Thousands of churches are closing across the U.S.

[Shadow Wolf]

Sense of real world community, shared charitable initiatives and a sense of authentic spirituality (even if it's just someone who's lost being given some guidance by a mentor or something) that might otherwise be filled with self destructive nihilism or ideological fervourism which has been very much on the uptick lately.

Church isn't necessary or needed for any of that. In fact it often times causes the opposite of that.
"Authentic spirituality" is a very open and vague term, commonly practiced but it tends to be "whatever floats your boat."
Amd where do we see this "self destructive nihilism" on the uptick? We see ideological fervorism on the rise, but that strongly tends to be among white Evangelical Christians (who, in their fervor, are more supprtive of Christian Nationalism, which itself is an existentialist crisis).

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Church isn't necessary or needed for any of that. In fact it often times causes the opposite of that.

It depends on what you mean by necessary. There are plenty of people that do just fine without attending church. But on a statistical level, we also know that involvement in a religious community makes people in general happier, healthier, longer lived, and gives them a buffer against anxiety and depression. Those benefits alone are very good reasons why a person would want to attend church.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Church attendance has been dropping and it seems religion is losing a little ground every year.

Thousands of churches are closing across the U.S.

Churches are closing at an alarming rate in the United States, according to researchers, as congregations shrink across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity entirely – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the United States adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches close each year, a trend that experts believe has accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.......

According to Lifeway Research, approximately 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, with approximately 3,000 new churches opening. It was the first time the number of churches in the United States had not increased since the evangelical firm began researching the subject. With the pandemic hastening a broader trend of Americans abandoning Christianity, researchers believe the closures will only have accelerated.

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, according to McConnell, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022, 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared to 75% before the pandemic.

However, while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people abandoning religion. In 2017, Lifeway surveyed young adults aged 18 to 22 who had attended church on a regular basis for at least a year during high school. The firm discovered that seven out of ten people had stopped attending church on a regular basis."

Churches are closing at an alarming rate in the United StatesChurches are closing at an alarming rate in the United States.

I would like to see a survey that attempted to gain the statistic of U.S. citizens that who do not attend church, yet still proclaim to identify as Christian. My presumption would be that the number would be surprisingly high.

Is Christianity/Spirituality on a decline, or just the attendance of the old brick and mortar buildings?

Perhaps the preachers and pastors that are forced to close the doors of the church should create a group in a social app for any lost sheep in search of the path to Jesus.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

In most/many small towns, the three most populace things are churches, fastfood and banks.

Churches, Bars, Gas stations. In the towns near me.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

I would like to see a survey that attempted to gain the statistic of U.S. citizens that who do not attend church, yet still proclaim to identify as Christian.

According to Gallup:

"Church attendance is down four points among Protestants (from 44% to 40%) and seven points among Catholics (from 37% to 30%), the two largest faith groups in the U.S."

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It depends on what you mean by necessary. There are plenty of people that do just fine without attending church. But on a statistical level, we also know that involvement in a religious community makes people in general happier, healthier, longer lived, and gives them a buffer against anxiety and depression. Those benefits alone are very good reasons why a person would want to attend church.

We can get those things from secular groups.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Grifts and rackets come and go.

The oldest one predates history, it may precede oral language for all we know.

Strange phenomenon occurs, and is misinterpreted or misrepresented, and the confusion is capitalized on.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

According to Gallup:

"Church attendance is down four points among Protestants (from 44% to 40%) and seven points among Catholics (from 37% to 30%), the two largest faith groups in the U.S."

Do Catholics consider themselves Christian?

 

[IndigoChild5559]

We can get those things from secular groups.

Abstract​

Participation in religious services is associated with numerous aspects of human flourishing, including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Evidence for the effects of religious communities on these flourishing outcomes now comes from rigorous longitudinal study designs with extensive confounding control. The associations with flourishing are much stronger for communal religious participation than for spiritual-religious identity or for private practices. While the social support is an important mechanism relating religion to health, this only explains a small portion of the associations. Numerous other mechanisms appear to be operative as well. It may be the confluence of the religious values and practices, reinforced by social ties and norms, that give religious communities their powerful effects on so many aspects of human flourishing.

