Decline of religion

[Fake Messiah]

Archbishop of St. Louis closes 35 parishes, reassigns 155 priests in Catholic church reorganization

The Archbishop of St. Louis will close 35 parishes and reassign 155 priests in the most sweeping reorganization of the Catholic church in St. Louis history.

After 18 months of waiting, Catholics learned on Saturday the fate of their priests and parishes in the downsizing of the archdiocese called “All Things New.”

“I wish these changes were not necessary, but it is what we are called to do at this moment,” Rozanski said Saturday.

The Catholic population in the region has fallen below 500,000 in 2021 for the first time in half a century. Pews are only about one-quarter full on Sundays.

Five men were ordained Saturday to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of St. Louis, down from an average of 18 ordinations a year in the 1960s.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr...4bba5.html

[GUBU]

Hispanics are abandoning the Catholic Church

A survey from the Pew Research Center released last month showed that there is a rapid decline in Catholisism among American Hispanics — tumbling from 67% in 2010 to 46%. “That’s consistent with other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, where large numbers of Catholics have converted to Evangelical Christianity,” says Dr Andrew Chesnut, Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The “health and wealth” promises of Pentecostalism in particular are driving people across the continent to Evangelical churches. “The interesting difference between Latin America and the United States,” says Chesnut, “is the percentage of religious ‘nones’, which has tripled to 30 percent in 12 years. In Latin America, they’re only usually in the 12-14 percent range.”

Nones are people who have no faith at all, and they are fast swallowing up white Christian America — now firmly a minority. In 1996, the year Bill Clinton was sworn in for his second term as president, almost 65% of Americans identified as white and Christian. Now, only 44% do. In 1990, only 7% of Americans said that they were nones, but that figure has increased four-fold over the last 30 years, largely because of young people. Today, almost half of Gen Z — young adults born from 1997 onwards — say they have no religion.

For a long time, American exceptionalism saw the United States buck the European trend of secularisation. And faith among Hispanics, who tend to come from more religious backgrounds than white Americans, remained particularly strong. Catholicism was seen, even among the young, as part of their identity — but “the inflexibility of the Church to modernise its dogma and doctrine in terms of blessing, same sex marriage, and female clergy really is culturally out of touch with Millennials and Generation Z”, Chesnut says. High-profile sex scandals have also put people off — too much even for the Latino community’s cultural Catholics. People who once ticked the box identifying as Catholic, even if they weren’t regularly attending, are now firmly in the “none” camp. And Hispanics are now abandoning the faith as fast as the rest of the country.

https://unherd.com/2023/05/hispanics-are...ic-church/

I would not be at all surprised if Latin America's infatuation with US evangelism is a short lived phenomenon. With its problems with racism, a child rape scandal that's, if anything, worse than the rcc's, and its nature as essentially a scam, Latins will get mighty sick of pentecostalism after a while.

[Fireball]

Hispanics are abandoning the Catholic Church

A survey from the Pew Research Center released last month showed that there is a rapid decline in Catholisism among American Hispanics — tumbling from 67% in 2010 to 46%. “That’s consistent with other Latin American countries, such as Brazil, where large numbers of Catholics have converted to Evangelical Christianity,” says Dr Andrew Chesnut, Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The “health and wealth” promises of Pentecostalism in particular are driving people across the continent to Evangelical churches. “The interesting difference between Latin America and the United States,” says Chesnut, “is the percentage of religious ‘nones’, which has tripled to 30 percent in 12 years. In Latin America, they’re only usually in the 12-14 percent range.”

Nones are people who have no faith at all, and they are fast swallowing up white Christian America — now firmly a minority. In 1996, the year Bill Clinton was sworn in for his second term as president, almost 65% of Americans identified as white and Christian. Now, only 44% do. In 1990, only 7% of Americans said that they were nones, but that figure has increased four-fold over the last 30 years, largely because of young people. Today, almost half of Gen Z — young adults born from 1997 onwards — say they have no religion.

