Among the single biggest favors COVID-19 did for us was to allow people to discover that church really isn't necessary. Rather a secondary result once people came out of the pandemic was that there are OTHER means of having community / fellowship / bonhomie / et cetera than in a church congregation. And, in the midst of all that, a few of those discovered some of the problematic nature of religion and decided that they had had enough.
One way or another, religion is losing traction ... and I for one think that is way overdue.
My vicar-daughter's cathedral now livestreams its morning services and someone told her she prefers to watch at home as she can do the ironing at the same time. Daughter also says that those early lockdown services when all churches were closed, meant a pastor/priest doing a blurred and wobbly service on their phone, from their kitchen. Then churches started employing professional film makers, and that seemed to satisfy many and keep them at home. I also think that some folk who've been churchgoers all their lives need a plausible excuse to stop. Covid gave them that, and prior to 2020, I noticed in my village some elderly folk who had to stop driving, then refused the offer of lifts to church by others, or said things like the pews were not comfortable for their backs.....IOW, they only felt they could leave if they presented a 'real' excuse....and Covid certainly exacerbated that, as well as leaving many older - and some younger - folk with long Covid, or just the increased frailty of being elderly and, two years on, being more frail than pre-Covid.
i am guessing the churches do not care so much if you are not showing up in person if you are still forking over the $$$$$. Church /religion is still a VERY lucrative business model and they want their tax free money any way they can get it. No doubt some part of the online church services are handy links to transfer funds.
I quit going to church when they occasionally advocate young earth creation crap in their sermons and Sunday School. One day after I moved out of mom's home, I went to church one more time, left the church during the service, and never came back. I've had enough. I'd rather stay home on Sundays unless I feel like going out shopping for awhile.
Good thing I left right before they got into Trump/MAGA crap and then close the church down due to lack of attendance.
At this point, social media is taking over anything churches used to do for people and making interactions more convenient, easier to manage, and available at any time. Church isn't needed to get that sense of community anymore and who would want to get up early on a Sunday and get into their best clothing if they don't really have to?
Add to that the way any number of conservative Christians have been displaying their real goals of late, and you've got a recipe for an exodus. Hating people takes time and energy most people I talk to these days just don't really have the enthusiasm for even if they were actually interested in doing so, which they aren't. Going to church involves being guilt tripped into donating money, being told who to hate because Jesus said so, and after COVID it's only no wonder people have figure out it's not doing anything for them. Finding the door has never had so much motivation.
Some Sundays I had to get up early and put comfortable clothes to go to a Museum either when I was a child or for my nephew, you are tricked to spend money there too but at least you can get something valuable. My nephew who will be 17 in August still have the pterodactyl plush toy* I bought him about 10 years ago.
* He wanted a game where you dig a fossil imitation but asthma and fine particules don't get along (vetoed by his mother when I called her).
Let's see... people's free time is limited these days, what with work and all. Now they've discovered how nice it is to have two days off and sleep in on a Sunday, instead of getting up, dressing up, and spending your entire morning in church. Once out of that habit, they realize, WTF am I doing, giving part of my day off in church and giving money to the church. Time is tight, money is tight. Druther sleep in, have some avocado toast and take it easy. Read the comics with a leisurely cup of coffee or go get yelled at for being a sinner and made to feel awful about yourself? Not much of a choice for me, pass the butter.
7 days a week for us. Glad to have the Seattle Times, but miss the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (it's online only now). And I also miss the print edition of Dan Savage's "The Stranger."
We used to be a three-newspaper town: the St. Petersburg Times (morning), The Evening Independent (afternoon), and the Tampa Tribune (don't know because I never read that birdcage liner). The Times bought the Independent and later merged it into the Times. Seven years ago, the Times bought the Trib.
As soon as I was old enough to drive, I told my parents I was going to church, then drove to a nearby city park and spent an hour reading and leering at the hot joggers. "Bearing false witness" wasn't the worst of the commandments I've broken..
I do think the pandemic played a role but mostly in giving people an opportunity to experience their life without regular church attendance. Once people realize that their life is just fine without church, the spell is broken. As far as the question of what church leaders do to bring people back, I actually think we’re at the point where they don’t have that authority anymore. They’re in a no win situation where they need to pander to the extremists who are still attending if they want to stay relevant, but at the same time that will push non-churchgoers even further away. I will of course send my thoughts and prayers to them in this difficult time.
I think a lot of people felt they needed church because they had been conditioned from birth to believe they needed church, and that church attendance somehow equaled morality. Some of the most mean-spirited human beings I have ever known, never missed church.
Church leaders are doing what they can to bring people back, aligning with a political party that is working to make the USA a theocracy in order to force people into pews. Maybe this is a slippery slope fallacy, but I think that the decisions from the SCOTUS “ lately are leading up to eliminating the first amendment as they have been in contravention of it, and the decisions are methodical in breaking it down. Eventually the laws that are being crafted by groups like Project Blitz will begin to shift from intrusion of religion into public spaces to government coercion of individual actions, ie. forcing folks to attend church services and paying tithes. At the least, they may add a religious tax to our annual income tax responsibilities. I doubt they will stop there.
At some point, sane people are going to actively start pushing back instead of just passively not going to church any more. Up with this, we shall not put!
They're taking an authoritarian, top-down approach to winning the culture wars they lost a long time ago. They lost because their arguments did not resonate with enough people to prevail, but since they're operating under divine sanction they deserve to win anyway.
