while former houses of worship are being converted into bars, clubs
i want to see the pastors faces when their church gets turned into a full nude titty bar
depending on the church that could be a very interesting idea.
literally just walk into a full on church with the pews and altar and stained glass and strippers and communion shots
It's not that far, but a couple of years ago, a Spirit Halloween took over an abandoned church at a town near here. I'm still mad I never took a picture.
A kink club
Amusingly enough, one of the ministers at my childhood church brewed his own beer - and this quality featured heavily in my church's decision to invite him to preach at our congregation.
In the middle ages, it was the monasteries that kept the arts of beer brewing and wine making alive.
quite region dependent, in the rural south they're still pretty strong, in the rest of the country and in large cities, not so much
Hi. Indiana here. Plenty of full church parking lots on Sundays in this shithole. Lots of Jesus billboards too.
Safer for the kids
Congrats to Buffalo, it sounds like things are looking up there.
In my area (WA state) there was a small-ish Xian church (the one-storey building was probably <2000 sq ft and cheaply built - the steeple-ish thing (w/o a bell of course) blew off in a windstorm once)) that shut down a year or two ago and was boarded-up. It's been repurposed as a homeless shelter that specifically serves people with serious medical problems. The change has greatly improved the 'hood.
People here are arguing for the (gate-kept) community that Xian churches once offered in the US. By "gate-kept" I'm referring to the fact that Xian churches were, and are, open to only the "right kind" of people. I'm sympathetic to the need for community, and have even looked around locally for what's on offer from Xian or Xian-aligned/compatible organizations, but haven't found any that promote an ideology that isn't based on superstition and that don't demand that I defer in all things moral/ontological to a human power hierarchy within the church. One whose authority, such as it is, is based on "it's in the Book".
Hard pass on that. I'll find my community through volunteering and possibly, one day, through fraternal orgs, though I've found the ones around here (Masons, Rotary, &etc) are still hardcore on gatekeeping themselves, despite being on the wane just as much as Xian churches are. If you think you'd be most comfortable in a Xian-churchy sort of context, but are politically and socially "liberal", the UCC seems pretty inoffensive, though they still (at least locally here) carry on about "worshipping" invisible deities all the time. The Unitarian Universalists (uua.org) seem the least offensive of any old-timey church that I've encountered and it has a certain appeal to me for its association with New England and with 19th-century intellectuals like Emerson and Thoreau. The local UUs have had a local schism in the past five years, with the historical church taking a politically rightward lurch and another UU church spinning-off it but seemingly being more preoccupied with how their church is controlled (no more all-powerful pastor-types, only collective decision-making allowed) and less with charity and community. Finally we have Unity here (unity.org) which has potential for community, but where weekly service addendees seem to be almost exclusively elderly, so I wonder how much longer it will be a going concern?
I'm hoping that someday we get a Satanic Temple that meets in-person here. I could definitely see myself joining that. The Church of the Subgenius (https://www.subgenius.com/), praise "Bob", would suit me well too, and I already own a copy of the Sacred Text, but they don't meet in person AFAIK.
Next up: Republicans trying to make church attendance mandatory.
They're already turning schools into churches, so they're probably not too upset over this.
At least there's some good news!!!
If a church can't be supported through its active membership, it should close. Better no church at all than one sold out to the world, making money from investments and forgetting their true purpose.
Churches that shut down don't get burned down.
The church is nothing but a tool of opposition. Glad to see it have less influence.
Kids can sleep easy tonight. The cult is dying.
Hallelujah
but if they don’t get 10% of everyone’s income how can they afford to reallocate and protect the offenders??
Jesus christ I thought r/atheism was bad. Anything religion related gets you ppl foaming at the mouth
It's almost like countless people have directly been harmed by religion
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