Thousands of churches are closing across the U.S.

[sun rise]

It seems people are still spiritual, they just aren't into organized religion/church.

Given the news about Catholic priests abuse, putting politics above God in some churches, sexual scandals in Protestant churches etc, it's totally unsurprising that people would look elsewhere.

 

[Kenny]

The era of "churchianity" is ending.

That is very hopeful thinking but hardly based on history or on humanity's ability to change. I should know, I changed.

 

[Kenny]

Given the news about Catholic priests abuse, putting politics above God in some churches, sexual scandals in Protestant churches etc, it's totally unsurprising that people would look elsewhere.

Actually, the early American church all the way to the mid-1950's were very much involved in politics. God is a God of government.

Now, sexual scandals is bad news.

Eventually people stop looking at pastors and seek God. IMO

 

[Kenny]

It seems people are still spiritual, they just aren't into organized religion/church.

A family always has organization unless children rule the coup

 

[CharmingOwl]

People are saying that churches are our community centers and whatnot, but it's strange that churches are seen as a replacement for social infrastructure or the center of communities since they can only represent the religion of the church.

 

[Sand Dancer]

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 love good news.

 

[InChrist]

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.

Well said and quite an astute observation of the situation.


But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good…
2 Timothy 3:1-3

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Doesn't sound alarming to me but great news worth celebrating.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

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

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.

 

[Debater Slayer]

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.

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 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.

 

[InChrist]

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.

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.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Given the news about Catholic priests abuse, putting politics above God in some churches, sexual scandals in Protestant churches etc, it's totally unsurprising that people would look elsewhere.

The star is for the Dr Laitman quote. I believe people are tired of divisive religion and want unity. Scandals too and Covid 19 have resulted in a drop in attendance. He also says ‘humanity is a single, integral organism’. If we all had his vision what a great place this world could be. For people to develop a consciousness of the oneness of humanity they have to ditch beliefs which are prejudicial and limited and I think they are.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

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.

From what I've read, many are turning to neo-Paganism and being filled with psuedo-science. According to one article I read, it's not church attendance that gets you hired and promoted, it's Tarot cards and star charts (though surely this must not be as widespread as the article suggested).

 

[IndigoChild5559]

From what I've read, many are turning to neo-Paganism and being filled with psuedo-science. According to one article I read, it's not church attendance that gets you hired and promoted, it's Tarot cards and star charts (though surely this must not be as widespread as the article suggested).

You cannot believe in magic and science, since science says magic doesn't work.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You cannot believe in magic and science, since science says magic doesn't work.

That's partly why we call it pseudoscience. And you are correct. Things like Tarot and astrology are not science, and probably better regarded as magic than pseudoscience.

 

[PureX]

I understand what you mean, I do/did enjoy hearing the bells and chimes in the distance and the family time each Sunday, decades ago but I think the direction churches have taken themselves of late is at least partially to blame for the downfall.

Particularly that of the mega church trend.

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.

Personally I feel evangelicals to a large degree in addition to Catholic scandals and crimes have pretty much destroyed the traditions and image of the classic old tyme church and levied in place the title of scammers, and greed lust in place of what once was a reasonably respected institution in society.

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. .

 

[PureX]

Well said and quite an astute observation of the situation.


But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good…
2 Timothy 3:1-3

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.

 

[PureX]

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.

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

 

[PureX]

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.

1. I think you've bought into a lot of vitriolic BS fed to you by a news media that sensationalizes the worst in everything, and ignores the best.

2. I think you way underestimate the social unity churches traditionally provided and way over-estimate the more modern emphasis on ideology. Now days some churches have become very ideology and 'clan' oriented because they are under constant and grave threat from a culture of greed and selfishness that never relents. The only churches left , it seems, that can hold themselves together are those that have become ideological cults. But this is a more modern iteration brought on by a culture in crisis.

 

[Debater Slayer]

1. I think you've bought into a lot of vitriolic BS fed to you by a news media that sensationalizes the worst in everything, and ignores the best.

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.

2. I think you way underestimate the social unity churches traditionally provided and way over-estimate the more modern emphasis on ideology. Now days some churches have become very ideology and 'clan' oriented because they are under constant and grave threat from a culture of greed and selfishness that never relents. The only churches left , it seems, that can hold themselves together are those that have become ideological cults. But this is a more modern iteration brought on by a culture in crisis. And it's still not all of them.

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.