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Churches close their doors as fewer Americans attend
(abcnews.go.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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As churches decline we're losing what is, essentially, a free communal space. Church was a place where people built community.
We need to replace it with something, not just cheer because a shitty religion is dying.
I agree wholeheartedly. I don't know what the replacement would be, however. I keep thinking about that when I think about trying to bootstrap something in my community. Something that somehow (?) is supported to keep the heat and the lights on, and everything clean and very safe, the taxes paid, but provides a place to: 1) meet-up for book clubs 2) has a maker/hacker space 3) Has break-outs for hosting meetups along with projectors, etc. 4) provides open source training of various kinds. 5) Throws social functions, with food and modest amounts of alcohol.... 6) A place with trained staff that put on things for kids to do after school lets out or in the summers
Something with wifi, where access to snacks/coffee is also possible, where people can hang out all day and not feel any guilt for buying nothing or only one coffee and just being in the presence of others.
In some cases, I see libraries trying to serve some of these functions. In some cases, I have seen some "community centers" or the building owned by Elks/Masons also trying for a subset of this... if there is some nonprofit or b corp out there making something like this happen at scale, I'd love to hear it. I've been part of meetups that struggle to find/keep spaces they can use, often they have to rely on someone being employed at some company or another.
But yes, I'm no champion of churches. I also don't want every single public space to essentially dwindle to nothing. Malls are not that - and they are mostly dwindling, too. Starbucks is not that. If the only remaining public space is only trails and maybe the post office (if Musk et al don't kill that too) and the DMV, what a sad state of affairs...
So you're saying we should have more boardgaming conventions?
I'm all in on that proposal.
Or convert them to crack houses.
Missed you at the latest city council meeting. See you at the next one!
Most of the council members have a restraining order against me.
Not conventions. A convention requires paying for a convention space, and that requires making attendees pay for admittance or getting sponsors to pay in their stead so they can sell products. That's not community.
The power of churches is they are entirely free and not commodified. That's what makes them communal. We'd need something like a communal boardgame hall, supported by donations that anyone can come to without needing to pay anything.
If they belong to a denomination, that's absolutely not true. If they don't, they're nearly all fundie evangelicals whose independence is solely financial, since they all believe essentially the same bullshit, and any "community" they have consists of enforcing toxic social norms and conformity to antidemocratic ideals. Good riddance. You want community, reopen bowling allies, small music venues and community dive bars.
i.e. places you need to spend money
Indeed, it's a real quandary. The current choices for "public" spaces have mostly been a choice between religion or commerce.
If only there were more truly public spaces for people to congregate that were neither. Where just congregating and just doing something together (or alone, but among others in the same building) was not considered a criminal act ("loitering").
I think about this a lot. And yes, for things like board games and other meetups. A well lit, warm, safe space for people to meet in public, and without having to engage in commerce. Without having to profess a belief in some creed.
Where I live, the library serves this purpose. They even have advertised game nights for various age groups on weekly to monthly basis. Maybe reach out to your public library and see if they would host.
I think you don't understand "Free". They weren't free.
Use required, at the very least, selling your soul. But more pragmatically, a flat 10% tax- which frequently funded ostentatious lifestyles of the priests and pastors; and sacrificing your children to pedos.
But sure. It created "community"...
That "community" is a judgmental indoctrinating shithole that destroys people.
Good riddance.
Okay, but that community also kept me from being homeless as a child. I got to eat food when otherwise I wouldn't.
We need to replace it, we can't just let community die with nothing in its place.
Yes. Schools and libraries.
We need more than that. We need places where people go regularly and choose to interact with each other. Church sucks, but seeing your neighbors, engaging in community activities like celebrating births and marriages and holidays and just regularly seeing each other and being reminded of your connections to each other are important. People talk about modern isolation and by giving up community activities and spaces that's what we get.
The fact that churches have captured the commemoration of major life events is part of the problem. Those things shouldn't have ever been attached to a particular religion or religious denomination, those should be common to the whole community (though some sub-communities might also offer bonus commemorations such as quinceañeras).
It didn't use to be. I remember most churches on the 80s had a message of, "try to be a good person" and then everyone would hang out and chat. Pretty chill space. Can't stand going to any churches now.
We'll replace it with more commercial real estate squatting.
See you in the Library.
Unfortunately the internet is now the new 3rd space.
Religion advocated for bad policies in government which dug their own grave.
I don't feel bad they're closing down.
The internet isn't a third place! Not only do you have to pay to access it, but more importantly, it isn't a physical place. None of us are people here. We're strings of characters on a screen behind pseudo-anonymous handles. You can't help me, I can't help you.
This is not community. It can't be.
Welcome to the capitalist process of dematerialization, substituting a shitty simulacrum for an authentic experience. You want a nice meal? You get McDonalds. You want to have a sexual relationship? You get online porn. The real thing you thought you wanted has been transformed into a caricature, offering symbolic signifiers where there once was something real. And advertising trains you to believe the fake experience is the distilled essence of the real one.
Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse were writing about this as long ago as the late 1930s. Doctorow's rant about enshittification is a modern refinement of this sort of analysis (with less Marx).
Reminds me of Gramsci. In the first instance we have the object: sex. In the second instance we have a reflection of the object: porn. In the third instance we have a reflection of the reflection: pornographic art. Then in the final instance we have a reflection with no object as a reference: AI porn. In this last instance the real thing has been replaced entirely by a simulacrum.
"Grandma, what was it like when people had sex? Before we all lived in the Metaverse?"
My daughters (public) school choir had to pay $2500 to rent a church for their winter performance last year. Well, didn't have to, but the teacher wanted a different space than the school and apparently everyone thought that was an acceptable amount of money for a 2 hour performance. I was pretty upset when I learned the cost.
Like , say, a community center? I took karate when I was 12 at my local community center.
Why not both?
As much as I'm happy to see churches go, I agree with this. I used to go to church even as a non believer for this reason. Outreach into the community is much easier when backed by an organization that is trusted, and has resources at their disposal.