As America Becomes More Secular, American Religion Will Need To Become More Urban
It's in cities that greater absolute numbers of religious people can compensate for declining per capita rates of religious observance.
While visiting my family in rural Kentucky a few weeks ago, my options for attending Mass were limited to a single time at the one Catholic church on the edge of town. When I pulled into the parking lot that Sunday morning, the first thing one of the parishioners asked me was, "Are you lost?"
This was an earnest geographic question, not an inquiry into my spiritual health.
Welcoming as this small parish was, it clearly didn't get many visitors. The only other out-of-towner there that Sunday was the priest, who had driven from an hour away to celebrate Mass.
While I was in a very Protestant part of Kentucky, most of the churches in the area are quite small, and a few are struggling to sustain themselves.
Contrast that with the Easter Vigil Mass I attended at my regular parish in Washington, D.C. Pews were full, spirits were high, and an additional 15 people were baptized and confirmed into the Catholic church. Similar scenes played out that same night at dozens of churches across the District.
This is despite the city being a less religious place than Kentucky as a whole, and certainly less religious than the part of Kentucky I was in.
The fact that Washington, D.C., is a city probably has a lot to do with the relative vitality of its religious communities.
As America becomes an increasingly secular country, religion will become an increasingly urban affair. It's in cities that greater absolute numbers of religious people can compensate for declining per capita rates of religious observance.
Those interested in sustaining active faith communities should be interested in supporting policies that make those urban areas more affordable and accessible.
That the country is becoming less religious, there is no doubt.
In the run-up to Easter, both the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Gallup released new surveys showing that by all measures of religiosity, America is continuing its slide into secularism.
Their results vary slightly, but both surveys show around a quarter to a third of Americans attend a religious service every week. About the same share of the population has no religious affiliation.
The "rise of the nones" isn't a new demographic finding. But anyone hoping that a third Great Awakening is just around the corner will be disappointed.
Over at The Pillar, a Catholic publication, Brendan Hodge took a deep dive into General Social Survey (GSS) data on the spirituality of the youth. He found that "younger generations of Americans are simply less religious than their parents and grandparents—and significantly so."
Given that children raised in nonreligious households are the least likely to become religious in adulthood, the next generations are likely to be less and less religious, reports Hodge.
This is all bad news for Christians and members of other shrinking faiths. Even nonreligious writers and commentators are starting to reevaluate whether this withering of religion is necessarily a desirable thing.
The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, a self-identified agnostic, fretted in a recent article that as America loses its faith, it will also lose one of the few things that creates meaningful community in people's increasingly isolated lives.
The famous atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins recently made headlines by declaring himself a "cultural Christian" after seeing London's mayor hang lights around town to celebrate Ramadan instead of Easter.
"The number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I'm happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches," said Dawkins.
The Spectator's Justin Brierley has a good rundown of other "intellectual dark web" members like Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein who aren't religious themselves but see religion, and Christianity specifically, as "a 'useful fiction' for making sense of life."
It's increasingly the case that as society becomes less religious, the faithful and impious alike both see some value in church communities sticking around. These communities will need to concentrate in cities to ensure they do stick around.
When explaining why cities exist at all, urbanists tend to talk about the idea of agglomeration. More people living within the same city allows for a richer economic and social life than if the same population were distributed amongst smaller communities.
Cities are labor markets, urbanist Alain Bertaud likes to say. A greater concentration of people gives workers more job opportunities and firms more options for hiring workers.
A more active labor market also allows increased specialization. A town of 50,000 people probably won't have many tech businesses. A city of 5 million can sustain a whole tech sector with dozens of specialized firms.
Increased specialization of production leads to increased specialization in consumption as well. A small town might have a bar or two. A larger city has a whole bar scene.
This logic of agglomeration applies as much to religion as anything secular.
Some faiths can be practiced by individuals all on their own. In general, though, churches need a minimum number of people to function. If the average person is less likely to be religious, churches will need to be able to draw off a larger universe of potential attendees to sustain themselves.
America's smaller, minority religions have appreciated this reality for a long time already. It's one of the reasons that Jews have settled in large numbers in New York City and Mormons founded Salt Lake City.
This will become increasingly true for Catholics as well since they require not only an active laity but also ordained clergy to administer the sacraments that are at the center of Catholic life.
If churches are to provide the additional benefits that some agnostics and atheists ascribe to them, it's not enough that they have the bare minimum of people necessary to keep Sunday services going.
Churches can only provide the social benefits Thompson praises if they have enough active members to form an actual society of young adult groups, senior ministries, softball teams, etc.
The "beautiful church parishes" Dawkins has come to admire also tend to be incredibly expensive buildings to maintain. Paying those maintenance costs is more doable when those costs are spread across a larger congregation.
Absent a reversal of America's secularization, or an extreme balkanization of religious and nonreligious people into different areas of the country, churches will need the larger universe of potential attendees urban areas offer to stay afloat.
Obviously, lots of churches already exist in cities. The First Amendment and federal law prevent zoning laws from making the construction of new church buildings all that difficult.
The real concern for churches then is that the regulations that prevent urban growth generally will prevent potential parishioners from moving to them.
