Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade.
Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”
To quote Frank Zappa: “Tax the churches. Tax the businesses owned by the churches.”
And then, for the ones that do actual charity work, have them run the charity separately from the church, under the same rules as secular charities, with regards to taxes and reporting.
Absolutely. There is no reason for these predators to be tax exempt.
Thomas Cromwell got there way earlier.
Reading between the lines in the article, it’s the more agreeable ones that are closing. Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, to some extent Catholics. The ones that are thriving are your batshit insane Baptist, Evangelical, Pentecostal types. So don’t get too excited from the headline, the worst of Christianity will always survive.
This is exactly what I see in my area
The ongoing schism in the Episcopal church is also a tragedy.
Storefront type Baptists are doing just okay, and Catholics have drifted to majority hispanic by now.
Steel-barn / Christian Rock megachurches are expanding
I want to buy up a megachurch and turn it into a to something that serves everything the Victorian bullshitters despised.
Over here, an abortion clinic. And here we have the needle exchange. On the east end there’s a gay bar and sex dungeon in the basement. (We didn’t really have to make a lot of changes to the basement.) second floor is a children’s library (it was important we placed that one as far away from the basement as possible since….well, trauma from the previous tenants). Psychotherapy is offered on the weekends. In the annex we have a furry menagerie and then the grey room.
In the field out back we have a solar array and charging stations in the parking lot. We also added a bus stop here so those without cars can still come in for low-income food assistance on sundays.
What’s the grey room? Oh it the most sinister room of all. All the complaints we receive from Christians are fed into a paper shredder. Their phone calls also just go to a speakerphone in that room. Nobody mans the grey room. It’s where Christians BS gets ignored entirely.
I love your idea. Please make room for a Planned Parenthood clinic.
EVERY LIFE MATTERS!! I mean, I don’t want any of them, and I don’t care where they go as long as they’re born and it’s someone else’s responsibility. /S
Some churches teach positive things and perform useful services for the community. Most don’t, and many are actively harmful. Really they’re all harmful as they teach people to believe in absurd things with no evidence and that the harder you believe in their inane supernatural views, the better of a person you are. Also, to blindly trust authority, the pastor. If we could get rid of the churches that teach people about “demons” and indoctrinate them into conservative politics, that would be great.
The churches that do the most good are the ones that primarily serve and strengthen their surrounding community.
I’ve known a church that does this and people love it, although they still protected the rapist pastor’s son from consequences.
*pastor’s rapist son
Why not both
Just one of the weird rules of the language that none of us understand but we all intrinsically know.
the harmful ones are the evangelical ones, and the televangencial churches. the small denominations usually are not part of that mainstream.
Still, evangelical churches have 60 million members in the US, or slightly under a quarter of US adults.
Younger folk see the grift.
IIRC, it’s mostly that mega-churches are taking over.
It’s the smaller (ostensibly) community focused ones that are dying.
The bigger the grift the closer to god - or something like that
The might be getting the larger share of a dwindling pool overall. The percentage of Americans that are xtian has gone down a lot.
From early 90s being ~90% to ~63% around 2022, anyway. That’s quite a tidal shift.
A lot of older folks, too. A lot of people used to go to church for the social aspects, but today, everything is about grifting more and more money, and people get tired of constantly being tapped for money.
Also, a lot of people don’t like their church ordering them to vote for evil pedophile traitors, or they’ll go to Hell. The first time my pastor told me that I had to vote for Trump, would have been the last time he ever saw me.
But that didn’t happen to me, because I know better than to welcome Zombie Cannibal Death Cults into my life.
Churches should pay taxes like the rest of us.
Let’s start with billionaires. Then work our way down.
Churches are literally billionaires hiding behind Jesus
Por qué no los dos?
Because as it is we can’t even do one.
I figure let’s tackle billionaires to gain some momentum.
No kidding. Where I live in the Midwest that isn’t particularly religious, most churches have like an insane amount of labs they’re not using. Tax them to the ground.