Religious Communities and Human Flourishing - PubMed

Participation in religious services is associated with numerous aspects of human flourishing, including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Evidence for the effects of religious communities on...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Do Catholics consider themselves Christian?

Yes, Catholics are Christians. Catholics and Orthodox are the two groups that have basically been around since the time of the Apostles. Protestants, who are also Christians, have only existed since the Reformation (some don't even go back that far). Of the three groups of Christians, Catholics are by far the largest. The Catholic church accepts as Christian anyone baptized using the Trinitarian formula. They refer to the Orthodox as "the other lung" of the church, and to Protestants as their "separated brethren."

 

[paarsurrey]

Do Catholics consider themselves Christian?

None of the 45000+ denominations of Christianity is actually Christian (followers of Jesus/Yeshua) , I understand, they all follow Hellenist-Paul and knowingly or unknowingly are Paulines and or followers of Hellenism (believers of dying, rising, deity):

Apollo​

Alias: Apollon​

Location: Asia Minor (Turkey), Greece, Rome​

Cities: Delphi (Greece), Delos (Greece), Arta (Greece), Troy (Turkey), Wilusa (Turkey), Rome​

Estimated Date: 700s B.C. - 500s A.D.​

1. He is a shepherd and lyre player​

   
   
   
   Apollo is known to be a shepherd and lyre player and was assocaited with intelligence, music, philosophy, purity, pestilence and medicine. Some modern scholars believe he is a combination of a northern Dorian shepherd god from 1000s B.C., similar to Dumuzi or Adonis, and a Hurrian plague god from the 800s or 900s B.C., Aplu, from the Akkadian title Apal-Enlil, meaning “son of the lord of air”, given to the king of the netherworld, Nergal, husband to Inanna/Ishtar's zombie queen sister, Ereshkigal. Apollo was associated with the sun in Greek philosophy around the 400s B.C. but there is little evidence he was worshipped as a sun god before then. He had a war-like twin sister, the virgin huntress Artemis, equivalent to Ba’al Hadad’s warrior-companion and sister Anat, but also similar to how the Sumerian sun god Utu’s twin sister was Inanna. His character is much closer to that of the Ba’als in that he hunts, founds cities, and does not die and resurrect, but like Dumuzi and Attis and unlike the Ba’als, Apollo and Artemis are agents of the mother goddess, slaying her enemies."

The Dying-and-Rising Gods: Apollo

Right?

Regards

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Abstract​

Participation in religious services is associated with numerous aspects of human flourishing, including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Evidence for the effects of religious communities on these flourishing outcomes now comes from rigorous longitudinal study designs with extensive confounding control. The associations with flourishing are much stronger for communal religious participation than for spiritual-religious identity or for private practices. While the social support is an important mechanism relating religion to health, this only explains a small portion of the associations. Numerous other mechanisms appear to be operative as well. It may be the confluence of the religious values and practices, reinforced by social ties and norms, that give religious communities their powerful effects on so many aspects of human flourishing.

Religious Communities and Human Flourishing - PubMed

Participation in religious services is associated with numerous aspects of human flourishing, including happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships. Evidence for the effects of religious communities on...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Again, religion isn't needed.
The Mental Health of Atheists and the "Nones"

However, the studies leading to these conclusions often collapse a variety of different groups (e.g., agnostics, lapsed, unaffiliated, weak atheists, strong atheists) into a single category of "nones," comparing these to a single category of "religious." This binary "lumping" approach loses granular-level information about the many specific sub-groups within the "nones."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X17308062

Conclusion
Secularity does not have a simple relationship with health and well-being. Rather, like religion, the relationships between secularities and health are complex. Overall, atheists have positive physical and mental health outcomes. In contrast, religiously nonaffiliated theists have poorer physical and mental health compared to both non-theists and religiously affiliated theists.

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households - Volume 202 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

Religious people were similar to those who were neither religious nor spiritual with regard to the prevalence of mental disorders,

Are Believers Really Happier Than Atheists?