As Reason has covered repeatedly, restrictive zoning regimes drive up housing costs in urban areas. The more expensive it gets, the more people are priced out of urban areas entirely. As large cities become the center of religious life in an increasingly secular age, that means more people are also being priced out of religious communities.
Interestingly, some churches have settled on building affordable housing on their properties as a way of keeping themselves alive. Rent-generating housing helps shore up their finances, and the affordable units help fulfill their charitable mission.
States and cities have passed "Yes in God's backyard" laws that waive zoning laws preventing residential development on faith lands. If policy makers truly wanted to help churches generally, they'd liberalize zoning laws generally.
Back in February, Addison Del Mastro in the Catholic magazine America made the case for Catholics to reject NIMBY politics and embrace urban growth.
"[Pope] Francis articulates the broader Catholic conviction that no public policy which contradicts the principle that people are good can itself be good," writes Del Mastro. "If people are good—if babies and families are good—the housing they need must also be good. Housing is an extension of people and of the family, and when babies grow up, they become neighbors."
In other words, Catholics should support YIMBY policies because their faith demands it. In an increasingly secular world, where cities are the center of church life, it seems their faith will require it as well.
Rent Free is a weekly newsletter from Christian Britschgi on urbanism and the fight for less regulation, more housing, more property rights, and more freedom in America's cities.
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Faith is personal, not a “community “.
“The number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and I’m happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches,” said Dawkins.
I’ve said it before, Dawkins. Turrn Catholic Churches into art museums and observatories, turn Protestant Churches into business conference centers, turn Islamic Mosques into dance halls and skating rinks, turn Jewish Synagogues into boutiques, cat walks, theatres, and playhouses (and much else,) and turn Buddhist Temples and Hindu Ashrams into resorts and hunting lodges! In other words, turn them into buildings that serve actual, life-affirming, human purposes.
The Spectator’s Justin Brierley has a good rundown of other “intellectual dark web” members like Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein who aren’t religious themselves but see religion, and Christianity specifically, as “a ‘useful fiction’ for making sense of life.”
So Religion is a mnemonic device??? Even I, a Howling Atheist and Freethinker have a higher view of Religion than that!
Dawkins in in England. Their government has surrendered to the Muslim invaders and like most Athiests acknowledges that Islam is the absolute worst of the major religions today. He reasonably figures that if nothing is done the historic churches of England will be torn down and replaced with Mosques.
Too bad no one in Europe listened to Hitchens when he called for the saneish world to drop kick Islam back to the stone age. Now I suspect it is too late for most of Europe and Dawkins is just that canary in the coal mine tweeting as loud as he can that the gas is building up.
I know Dawkins is English, of course, but my proposal of putting houses of worship to better uses could still be implemented in England too.
Both Churches and Mosques in England could make great pubs, discos, symphony halls, and/or indoor versions of Speaker’s Corner, which would be ideal for England’s many dreary, foggy, rainy days. In fact, a studio version of Speaker’s Corner would make for a Hell of a good “reality” show!
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As for public street lights in London mentioned elsewhere, those would be better used by private contractors to make the streets safer rather than to officially celebrate either Christmas or Ramadan. And goodness knows, Jihadists have made London streets dangerous places.
I agree that, even though he turned out mistaken about the outcome of Iraq, Christopher “The Hitch” Hitchens was Da Bomb! He and Dawkins were and are my favorite of The Four Horsemen!
Daniel Dennett has some good points but is way too low-key and Sam Harris went totally South when he defended Biden with all the zeal of the Jihadists we both hate.
Hitchens mistake was to trust a fucking Bush. But when that’s the only game in town what’s an anti Islam guy to do? Try to browbeat England into doing the right thing? That ship has sailed.
Oh, didn’t talk about Dawkins living in England because I thought you didn’t know, just wanted to provide context for other readers.
I know I had called you a Dummy once over something. Before Reason kicks me off, I wanted to apologize.
Enough time here in the thick of it with some truly irrational and evil people has made my patience much shorter. Please forgive me and if you choose go stay on, don’t let the place get you too crazy.
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Dude, it takes a lot of crap to get me pissed off. I’ve done a lot of trolling and I have very thick skin. Even when I’m throwing some serious, what the kids today call “shade”, it’s all being done in fun. Well, fun for me. My goal is to get people to threaten me with horrible retaliation.
Before ANTIFA I’d give those people my home address and work schedule. These days my wife would kill me for doing that. Too many burned down places to take that risk. Those fuckers are crazy.
Tax churches.
For what?
Producing religion? Manufacturing food banks? St. Luke’s International Hospital? Mount Sinai Morningside? Selling Jesus?
They own vast properties and use public services like any other business or organization. They should pay their share.
Share of what?
They’re generally 501(c)(3) organizations, just like the Rotary Club, The Elks, Co-op Health Insurers, Teacher’s retirement associations, credit unions that do not have capital stock organized, The Nature Conservancy, the Society for Science and the Public, the World Wildlife Fund, Doctors without Borders, etc…
None of them pay taxes on their activities either, so the “any other organization” part was ignorant bullshit.