Good point. The maker’s spaces that take these places over should join some tax advantaged organization before going in and fixing them up.
I would say “good”, but I’m sure this will somehow not affect megachurches
It’ll probably increase attendance at (and payments to) the megachurches as the smaller community churches close and people who can’t face life without a church look for a new place to go.
Waow church capitalism
Yea this was my first thought.
Anecdotally, in my area (rural, 25ish miles from a mid city) many of the old-school but liberal-ish protestant denominations seem to be withering… Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist etc.
The storefront Baptists are doing just okay, and the metal-shed-building mega or wannabe mega are booming. New Life etc
This is not a particularly great trend imo.
The ongoing schism in the Episcopal church, also not great.
uplifting news!
I drive by three empty old churches every day and about ten fully functioning ones complete with a huge tax funded metal sided auditorium/gym. They don’t pay taxes but they sure do spend them.
There is a difference between tax funded and tax exempt. I say this because we should be specifically asking that the tax exempt status for religions be removed from the tax code.
If you don’t understand then let me explain. The church is tax exempt and the facilities they have built are tax funded. Hope this clears that up.
Thats not how tax funded works. Tax funded is when the gov uses tax money to pay for something. What you are describing is paying for something using tax savings from tax exempt status. If you supported a bill banning tax funded religous buildings, I don’t think it would stop anything currently happening right now.
I’m sure you wont understand it but here it is.
I don’t need your flawed opinion. At the time when it first got started in 2005 I was working part time for a company and we went in and wired several of the metal barn style buildings with ethernet and wlreless. Everyone involved knew where the money came from. It came from the government in the form of a grant or as I like to call it welfare. Every President since then has supported it and trump has made it all about christian white haters.
You are making a good point, and providing at least somewhat of a source for your assertion is great.
But your delivery sucks. You would be more persuasive with less abrasive.
I understand his anger in general. They just doesn’t differentiate freind or foe when they vent their anger. That said, I explained in a direct response to them how it’s still not technically tax funded. They actually alude to that when they say “everyone involved knew where the money came from”. The organizations used loopholes to indirectly pay for those building. Those loop holes would ensure they are not technically tax funded. So a ban on tax funding religious buildings wouldn’t apply.
I’m not trying to convert anyone. I just put the information out there as it is.
Edit: If it abrades then it its hitting the mark.
In other words, your opinions and your words are useless
So if I assume those building you speak of were paid for by the grants the link mentioned. What are theynused for. Cause the grants are to pay an organization to provide social services.
If you pay an organization with tax money to provide a service, assumably with some profit built in. And they use the profit to build a building… you are stretching to call is tax funded. And my point holds up to this. A ban on tax funded religious building would not legally ban this.
Your pretty antagonistic to someone who litterally wants the same thing as you. I just want to be sure people are rallying around something that will actually achieve the goal. I want religious organization to recieve no special treatment compare to any other. Removing their tax exempt status is the goal with the biggest impact. Entirely getting rid of the office of faith based … is also a great goal. And I support doing that too. Banning tax funded structure for religious organizations wouldn’t do anything.
Think about it. They could sell the land and buildings to a charity they control that rents the church back to them. Then get the grants to build the gyms and such. Their core finances are still under a religious organization, but the buildings are technically owned by a non-religious organization.
lol. I’m not reading that. There is no amount of discourse that will get you to quit being so obtuse and out right confrontational. You have to be either a troll or some god botherer who doesn’t like that they are getting welfare.
Good to know your true colors.
I keep thinking about all that property and buildings already there and people being hungry for third spaces and how I could start some kind of movement that was like open source for software but something for third spaces and done as non-profit.
Something that could host things like makerspaces, quilting groups, book exchanges, swap meets, reading clubs, game day/nights, still rent out for meetups and even weddings/wakes, things like that.
Seems to me that people are dying for third spaces that don’t involve having to cough up money just to be somewhere that is not home, school, or work.