For a long time, American exceptionalism saw the United States buck the European trend of secularisation. And faith among Hispanics, who tend to come from more religious backgrounds than white Americans, remained particularly strong. Catholicism was seen, even among the young, as part of their identity — but “the inflexibility of the Church to modernise its dogma and doctrine in terms of blessing, same sex marriage, and female clergy really is culturally out of touch with Millennials and Generation Z”, Chesnut says. High-profile sex scandals have also put people off — too much even for the Latino community’s cultural Catholics. People who once ticked the box identifying as Catholic, even if they weren’t regularly attending, are now firmly in the “none” camp. And Hispanics are now abandoning the faith as fast as the rest of the country.

https://unherd.com/2023/05/hispanics-are...ic-church/

I would not be at all surprised if Latin America's infatuation with US evangelism is a short lived phenomenon.  With its problems with racism, a child rape scandal that's, if anything, worse than the rcc's, and its nature as essentially a scam, Latins will get mighty sick of pentecostalism after a while.

One can only hope. The RCC has supported buttfucking, etc., of minors for a long time, and truth is, protestants have a real track record for the same thing. In terms of longevity in this case, you are probably correct.

[Fake Messiah]

In Europe’s empty churches, prayer and confessions make way for drinking and dancing

The confessionals where generations of Belgians admitted their sins stood stacked in a corner of what was once Sacred Heart Church, proof the stalls — as well as the Roman Catholic house of worship — had outlived their purpose.

The building is to close down for two years while a cafe and concert stage are added, with plans to turn the church into “a new cultural hot spot in the heart of Mechelen,” almost within earshot of where Belgium’s archbishop lives. Around the corner, a former Franciscan church is now a luxury hotel where music star Stromae spent his wedding night amid the stained-glass windows.

Across Europe, the continent that nurtured Christianity for most of two millennia, churches, convents and chapels stand empty and increasingly derelict as faith and church attendance shriveled over the past half century.

“That is painful. I will not hide it. On the other hand, there is no return to the past possible,” Mgr. Johan Bonny, bishop of Antwerp, told the Associated Press. Something needs to be done and now, ever more of the once sacred structures are repurposed for anything from clothes shops and climbing walls to night clubs.

It is a phenomenon seen over much of Europe’s Christian heartland from Germany to Italy and many nations in between. It really stands out in Flanders, in northern Belgium, which has some of the greatest cathedrals on the continent and the finest art to fill them. If only it had enough faithful. A 2018 study from the PEW research group showed, in Belgium, that of the 83% that say they were raised Christian, only 55% still consider themselves so. Only 10% of Belgians still attended church regularly.

On average, every one of the 300 towns in Flanders has about six churches and often not enough faithful to fill a single one. Some become eyesores in city centers, their maintenance a constant drain on finances.

Mechelen, a town of 85,000 just north of Brussels is the Roman Catholic center of Belgium. It has two dozen churches, several huddled close to St. Rumbold’s cathedral with its UNESCO World Heritage belfry tower. Mayor Bart Somers has been working for years to give many of the buildings a different purpose.

“In the hotel, people sleep in a church, maybe have sex in a church. So you could say: ethically, is it a good idea to have a hotel in a church? I don’t have so many hesitations,” said Somers.

Also in Brussels, the Spirito night club has taken over a deconsecrated Anglican church and has a drawing of a priest kissing a nun as its logo.

https://apnews.com/article/churches-euro...676b981237

[Fake Messiah]

Germany: Catholic Church loses half a million members

A record number of people left the German Catholic Church in 2022, the German Bishops' Conference (DBK) said on Wednesday.

A total of 522,821 people ended their official relationship with the church, surpassing the record broken in the previous year when 359,338 people left.

The departures follow a series of child abuse scandals that have rocked the church in Germany, and elsewhere.

Even though more and more people are leaving the church, there are still 20.94 million people — just under a quarter of Germany's population — who are registered members of the church.

"The Catholic Church is dying an agonizing death before the eyes of the public," Thomas Schüller, an expert in Catholic canonic law at the University of Münster and close observer of the German Catholic Church, told German news agency DPA.