And in some jurisdictions churches DO pay land taxes and in some they don’t, just like all the other 501(c)(3)’s. And if churches are allowed in a jurisdiction to lease premises for purposes outside of their allotted activities, then they do pay taxes on the income.
Admit it, you don’t give a shit about the pocket money taxing churches would bring in. You just hate those awful Xtians and want to fuck them over somehow.
Plenty of preachers push politics from the pulpit. If they want to play that game they can help pay for the stadium.
A church in my municipality rented space to the county for use as a polling place, then took down one party’s election signs on election day (leaving the other party’s), claiming a First Amendment right not to have disfavored signs on their property and a religious entitlement to be such a shitty landlord. The mother church didn’t stand behind that particular church’s position but the county yanked the polling place (and the government checks).
That was roughly 10 years ago. That church was consolidated with a couple of others — plenty of that occurring these days, as religion continues to fade — and is a shell of a church these days.
Interesting. Never heard that tale before, but it makes sense.
In the grey box for you. ‘Bye.
Gullible, bigoted, superstitious freeloaders are among my favorite culture war casualties.
Speaking in tongues is entertainment, resembling a movie or a comic book. Summer Bible camp is functional babysitting, no different from a baseball or soccer camp. Seven-day-a-week day care is a business, not a spiritual endeavor. The church closest to my house has a Starbucks, a summer concert series, a day care center, music lessons (guitar, piano, etc.), weekly line dancing, a polling place (for which it charges rent), car shows, a pickleball league, a single mingle program . . . all of which compete with legitimate businesses and none of which is religious. The pastor earns more than $350,000 a year and gets a free house.
Leeches. Freeloaders. Sponges. Deadbeats.
Old-timey. Obsolete. Receding.
There is one thing churches provide and that is a sense of community within their sub cult group. I am not a fan of what belief in the magic sky god does to innocent children but I have to admit my mother’s Lutheran Church has stood by my father and her through all the ups and downs of his kidney disorder and two transplants. When my father died they must have dropped of about a billion calories worth of hot dishes and deserts at moms house. I ate pie for lunch every day for a week. Not a slice of pie. A whole pie. Just for me. I wasn’t being greedy, at least 4 pies were delivered each day.
That’s the nut we non religious have to crack to be able to keep kids from all that religious brain washing. However I can’t do the put up or shut up. I’m an asshole. I’m not the guy to organize the “First Non Religious Non Church of Sturgis SD.” Unless we serve hoke brew beer… Then maybe I could get behind starting that up.
I wonder what liquor laws look like if you’re just serving bear but not taking any money for the beer, only for the hall you use.
“First Sturgis Beer Hall of no god” has a ring to it.
Nothing that you can’t get or make for yourself, and for much less, in the suburbs and exurbs and all without either Government or God.
‘Course, you think the suburbs and exurbs are all mouth-breathers and soft-jowled Clingers and that Secularists can’t live outside of megacities too. You need to get out of the ratcage you share with Herr Misek and Mtrueman, Rev. Artie!
I won’t miss you when Reason kicks me out!
‘Bye Klinger! Keep your feet tangled in your fourishing cape and keep playing Blind Man’s Bluff!
and Universities, and NGO’s..I’m all for all of that. tax them all…and tie the dollar to gold.
no, don’t tax churches.
I am not a religious person myself but I understand the importance of separation of church and state.
If the government taxed churches, it will always be viewed as a type of “religious persecution” whether valid or not.
But this separation of church and state has to go both ways.
Churches *in their formal capacity* have to stay out of politics.
*in their formal capacity*
What does this mean? Should this effect what a preacher says on the pulpit?
If they preach politics from the pulpit then pay the piper. If they want to be tax exempt then they need to stick to interpreting the will of gawd. Simple idea.
Didn’t answer my question though.
What does that look like? When government has become so prevalent in every aspect of life, like our federal government is doing, who determines when a preacher crosses that line? How? Does an IRS agent attend every religious event? Do churches have to record their events and submit them to a committee for approval?
Is abortion a religious or political issue? What happens when the government decides they get to lock everyone down, including churches? Is a preacher not allowed to comment on his church being shuttered without losing his tax exemption?
Advocating for a specific candidate, advocating a position on a ballot initiative. That’s getting involved. Telling the flock that abortion is bad or that Christians should be a certain way is fine.
Tax nobody! Oh, and zone nobody!
FTFY
Why should Organized Religion have all the fun?
Do I have to pay sales tax on my Trump Bible order?
In NC, yes, though for a long time, NC did exempt Bibles.
I wonder if the NC sales tax is why some customer in my store stuck a $.78 clearance sticker on a $17.98 large size King James Version and tried to get out the door with it? So much for Bible-based morality, huh?
Now that’s a refreshing read. Good news after all.
If only it were true, huh?
As America Becomes More Secular, American Religion Will Need To Become More Urban
It’s in cities that greater absolute numbers of religious people can compensate for declining per capita rates of religious observance.
Ol’ Christian Britches talks like Religion is a good thing, Secularism is a bad thing, and that anything about cities today would make anything better. Talk about out of touch!
