Decline of religion

[Deesse23]

There are many churches in Germany which are being recommissioned as living spaces, art galleries, hobby areas, even sport halls because attendance is steadily decreasing:

46 Catholic ones in 2025 and 500 in the past 25 years.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There are many churches in Germany which are being recommissioned as living spaces, art galleries, hobby areas, even sport halls because attendance is steadily decreasing:

46 Catholic ones in 2025 and 500 in the past 25 years.

The only advantage in keeping houses of worship open is to keep the nutters in one place. These people need to be watched.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

America’s Christian revival is a hoax

Contrary to ridiculous reports, America is merely witnessing a Christian reboot, not a Christian revival. And reboots are rarely as good as the original.

To hear cultural tastemakers tell it, faith is fashionable again. Songs with Christian lyrics climb the charts. Cross necklaces reappear on red carpets. Political leaders promise to “defend Christians.” Podcasters debate whether belief has become cool once more. Even NPR, not exactly known for altar calls, recently asked whether Christianity has found new life in popular culture.

But culture isn’t the same as church. Visibility isn’t the same as vitality. And Christianity without commitment isn’t Christianity in any meaningful sense.

Start with the most basic measure: attendance. Churchgoing in America continues to fall. Weekly attendance has been steadily declining for decades. The pandemic didn’t create the problem so much as accelerate the retreat.

America is in the midst of the “great unchurching,” a steady shift away from organized religion toward a more individualized spiritual landscape. Nearly 30 percent of U.S. adults now identify as religiously unaffiliated, up by roughly one-third since 2013. About 57 percent seldom or never attend religious services, a sharp rise from two decades ago. The numbers tell a clear story. The visuals make it unmistakable: empty pews, consolidated parishes, and church buildings quietly repurposed into apartments, event spaces or yoga studios.

Yet the search for meaning hasn’t disappeared. If anything, it has migrated. The spiritual marketplace is booming, just not in churches. TikTok mystics dispense daily wisdom. Content creators offer bite-sized transcendence. Even AI prayer bots now offer forgiveness as a service.

For many Americans, spirituality is now something to consume rather than commune around. An individual brand rather than a shared discipline, a playlist rather than a practice. Belief remains, but it has been deinstitutionalized, downloaded, and personalized. No priest, sermon, or parking lot scramble required.

This is where the revival narrative falls apart. What we are seeing is not a return to shared worship, shared discipline, or shared belief, but Christianity detached from its roots and repackaged for mass consumption.

Arizona Christian University found that the share of Americans identifying as Christian fell from 72 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2025. That‘s roughly 15 million adults in just five years. At the same time, the number of Americans claiming no faith rose to nearly 60 million.

On this current trajectory, Christianity’s decline is less a gradual erosion than a generational shift. Each cohort that disengages is less likely to return, less likely to marry within the church, and far less likely to raise children in it. What looks like a marginal change on paper compounds quickly in practice.

https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blo...s-revival/

[The Grand Nudger]

It's why the nuts think demonic forces are attacking them from without - but, ofc, it's their own children ghosting the faith of their fathers from within.

[Fake Messiah]

Christians at the Christian Post are mourning the fall of Christianity in Europe. They don't want to admit that people simply moved on from superstition as the science progressed, but are actually admitting that it's because the Church is not scary enough and does not oppress people anymore ("it became comfortable and unthreatening"), people are not repenting anymore, they don't feel guilty.

Europe didn’t lose Christianity overnight. The Church gave it away

Europe did not wake up one morning and decide to stop believing in God. The old story is too neat, too flattering to modern secularism, and too convenient for the Church. It lets everyone pretend the crisis was caused by science, liberalism, or moral decline “out there.” But the harder truth is this: in Europe, Christianity did not only get pushed out. In many places, it hollowed out from within.

That is why the crisis of Christianity in Europe is not mainly a story about atheists winning arguments. It is a story about churches losing credibility, losing seriousness, and then losing the right to be heard.

The cathedrals are still there. The feast days survive in the calendar. Political leaders still invoke “Christian values” when it suits them. Millions still tick “Christian” on census forms. But much of this is Christianity as ruins, Christianity as atmosphere, Christianity as nostalgia. It is inheritance without discipleship. Memory without obedience. Identity without repentance.

That is when decline begins: not when the Church is attacked, but when it becomes comfortable.

