward their political agendas of exclusion and control and supremacy.
Evangelical leaders laugh at liberal and progressive claims of hypocrisy because they know that the core values they’re continually violating have, for a long time, been things to which they’ve only paid lip service (mainly for purposes of recruiting and maintaining membership of their more gullible marks). That’s why I maintain that we should continue calling out the hypocrisy: not because the corrupt and cynical leadership laughs at the misunderstanding of what their true substantial priorities are, but because we can prevent fewer marks (especially young ones) from becoming victims of their grift.
I don’t have firm numbers, but it’s relatively common in the U.S. and not limited to the evangelical/GOP alignment (although that’s by far the most dominant and destructive example since the 1980s). Whether or not the cleric is circumspect about an explicit endorsement (often it’s a nudge-nudge/wink-wink situation), the core issue is that houses of worship are regularly used to create voting blocs that link up with national political parties and local machines. Sometimes the result is positive for liberals and progressives, more often it’s negative, but either way if we’re handing out tax breaks based on the Establishment Clause it’s behaviour we shouldn’t continue to reward.
Now see the problem with this excellent comparison is that most of the churchgoers I know haven’t read enough of the bible to get a good Moloch reference.
It’s like, they go to the same book club every week for decades but they never actually read the book.
Yeah, how many folks are represented in this statistic because their church leader wasn’t sufficiently slavishly white supremacist? Considering how many fascists turned their back on so many Republican party stalwarts for being insufficiently fascistic (despite them being very, very fascistic), and have thrown in with various ascendant once-fringe groups like Tea Party and Trumpism, I wouldn’t be surprised if this stat didn’t just reflect disaffected liberal youth, but also furious far-right individualists breaking away from an insufficiently conservative flock so they can cleave to their own personal Q/Trump/KKK death cult (and homeschool their kids in it).
Anecdotal, but the catholic church my mother attends would tell the parishioners which Republican candidates to vote for. The platform was entirely based on abortion. They were still advocating for Trump during the last election.
At the same time they were soliciting donations for the migrants.
I recently talked with a few older family members who wondered if this decline was why we’re seeing so many people whose reactions during the pandemic seem to be motivated by selfishness. They are shocked at seeing how many demonstrate no concern about how their actions affect others. The idea that we’re all part of a whole and connected to our neighbors was what leaders used in the past to get most of a country’s population pulling in the same direction in times of adversity. For many, that was a core part of the lessons learned in church, if not at home or in school.
Yep. It’s a very different message than you get out of the white, right wing conservative dominionist prosperity gospel type churches, which center the individual and material success over community and one’s moral obligation to the wider world as set down by the example of Jesus.
But far too often, the actual differences between different churches and their relationship to the wider world is papered over to serve various kinds of us and them culture war narratives.