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I could mention that secularism/atheism killed about 100M in the 1900’s.
Were all the soldiers killing in the name of there being no god or were they killing because the great leader said “go kill those fuckers or I will toss your family in the gulag”?
It’s an important distinction.
How about religious people ending up in the gulag and becoming enemies of the people because they’re religious?
Also on the flip side, many “religious” wars were essentially political. So that cuts both ways.
The important point is that attempting rabidly secular/atheist societies doesn’t bring the death count down. Kind of the opposite in many cases.
To be fair religious types are fucking annoying. If I were a dictator I’d love them up too. Not for being religious, just for being a pain in the ass.
Come on, you wouldn’t lock up a bunch of Jehovahs Wotnessses for knocking on your door? Those fuckers annoy everyone.
You could mention that…And you would be historically inaccurate, engaged in a Fallacy of Division, and totally misunderstanding the definition of Atheism, which does not require State Atheism, and misunderstanding the definition of Totalitarianism, which does not require Atheism.
In fact, what you’re saying is so common and so inaccurate, it has become a Fallacy all it’s own and thoroughly knocked down for the Strawman Fallacy it is:
The Fallacy of “The 20th Century Atheist Regimes”
https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/the-fallacy-of-the-20th-century-atheist-regimes/
Just because it’s bullshit doesn’t stop them from using it over and over.
What I find funny is if Communist leaders were total and absolute Atheists it doesn’t matter at all anymore than Biden being a Catholic. We aren’t a Catholic nation because the leader is nominally Catholic.
You can do the exact same hairsplitting about many if not most religious conflicts. They were often just dynastic conflicts or land grabs where the heretic nature of the other side made them outlaw or susceptible to conversion.
The fact is atheist regimes don’t make for more peaceful ones. At best you’re just rejiggering the political dynamics being called upon for violence. At worst, you’ve actually removed a lot of the cultural value for human life from the mix.
Blah, blah, blah…
I’m sure all the Jews killed when the Crusaders were lost and attacked every community that wasn’t covered by crosses were so happy they weren’t killed by Atheists.
I re call listening to that Jewish bitch with a radio show where she gave advise to callers… Dr Laura Sh… can’t even guess how her last ne was spelled.
She was totally opposed to mixed religion marriages because you can’t raise a kid to be both Catholic and Jew. Nor Catholic and Prodestant. Even some sub sects of Prodestant aren’t good mixes.
The reason is the kids wind up being raised without organized religion and the part she didn’t say was that if you don’t get them young you don’t get them at all. Thus the rise of the “Unchurched” or the “Non Denominational” which may as well mean Athiest if they marry and have kids.
These days kids meet in college instead of church and religion isn’t their first concern to discuss. Thus the Catholic and the Prodestant are thinking of marriage after they graduate. Just like my brother and his wife. He was raised Lutheran and she Catholic. Now, she walked away from the Catholic Church and became a Lutheran so their kids would be raised in a church, but that’s not the normal way of things.
So as each generation raises more unchurched and fewer people attend services the collection plate isn’t filled and churches go broke.
It’s Dr. Laura Schlesinger, though my circle always called her Dr. Laura Shit-Slinger!
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She’s actually an Italian convert to Orthodox Judaism who never got the memo that Jews don’t proselytize.
She has no business talking about “family values” since she was caught in an adulterous affair and denied the photos the media used to prove it were hers, yet she tried to sue the media for Copyright infringement. Gigawut?
She’s enough to make Schmuley Boteach sing “Give Me Back My Wig”
https://youtu.be/b3kKZM8Shv4?si=f_eiL6KtWuRnaqRV
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And she also needs to “Go Take On A Life!”
In her defense, the callers ASKED her for advice.
No issues providing it if they ask for it.
Indeed. Dr. Laura’s program was a live Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) broadcast of a Sado-Masochism.
The only thing more jaw-dropping than Dr. Laura’s smarmy, bitchy patter was the willingness of callers to have it directed at themselves.
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I forgot to add:
‘Bye, ya’ll! I’m ready to get the boot when you are, Reason!
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I was the child of a Catholic father and Protestant mother who have been married for over 45 years.
I went to Protestant Sunday school *and* Catholic parochial school. Our main church was the Protestant one, and I did not take Cstholic sacraments, but we did usually go to Catholic Christmas mass until I was about 16.
I have grown disaffected with orgwnized religion although atheism also does not appeal to me. But it certainly wasn’t for a lack of early religious exposure in an ‘interfaith’ family!
That’s exactly the kind of thing that makes kids into unchurched adults. The various sects have distinct differences and one will believe a certain thing is done a certain way and the other will believe the other way is the right way. These inconsistencies add up to kids asking questions and Sunday school teachers aren’t good at answering questions. That’s why I’m an Athiest. I asked a lot of questions and never got good answers. So I walked away.
Christian ignores the suburban and rural Megachurch phenomenon. They have large congregations drawn from a large area. The priest in the article drove an hour to get to church—so do many rural Megachurch members. Rural and small-town people are accustomed to long drives to get to work, school, shopping, and services. A long drive to church doesn’t scare them.