The corruption of institutions. The wars of religion. The compromises with empire. The nationalist idolatries.

Europe did not turn from Christianity simply because it became secular. It turned because the churches often gave it reasons to do so.

This is the point many conservative Christians refuse to face. They are eager to blame secular elites, immigration, sexual ethics, consumerism, and moral relativism for Europe’s spiritual collapse. Some of that criticism has force. But it is dishonest if it skips the Church’s own guilt. A Church that confuses faith with cultural dominance should not be shocked when culture eventually spits it out.

And many liberal Christians have their own evasions. They imagine the answer is accommodation: soften doctrine, lower demands, apologize for certainty, become as unthreatening as possible. But Europe does not need a gentler irrelevance. It does not need churches that survive by becoming chaplains to post-Christian sentiment. If Christianity in Europe is dying, it is not because it has been too Christian.

In many places, it is because it has not been Christian enough.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/eur...st-it.html

[Fake Messiah]

'They refuse to conform': 100,000 churches could close across the US

The U.S. could lose approximately 100,000 churches in the coming years, according to the National Council of Churches.

Financial strain, accelerated societal shifts, and the pandemic's disruption of in-person worship are driving this historic change. Religious leaders warn that these closures could permanently transform the spiritual fabric of the nation.

At First Baptist Church of Abilene, Pastor Ray Miller assures that his congregation is working to adapt in the face of declining attendance and rising challenges.

"Statistics will come and go. We don't know if God will intervene. I do believe that church is going to be different in the next few years, but it will always be relevant," he said. "At this time, I think we just need to keep praying. We need to keep preaching the word of God. We need to love our neighbors and spread the word of Jesus Christ."

KTXS asked, “What steps is First Baptist Church of Abilene taking now to safeguard its future?”

Miller explained that First Baptist Church is constantly brainstorming new ways to connect with the youth.

"We're always asking ourselves questions about whether we are reaching the next generation. We have a huge community outreach that we'd like people to participate in. We want everyone to come and serve alongside us," Miller said. "If you serve alongside us, we believe that you will meet the Savior."

Community members like Clarence Ealem believe that churches no longer resonate with the people they serve.

https://ktxs.com/news/local/they-refuse-...oss-the-us


I don't know how much god will intervene to save the churches from closing considering that HE is not intervening in more serious situations like in wars that are happening right now. Like, there is a toxic rain falling on people in Iran, which he didn't stop, although it will give them cancer. Or maybe it is god's will for people to simply believe in HIM (and his dangling dick) without going to church.

[Mister Agenda]

That love our neighbors thing would be a nice change of pace.

[Fake Messiah]

Using sex to lure men back into the Catholic priest profession. Will it work?

Belgian bishop announces plan to ordain married men as priests

Bishop Johan Bonny of the Diocese of Antwerp published March 20 a document outlining the application of the synod on synodality in his diocese. In it, he said that “the question is no longer whether the Church can ordain married men as priests, but when it will do so, and who will do it.”

“It is an illusion to think that a serious synodal-missionary process in the West still has a chance without also ordaining married men as priests,” he added in his letter.

Bonny said in the letter that while foreign priests help in filling shortages in many dioceses and “enrich our church life with a healthy dose of universality and catholicity,” they “come to help us, not to replace us. Moreover, it would not be fair to place the burden of our shortages on their shoulders.”

“There is a historical shortage of local priests in many dioceses. The number of unmarried men who want to become priests has fallen to just above zero,” he added.

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/belgian...es-plan-to

[Fake Messiah]

Japan is running out of monks, so they're training AI robots called "buddharoid" to replace them:

Japan is currently grappling with depopulation and a decline in religious affiliation, which has accelerated the closure of traditional places of worship; approximately 30% of Buddhist temples in Japan are projected to vanish by 2040 as younger generations move away from organized religion. This crisis is compounded by an aging population, making it increasingly difficult for rural temples to find successors or maintain a physical presence.

The Buddharoid is designed to support the Buddhist clergy as Japan’s religious infrastructure faces a steady decline. It utilizes a system called BuddhaBot-Plus, a specialized generative AI derived from OpenAI’s ChatGPT that has been trained extensively on sacred Buddhist scriptures. This allows the robot to provide spiritual guidance on personal and social issues, like a real monk would.

https://www.tokyoweekender.com/entertain...uddharoid/

[Angrboda]

I want one.