Who is better off: the religious or atheists? Cultural values determine the answer

www.scientificamerican.com

Gallup have collected a representative sample of the world that measures religiosity and happiness. They found that the positive effects of religion depend enormously on where you live. Religious people may be happier than their godless counterparts, but only if the society they belong to values religion highly, which not all societies do. For atheists and the growing ranks of unaffiliated individuals, these findings bode well.
...
If you live in a nation where daily existence is difficult, your life satisfaction is generally lower. In those countries, being more religious appears to grant you a premium on happiness that your less religious neighbors do not enjoy. If the living is easy, however, both nonreligious and religious people have similar, relatively high subjective well-being. This effect held true for all religions represented in the sample—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Again, religion isn't needed.
The Mental Health of Atheists and the "Nones"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X17308062

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households - Volume 202 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

Are Believers Really Happier Than Atheists?

Who is better off: the religious or atheists? Cultural values determine the answer

www.scientificamerican.com

This study shows many interesting facts, including but not limited to:
1. Atheists are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with mental disorders than religious folks.
2. The more often a person goes to church, the less likely they are to be diagnosed as mentally ill.

Political Ideology, Religious Attendance And Mental Illness​

Political Ideology, Religious Attendance And Mental Illness

(ANALYSIS) For all the death and destruction that COVID-19 brought to the United States and every other country on Earth, it also gave us a tremendous window into how folks handled mental stress in near real time. Here we look at whether there’s an association between mental illness and religious at

religionunplugged.com

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Again, religion isn't needed.
The Mental Health of Atheists and the "Nones"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X17308062

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Religion, spirituality and mental health: results from a national study of English households - Volume 202 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

Are Believers Really Happier Than Atheists?

Who is better off: the religious or atheists? Cultural values determine the answer

www.scientificamerican.com

I would argue that while religion may not be necessary, for at least some portion of the population it is the best avenue to find contentment.

That which is good for one individual, may be detrimental to another. To each his own.

 

[paarsurrey]

Thousands of churches are closing across the U.S.

"When Pastor Douglas Theobald steps to the pulpit at Struthers United Methodist Church this Sunday, it will likely be the last religious service in its 112-year history.

Over the years, Struthers UMC has weathered the boom and bust cycles of the Youngstown, Ohio, suburb. In the 1960s, when the steel industry was at its height, it was common to see as many as 250 people in the pews on any given Sunday. But Theobald, who started preaching there in 2009, has presided over a congregation in slow decline. Today, services attract only a few dozen, mostly older, congregants."

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1175452002/church-closings-religious-affiliation

Right?

Regards

 

[Kathryn]

Looking around, I see estimates typically around 330000-350000 churches so you're right. But attendance is dropping overall so this is a "Canary" in the religious "coal mine"

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time

I've been to five or six Catholic churches over the past couple of years and I am pleased to report that not only are they full, the attendees are quite varied in age, moreso than many Protestant churches I was a part of for several years.

 

[Revoltingest]

Near MI's west coast, I saw a church
that was re-purposed as a liquor store.
Good usage.

 

[PureX]

Many have been closing around here.

I feel bad for the folks that have been going to them, often for decades. Or even generations. And are now being told they need to go to another church with a consolidated membership. For many, regular long-standing church attendance provides a strong sense of peace and continuity. And it's upsetting to lose that.

But church buildings are very costly to maintain, and to heat and cool, and to upgrade over time. And as we all know, the majority of people now days have almost no discretionary money to give away. So I understand the problem. But still, it's a shame. Because those buildings are often of no use as anything else. So they will be left to rot when once upon a time they were top quality.

 

[Revoltingest]

Many have been closing around here.

I feel bad for the folks that have been going to them, often for decades. Or even generations. And are now being told they need to go to another church with a consolidated membership. For many, regular long-standing church attendance provides a strong sense of peace and continuity. And it's upsetting to lose that.

But church buildings are very costly to maintain, and to heat and cool, and to upgrade over time. And as we all know, the majority of people now days have almost no discretionary money to give away. So I understand the problem. But still, it's a shame. Because those buildings are often of no use as anything else. So they will be left to rot when once upon a time they were top quality.

I managed & re-habbed a church
that was turned into apartments.

 

[PureX]

I managed & re-habbed a church
that was turned into apartments.

That happened to a lot of church buildings in Chicago, too. But a lot of smaller communities now days are dying. Populations dwindling, economies tanking. And those big old church buildings are just going to fall to ruin when they're the best designed and built architecture in the town. You couldn't even give the away.