To be fair the Mega Chirches are something everyone would like to forget. Like professional wrestling.
Can we convict Joel Olsteen , Jimmy Swaggart, and the rest of the goon squad of fraud yet ?
Only if they run for president.
What fucking fraud are you babbling about? Has that term been fully co-opted by you leftists to mean criminal charges because you don’t like them?
Pretty much.
Not that Joel Olsteen isn’t probably a huckster and an Elmer Gantry, but he’s no more defrauding his fans than Dawkins or Dennett.
To say nothing about going after every Tony Robbins, Depak Chopra, Dr. Phil, and Oprah Winfrey between them.
For what it’s worth, Osteen doesn’t get paid for his work as a minister for his church. His income comes from book sales. I’m not a fan. But, a lot of the claims about him are fundamentally (pun intended) dishonest.
Which one of those said that if his followers didn’t donate some huge sum of money that gawd was going to “call him home”? I get them mixed up all the time.
Sam Harris.
Oh wait, he was the one that said it’s okay to lie to people if it’s for a noble cause like orangemanbad. Sorry.
it’s okay to lie to people if it’s for a noble cause
IIRC Martin Luther justified lying in a good cause.
The Republicans could manage to get more votes if they’d just drop their religious obsessions. Most people don’t want an American Theocracy so the Democrats get their voted by default.
I prefer the Christian theocracy to the Globalist Woketard theocracy.
And yeah, the latter is definitely the more barbaric and disgusting of those two religions. It calls for the subjugation and punishment of all heretics and some of its ‘holy sacraments’ are abortion, mandates, “mostly peaceful” arson, and virtue-signaling. It demands everyone bleat its theology, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff.
If Christianity is practiced *correctly* it is mostly tolerance, love, and forgiveness. Mostly they just want to be left to their own devices without mandates and regulation strangling their way of life. I feel like there’s a third party that has that in their platform somewhere (and a major one starting with R, but they tend to be *way* bigger hypocrites about it).
You known that Marxists like to talk about how communism hasn’t been practiced correctly. It’s a lame excuse. I think yours is pretty lame too.
Why choose either Theocracy? And historically, they both mean the same thing.
Oral Roberts…Not to be confused with two Metropolitan Church members nicknamed “Bob.”
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Thank you, I get all those tv preachers mixed up.
People go to church because they get something out of it, it’s more than having a centrally located building somewhere.
Yet another Britschgi article that devolves into YIMBY progressive social policy.
Religiosity increasing in cities would be great. Unfortunately what I see is secular religion (social justice politics) infecting those churches and defying basic religious principles. If the Christian churches are not going to be Christian anymore then they might as well die
Can you feel the love tonight…
How truly Christian of you.
That makes zero sense.
Why would you continue to be an antitheist if you actually believe in God?
You can believe in God and not like Him.
Not really. They can believe in their version of ‘God’ and not like him, but when you press them the figure they identify as ‘God’ always turns out to be the devil.
“I’m an anti-theist, someone who believes in God but doesn’t like him.” sounds an awful lot like “I’m a trans-female, someone who believes in birthing persons as a social construct but doesn’t like them.”
Good to hear that your concept of God is the only one that could possibly be right, so that we can turn to your opinion for the absolute truth on the matter.
Are you channeling Dana Carvey’s Church Lady from Saturday Night Live?
Could it be… Satan!?!
It was his intolerant last sentance I was reacting to. “They can die” is not the most loving statement one can make.
What’s unchristian about it? He’s obviously talking about the institutions and not any members of the institutions. An organization that fails to accomplish it’s central underlying mission probably should go away. The purpose of the church is to preach the Word of God. If they’re not going to do that, there’s really not a whole lot of reason to think they should continue. The Christian belief is that the church exists for God. If it’s not serving God, keeping it around as a social club or a social service center is probably a waste.
Isn’t the church anywhere those who believe in Jesus gather? Thus implying the church is the people. Not the collection of ideas and dogma. Thus they can die doesn’t sound like a peaceful loving idea.
Just a reminder:
Charlie Kirk: If you vote for Democrats, you can’t call yourself Christian.
https://www.threads.net/@barbarajsobel/post/C4tvHRvNSoq
Huh. That article sure took a swerve in the last few paragraphs there.
Long and winding road got us back to YIMBY. Amazing that the faithful that consistently vote for taxpayer paid abortion in the ninth month can’t fill the collection plate.
Who the hell cares?
Also, at least in my city, they keep closing Catholic schools and churches. So there’s much less demand even in urban areas.
Only place it’s growing, and to be fair, it’s a big growth is among illegal aliens coming to the US
They’re having trouble finding enough priests because they’re not allowed to fuck boys anymore.
At the top in the Vatican they probably still practice kid diddling. They probably also have secret satanic rituals while laughing, but it could just be my imagination.
I’ve heard rumors they keep the mummified body of Jesus of Nazarith in the secret vaults below the Vatican. That’s why the Shrouds have all been shown to be fakes.
secret satanic rituals
Yeah, it’s called “mass”.
Now that’s low hanging fruit. Catholics didling kids is so last century.
