(May 16, 2024 at 11:17 am)h311inac311 Wrote: What are we replacing churches with?
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
Benjamin Franklin
In Nebraska, empty churches are becoming apartments, museums
After over a century of worship, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Benedict closed its doors in January 2020. Seven months later, the Johnsons bought it.
This house of worship turned home is one of a number of Nebraska churches that, amid rising costs and falling attendance, have found second lives filling gaps in their local communities. Churches are becoming apartments, community centers and places to preserve history and foster the arts.
In early February, the Lincoln City Council signed off on a proposal to turn the former Southminster Methodist Church into offices and apartments.
Cadre Architecture and Design is set to buy the church for $350,000 after New Visions United Methodist Church decided to merge into one building and sell their two remaining properties in Lincoln.
The United Methodist Church Great Plains Conference, which includes Nebraska and Kansas, has seen 81 churches close since 2014.
https://flatwaterfreepress.org/in-nebras...s-museums/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"