It's not only the Catholic Church that is suffering. Mainstream protestant churches have also seen their registered number of followers fall. In 2022, some 380,000 left Germany's Evangelical Church.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-record-num...a-66058149

[Fake Messiah]

Church of England proposal seeks to rent out poorly attended churches, wait for "future growth'

To be debated at the Synod this week, the plan promotes allowing churches to “lie fallow,” suggesting that such a move will “enable the church and community to remain open to new opportunities for witness and service as circumstances change.” This concept is not about hibernation but rather a form of “waiting on the Lord,” allowing churches to reopen when the time is right.

However, this new approach comes against a backdrop of a steep decline in church attendance over the past decade. In June, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby characterized the drop in church attendance during his tenure as a personal “failure.”

In 2013, the average Sunday service attendance across the CofE was a little over 1 million. By 2019, this number had dropped to 854,000, a decline of over 15%. A further decline occurred in the wake of the pandemic, with a report by the Diocese of Oxford estimating that attendance in October 2022 was at 81% of 2019 levels.

The issue of declining numbers extends beyond church attendance.

According to CofE data analyzed by The Telegraph, 423 churches closed between 2010 and 2019, with nearly 1,000 churches closed from 1987 to 2019. This decline has brought the number of operational churches down to around 15,496.

Simultaneously, Christianity’s overall share of the population in England and Wales has dropped. According to the Office for National Statistics, Christians made up 46.2% of the population in 2021, a decrease from 59.3% in 2011.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/churc...d-out.html

[Fake Messiah]

Belief in God, the devil falls to new low: Gallup

Americans’ belief in God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil fell to the lowest point in more than two decades.

Since the pollster first began collecting survey data on the subject more than two decades ago, belief in God and heaven has dropped 16 points, while belief in hell has fallen 12 points and belief in the devil and angels has decreased by 10 points.

Belief is highest among those who attend regular religious services, with 98 percent of Americans who attend weekly services and 94 percent of those who attend nearly weekly or monthly services saying they believe in God.

Protestants and other Christians were also slightly more likely than their Catholic counterparts to believe in such spiritual entities, according to the poll. While 94 percent of Protestants said they believe in God, 85 percent of Catholics said the same.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/res...ow-gallup/


So 85% of Catholics believe in god? How can one be a Catholic and not believe in god?

[The Grand Nudger]

Nominal christianity. The demographic is even larger than that 15% who don't believe in god. Something like two out of ten christians don't believe in god, and a further six out of ten (between five and seven depending on the subcult) hold explicitly heretical beliefs - which is to say beliefs that are not only verboten, but that the self reporting holders know are verboten. You could really only count on something like two or three christians out of ten to be the kind of person you're thinking of when you use the term. Each of those guys thinks some number of the other two or three aren't christian, in addition to that.

Post christian christianity is the dominant form of christianity in the us, overall, and political religion is threatening the minority remainder. Taken together, it's the birth of a new religion in real time. It's fascinating, and christian institutions did it to themselves. One giant unforced error that could very well see christianity gone or unrecognizable as christianity within our borders, in our lifetime. Unrepentant assholes. Stealing shit, fucking children, drowning in taxpayer money, and still pleading a delicious combination of poverty and superiority. I guess they figured people would just take it till the end of days.

This has happened before. Christianity was a beneficiary the last time. The short and sweet of it is that christian ideology has failed to keep up with the private beliefs of it's own adherents.

[Lek]

California is probably one of the least Christian states in the US. I attend a Lutheran (LCMS) church here and our congregation is maybe 20% of what is was when I first came. We're located in the inner city and do a lot of community service with the locals. The few new members we do get are ex-prisioners, drug addicts and homeless. When they do become part of the church, they are often the most devout and serving Christians I've seen. The old Country Club members have kind of slipped away. They couldn't accept being like Jesus and getting their hands dirty.

[Fake Messiah]

This article is by a Christian who is trying to figure out why people in the US are leaving Christianity in droves. But he misses the point. He does not understand or just can not admit that people don't go to Church and are not Christians because of what Christianity is, and that is they can't believe in mythological creatures, they don't want to hear hate speech toward LGBTQ people, and they do not like to be lied to.

Millions of Americans Have Stopped Attending Church

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. That’s not unusual. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

Book The Great Dechurching finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church.

The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO, an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...op/674843/