Yes, chopping off children’s dicks and clits, and pedophile porn in the middle school libraries is the new hotness of the 2020’s.
Christians have been cutting off foreskins from their kids for at least a century. So some folks want to go a bit further down the shaft.
Why would any pedophile become a priest when teaching math/sex ed as a member of the gender of your choice in a public school comes with three months off, a paid continuing education/promotion ladder even for administrative staff, and a mandatory pension?
I’m no fan of The Church, but it continues to blow my mind how successful the anti-pedophilia campaign against them has been while virtually every public school system in the country gets hundreds of sexual assault complaints and, with paper trail, shuffles the accused around every year and openly advances their out-loud, “not-so-secret gay agenda” hand-in-glove with DisneyCorp.
Annihilating the Catholic Church isn’t clearly going to stop any brainwashing or save anyone any money but we’re sure as hell going to burn it to the ground. The indoctrination centers that we all pay for, even childless single people, and the corporations that support them? That’s complicated. The corporations are, of course, private… and some of the schools actually serve as a daycare and/or alternative to street violence… and, well, it’s complicated.
We could get rid of both and actually teach kids that the whole world and the whole Universe can be a source of education if you treat it that way.
“They’re having trouble finding enough priests because they’re not allowed to fuck boys anymore.”
If only public schools had that problem.
South Americans tend to practice a more intense version of Catholicism and they find American protestants to be a watered down religion without a lot of substance.
Yet, the Protestants have been making inroads.
https://www.cal-catholic.com/vatican-chooses-policy-for-the-poor-the-poor-choose-protestantism/ reprints a WSJ article.
As the Pope keeps turning the Catholic Church hard to the left they will keep losing followers who like the pre WWII Catholic Church. Makes sense that some hard core prodestants could pull some back in.
Centralized religion is just as evil as centralized economies and centralized medicine.
So Catholics bad, evangelicals good?
Because you don’t get more centralized than the Catholics and less centralized than American evangelicals.
As an organizing structure, yes. It is tax season, so right now the IRS is way more evil than the catholic church. At least tithing is still voluntarily without the threat of a gun.
In historical terms, it hasn’t really been very long since the Catholic Church was imposing its will with armed violence.
‘It’s in cities that greater absolute numbers of religious people can compensate for declining per capita rates of religious observance.’
Does that include the Church of Climatology?
That’s (D)ifferent.
As more people live in the city, churches need to focus on cities.
I mean – no shit.
Also, what happened to all the ‘the city is dead’ stuff coming from Covid. I thought everyone was gonna move out to the sticks and ‘work from home’?
Go to any large Catholic Church/Cathedral in major US and European Cities and they are dead. There is growth but in Red States not Blue. In my home of Charleston, Catholic Churches are overflowing and a new one is being built in my town.
Going to mass on Easter and 80% of the folks there haven’t been since Christmas Mass. This author is clueless.
You honestly can’t be a libertarian and write this shit. Why would any true libertarian live in DC? That alone disqualifies this piece.
Cities are not exactly ethical and moral pillars but rather dens of corruption, filth, degeneracy and in the case of DC, grave immorality.
As a Catholic who is still practicing after 50 years my observation and personal experience indicates two major factors in the decline of younger people attending mass. First is the Church going all woke. Second is how baby boomer and later woman left the Church as they adopted “feminism.” My wife who was raised Catholic hated the Church for one reason..abortion. And millions of young mothers fought their husbands to not raise their kids up to confirmation. As with many problems in America, the female gender decided the world had to change and it hasn’t been for the better including for themselves.
Woke kills churches. You see it all the time in mainstream churches and evangelicals that decide to adopt the new religion.
People don’t go to religious groups for something that they could get watching The View. They go to participate in real Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Judaism, or whatever.
Woke absolutely killed mine and my wife’s desire to keep going to our Presbyterian church. Mostly the white/wealthy guilt they kept trying to peddle while the pastors lived in giant McMansions in the rich people part of town.
The church my wife was raised in is probably about to go under. It’s a Methodist church and a couple of years ago decided to hire a lesbian preacher. That alone was enough for plenty of the older crowd to bail, but she so gave woke sermons and spends a lot of her time outside of the church in lgbt activism. That shit doesn’t draw in the younger crowd despite being a blatant attempt to pander. It also eliminates the point of going to church. I’m not religious but take my family to church so my kids can be raised with religion. It’s important to me that the sermon and overall message related in that church aligns with biblical teachings. Too many are abandoning that to cater to secular immorality.
Yes we know. Real Libertarians(tm) live in a cave and say “fuck you” to anyone who passes by.
It’s pretty obvious, given how much better the writers who don’t live near DC are, that relocating the HQ there was a horrible mistake.
If youre going to write about DC living near makes sense. Flying in from Frog Balls Montana for every other story isn’t going to be practical.
But you’re right, living on the east coast worms its way into your thoughts.
Those interested in sustaining active faith communities should be interested in supporting policies that make those urban areas more affordable and accessible.
“Hey listen, if you’re going to love God, we’re going to need you to prop up our failed megacities.”