And many people don’t want to be involved in a church per se.
I mean, churches already can do this.
Instead of being the boring place you have to go on Sunday, they’d do what you’re talking about.
Who wants fellowship in the most uncomfortable setting there is?
Cool it with all the pious bullshit, unpucker ye olde asshole and maybe some people might drop in. I cannot think of a more obsolete entity than the current church. Boring, stodgy, judgy, unpleasant. Big fucking surprise nobody is interested.
I think it’d be incredibly hard to have them revamp things from the inside. Suppose a pastor/minister/preacher wants to do something like that and subtract the “branding” of churches being really boring, stodgy, and often problematic (pedos)? Might be really tough to pull that off, and they’d still be a church in the end. I think most people would still nope out.
I’m thinking of using the same locations and turning them into some kind of super community center. Maybe even combine it with low-cost daycare and being a nexus of after-school activities. It’s mostly just a pipe dream, but honestly, I think the right kind of effort/people doing this could have this sweep the nation, under some kind of commonly-recognized naming/branding.
Especially after social media, Covid lockups, AI psychosis, etc…I really do think people of all ages have a real thirst for a physical third place where everyone could find their thing and just be in meatspace with others.
I always see Meetups that lose their location due a business closing or moving or no longer having an employee from the Meetup working there, etc. This could be another way something like this could fill the gap - offer that space for rent at deep discounts such that Meetups could afford it. Add in things like food drives and pantries and bingo nights, etc… to round out the calendar so there is always something to do, and it won’t seem to be some anemic thing of the past.
Reverend Richard Coles seems like the kind of guy to actually do this but I only know him from panel shows with rude jokes.
I’ve talked to plenty of chuchgoing people that would rather have the church die out than have it change.
“dire” forecast? I couldn’t think of anything more optimistic than church closings.
In my rural hometown a Christian church, whose small building was the model of old-timey church architecture, closed and sold the property to some kind of glass artist who lives there and uses it for a studio. Huge improvement and a boon for the arts.
Near me in the PNW a small off-brand Christian church shut down about 5 years ago and the building, which is modern and ugly, was converted to a homeless shelter for people with chronic diseases. It’s hard to think of a more socially-positive conversion and it always warms my heart to walk by there and say hi to any residents who happen to be about. You can tell how grateful they are to have a roof overhead. This whole region is peppered with tiny Xian churches and the sooner they’re bankrupt and converted into something pro-social, the better.
Finally some good news
Agreed, except this is mostly going to be small community churches and not the predatory megachurches that are much more problematic.
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perhaps more of them will decide science is peachy. Maybe. Possibly.
I wish I could share your optimism, but I’ve seen the closing of smaller and generally more liberal churches in my area lead to a percentage of their congregation migrating to a much less accepting megachurch.
It’s frustrating.
perhaps more of them will decide science is peachy
And they’ll get their “science” from quacks like RFK Jr’s cronies. If they could be conned by fundies, they’re going to be marks for any other snake-oil salesmen they come into contact with, though there might be a vanishingly small percentage of them who learn from their experience and stop being such flagrant suckers.
Less churches = less pastors (especially youth pastors) = less children being raped. At least i hope that’s how the math works out.
If the rapists are still at large, they’ll find other opportunities. That’s unlikely to improve the statistics.
Except at churches the parents bring the children to the rapists, often don’t believe the children, and the entire organization will then protect the rapists and ostracize the victims and their family.
So certainly less cushy and safe hunting grounds.
The church putting its weight behind Trump has turbocharged its own demise. Good fucking riddance.
The churches that put their weight behind trump are doing perfectly fine. The churches that are dying are the moderate churches that focus on traditional church stuff, helping neighbors, that type of thing. Megachurches that preach killing gays are doing great.
Trump is only about as unpopular as Bush was in the last couple of years of his presidency. The church also put their weight behind Bush and they seem to have survived.