More people living within the same city allows for a richer economic and social life
“Yes, come enjoy the richness of our tent cities of drug addicts, random chance of being violently assaulted (esp. if you’re a woman – which we can’t define, btw), utter refusal to police crime and illegal immigration, and let’s not forget the feces covered streets as your standard of living goes way down.”
Put it on Christian. Put on the nose.
https://c.tenor.com/T3x7tyBXKVMAAAAd/clown-nose.gif
Are you kidding me? The cities are way you go to engage in pedophilia, do drugs, and crap on the sidewalks.
Don’t forget about patting each other on the back for ripping off black people so that they can promise-lie to immigrants about being sanctuaries!
It’s what Jesus would do!
America’s smaller, minority religions have appreciated this reality for a long time already. It’s one of the reasons that Jews have settled in large numbers in New York City and Mormons founded Salt Lake City.
Put the bong down, dummy.
Wow, the anti-urban sentiment here is a little bit surprising. Do you all really think that living in the sticks is the preferable option not just for you, but for most people?
Sane people ,anyway.
I love living in the sticks. I lived in Denver in the 90s and Colorado Spings in the 00s. I hated it and moved to Spearfish SD first then to Sturgis SD. Life in the sticks is nice but the job opportunities are a bit limited.
My son is getting his degree in Metalurgucal Engineering. He’s done one paid internship but had to go to Utah for it. This year he will be going to Tennesse for a paid internship. This one will pay more than my wife makes. As an INTERNSHIP. Fuck a duck imagine the pay when he graduates.
But he can’t get that money here in South Dakota. There aren’t enough mining operations or manufacturing operations here. He’s trying for a low population state but i doubt he will find it. He will have to spend time in a large city for at least a part of his career. Cities concentrate labor and capital to make opportunities. It’s just the reality of the world at this time.
Living in very large cities is not optimal for anyone’s physical, mental, and social health, but people have to decide for themselves what they value in life and make trade-offs accordingly.
Why not, you and Britschgi make no pretense that you don’t believe living in the cities is “the preferable option not just for you, but for most people”? You can romanticize it all you want, but cities grew and developed as an economic engine for business activity that was facilitated by contact and physical proximity. Contrary to Britschgi’s claim, the city didn’t sustain the tech sector. The tech sector sustained the city. But, technology seems to be dramatically obviating the advantages of direct contact and physical proximity, at least for certain sectors and segments. That is something I would expect libertarians would, or at least should, celebrate. If manufacturing jobs being relocated to Mumbai or Ho Chi Minh City puts a smile on your face, why should you mind high end service jobs self-relocating to Butte, Montana, Jonesboro, Arkansas, or Moncks Corner, South Carolina?
The problem with increasing secularization is that unfortunately most people don’t magically turn in to super rationalists. They just replace worshipping Yahweh/God/Allah with things like The State/Scientism/Climatism.
Of course, YMMV on an individual basis.
The problem with increasing secularization is that unfortunately most people don’t magically turn in to super rationalists. They just replace worshipping Yahweh/God/Allah with things like The State/Scientism/Climatism.
And both religious profits and peerless or near-peerless scientific geniuses warn about this both ways, that you wind up with people doing things because they’re fashionable or because that’s how they’ve always been done or because they don’t know any better, but don’t worry, Christian’s got it all figured out better than any Pope, Pastor, or Nobel Laureate.
Why does everyone think that is automatically the case? Damn if I’m going to replace one form of irrational bullshit with another.
By the bye, “Scientism” is not a thing. Science is not an object of worship. It’s just the only game in town for rationally understanding the only “town” which is the Natural Universe.
You’re posting on a nominally libertarian comment section. You’re already more rational than the vast majority of our fellow Americans.
Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of how the universe works. Scientism is people acting like science/scientist are infallible. It’s just replacing one clerisy with another. You saw this a lot with your average covidiots argumentations.
You’re posting on a nominally libertarian comment section. You’re already more rational than the vast majority of our fellow Americans.
Well, since Reason is about to paywall me and others out of here, it’s about to become a whole lot more irrational. This is probably the only exception to The Tragedy of the Commons where charging for something makes it worse.
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Oh, and if the Comment section is more rational than most Americans, we’re really bad off in this nation. I mean, over here we’ve also got Herr Misek, Tony, Mtrueman, SQRLSY, Nardz, Goldie, Rev. Artie…
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On a more serious thought, much obliged for the compliment and right back at you. I will miss your thoughts when Reason rings the bell and says: “It’s closing time!”
Ironically, Christian ignores secular logical thought that predates Christ and pervades both Christianity and Western Thought into the modern day.
Just because more people show up to Catholic Church in D.C. doesn’t mean they’re more Christian or more religious any more than it means Richard Feynman’s South Pacific Cargo Cults are air traffic controllers and transportation personnel. Rather overtly the opposite.
Christ railed against showing up to Church merely to be seen showing up to Church and it’s the people who show up to an empty Church despite their religion being unpopular and simply to be closer to God themselves rather than be seen as a Christ-like figure that are actually living the word.
Christian’s reading is yet more of the precisely moronic “wet roads cause rain” and “Good Samaritan means blocking and screening” that pervades modern culture and makes people hate the media far more than they dislike showing up for Church.
Edit: And again and as usual, none of this is to indicate that anyone has to show up to Church or has to believe if they do show up or has to believe in a certain way if they believe. It’s to say that if you’re going to lecture physicists on physics, you should probably know at least enough Physics 101 to avoid saying “For every action there is no opposing force.” or “While in Kentucky every action has an equal and opposite reaction, in D.C. this doesn’t seem to be the case” like an abject fucking retard.
“America’s smaller, minority religions have appreciated this reality for a long time already. It’s one of the reasons that Jews have settled in large numbers in New York City and Mormons founded Salt Lake City.”
Mormons founded Salt Lake City because it was part of Mexico at the time and they wanted to practice polygamy, which is illegal in the US.
polygamy, which is illegal in the US.
But still practiced anyway. “Polygamy” in practice is just a euphemism for pedophilia.
It’s in cities that greater absolute numbers of religious people can compensate for declining per capita rates of religious observance.
Hey Christian, you do know that by your own secular socialist policies and projections your faith in cities is misplaced, right? That, even by fundamental economic precepts, crowding all your eggs into a small number of baskets is stupid, right? That, if you really believed in actual equality whether before the State or before God, the Separation of Church and State or Render Unto Caesar, etc., etc. you would be prescribing the exact opposite or at least not making the social commandments you’re making, right?
Because the population is going to decline, further and faster than immigration can offset, going into the future and the whole idea of paying elevated union and minimum wages to subsidize illegal immigrants *and* sanctuary cities policies aren’t going to fly when they do. Then, you’re really going to find out who the salt of the Earth, the people whose asses will be in pews rain or shine, regardless of who else is there, really are and who’s just putting on heirs to make nice.
That the country is becoming less religious, there is no doubt.
I wholeheartedly disagree. There are just new unrecognized religions to which millions of people ascribe. Marxism, for example. The people who think a person can change their gender by simply stating they’re a different one is indisputably a belief based more on faith than science. The horde of people proselytizing about the coming climate rapture also come to mind.
Mainstream churches have and continue to decline substantially; this is due I believe in large part to their cultural accommodation and secularization to the extent that they no longer stand for anything beyond social justice du jour.
For churches anywhere to survive (beyond reliance on urban populations, where fewer churches serve fewer constituents) they need to be true to their faith; that is what people ultimately look to, not whether they are culturally acceptable according to the zeitgeist.
The only things worse for the world’s future than Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Hindu fundamentalism are Islamic and Socialist/Communist fundamentalism.
Unfortunately, Biden has embraced the latter in his efforts to gain and maintain power.
Here in Pittsburgh, hundreds of old churches have been sold, abandoned and/or been condemned.
The problem is that historic preservationists have lobbied city officials to declare ALL old buildings be declared “historic sites” to prevent them from being torn down, and to force the owners (i.e. disbanded congregations) to pay millions of dollars to repair the old crumbling buildings.
By the way, until they act, I’m signing off every post by saying:
“Goodbye, Cruel World! Throw me out when you’re ready, Reason!
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This is a really weak article. It’s essentially saying that because secularism is growing, churches should get 100% behind one of the major factors driving that secularization, urbanization, because cities have more people. To get there, Britschgi has to ignore the actual growth areas of worship. My understanding is that, for the Catholics, it’s the Latin Mass. And for the Protestants, it’s the evangelical megachurches (many of which are non-denominational). Maybe the lesson here is, perhaps counterintuitively, selling out faith to the managerial-technocratic popular culture isn’t that great a business plan. A church’s underlying value proposition is that it offers you something other than the same recipe you get from the government, the media, the universities, etc. If I’m hearing the same things, the same message and the same presumptions, what’s the point of getting up early on a Sunday and listening to a bunch of music I might be indifferent about and sitting in a probably pretty uncomfortable seat?
He’s starting to get what I got a long while ago!
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Come To The Dark Side!…We Have Cookies!
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There are lots of “cultural” things that only big cities used to be able to support. Museums, zoos, fancy hotels, newspapers and sports teams. The raison d’etre of high population density cities went the way of the dinosaurs a number of decades ago with the invention of the internet, computers, automation and transportation. The wealthy factory owners can still afford to live in the big cities but their factories are out in the suburbs and the factory workers can’t afford to live in the big cities any more. Now the museums are the only thing left in the big cities worth visiting for. The beautiful old buildings may still be a tourist attraction, but their maintenance and upkeep costs are going to continue to skyrocket while the sources of revenue to maintain them will continue to dry up. Tough luck!
Yes, cities, where civilization goes to die — San Francisco, Minneapolis, Austin, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, New York. I can hardly hear myself think these days over the noise of people shouting “Let’s move to the city for the quality of life!”
Yeah, its true. I think it’s evident that the shifting demographics and cultural landscapes necessitate a recalibration within American religious institutions, particularly towards urban-centric approaches. By the way what do you think about astrology and numerology? I recently read an article about number 9 in Numerology by these authors and it was really interesting! Are you interested in such things?