This is pure conjecture, but I suspect there were people who figured out the preachers need them a whole lot more than they ever needed the preachers. Few things ever made me feel better than when I stopped going to church a few months out of high school.
"This is why the government needs religious freedom to force non-compliant individuals to freely exercise their freedom of religion by going to the nearest approved Christian Church, just as our founding fathers wanted." Clarence Thomas, maybe.
His daddy bought his diploma, just like every high society prick. He probably got passing grades just for being 𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥. Good thing for him, too; it's probably a major-league bastard to pass the Bar Exam wasted.
“Most people can’t bear to sit in a church for an hour on Sundays. How are they suppose to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?” - Mark Twain.
Heaven is a dung age peasant's idea of paradise- it wouldn't hold a modern Christian's fancy past the first hour, following which it would become indistinguishable from hell.
If nothing else, angels as described in the bible are a hell of a lot scarier than most people imagine. The purest white, fluffy-winged, Pat Boone-looking angels of the American imagination are nothing like the ones described in the Not-really-very-good Book. Not that I'd ever expect American christers to have actually read the damn silly thing.
We’re writing to share with you that as of tomorrow, our current commenting system will no longer be in service. After receiving and considering feedback from our most engaged commenters, we decided that Viafoura was not meeting the needs of the community.
*Gee it only took almost two and a half 𝐅𝐔𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 years of complaints ‽ ‽ ‽ 😤🤬*
As a participatory platform, we highly value our commenting community . . .
Doubt it will happen though. It would mean the return of memes/GIFs that don't need need to be clicked on to be seen. It would also mean the return of bold/italics/underlining/special character codes/
Yet no matter how low the numbers sink, the christers will keep insisting that "this is a christian nation." In his landmark "America at 1750" historian Richard Hofstadter analyzed the available data and found that fewer then 15%of the North American population attended church at all regularly at that time, yet they still insist "this was founded to be a christian nation." Myths die hard--especially in a country where people are as poorly educated as most Americans.
If nothing else, the christers really ought to consider that most church services are more boring that dried spit. Even Hanna-Barbera cartoons are more entertaining (and more intelligent). Paul of Tarsus? Nah, I'll take Peter Potamus any day.
She had a blast. They snorkeled with sea turtles and marlins. They saw a nurse shark or two. My hubs came face to face with a barracuda, but it just eyed him for a minute and left. There was some rain, they even showered in one rainstorm. For the most part they had a lovely time.
That’s too bad. It is expensive, but do able for most with scout scholarships and fundraisers. Your charter organizations are supposed to help out too.
I see a lot of leadership interfering in the scout experience, trying to be too strict with the rules or claiming scouts is something it isn’t, or just trying to direct the troops in the direction the kids and parents don’t really want.
The high adventure trips really can be the most educational and provide a safer environment to push limits in the kids.
I’m sorry he didn’t get to go, sea base has so much to offer and something for anyone no matter their interests and abilities.
Oh, no, that's not it. If you follow the sad excuse for a human being, Theophilus/McPherson/Fernandez/whichever name he's using, Sr., we just need another 911.
(He's been especially hateful and horrible lately, this was just from one of his videos today. There are still people dying from 911 complications. I found a Facebook group dedicated to them. A couple have died this month.
I just don't understand how people can be like him at all - or why YouTube keeps giving him a free pass to spew his hatred and nonsense. He's been reported for content in almost every video, yet nothing happens.
He has a son Theophilus McPherson Jr. I have no idea what Jr. is like.)
Can't help but notice there are no comments on this video. Maybe the victims of 9/11 (as well as others) were giving his insanity an earful and he cut them off.
Heh. He hides or deletes all of my comments, can't stand for anyone to see him corrected. He occasionally allows a negative one from someone else, but usually to insult or nuh uh them.
Among the single biggest favors COVID-19 did for us was to allow people to discover that church really isn't necessary. Rather a secondary result once people came out of the pandemic was that there are OTHER means of having community / fellowship / bonhomie / et cetera than in a church congregation. And, in the midst of all that, a few of those discovered some of the problematic nature of religion and decided that they had had enough.
One way or another, religion is losing traction ... and I for one think that is way overdue.
My vicar-daughter's cathedral now livestreams its morning services and someone told her she prefers to watch at home as she can do the ironing at the same time. Daughter also says that those early lockdown services when all churches were closed, meant a pastor/priest doing a blurred and wobbly service on their phone, from their kitchen. Then churches started employing professional film makers, and that seemed to satisfy many and keep them at home. I also think that some folk who've been churchgoers all their lives need a plausible excuse to stop. Covid gave them that, and prior to 2020, I noticed in my village some elderly folk who had to stop driving, then refused the offer of lifts to church by others, or said things like the pews were not comfortable for their backs.....IOW, they only felt they could leave if they presented a 'real' excuse....and Covid certainly exacerbated that, as well as leaving many older - and some younger - folk with long Covid, or just the increased frailty of being elderly and, two years on, being more frail than pre-Covid.
i am guessing the churches do not care so much if you are not showing up in person if you are still forking over the $$$$$. Church /religion is still a VERY lucrative business model and they want their tax free money any way they can get it. No doubt some part of the online church services are handy links to transfer funds.
I once heard a leader of a local church say that he wanted it to be as easy to donate money online to his church as it was to buy something on Amazon.
I quit going to church when they occasionally advocate young earth creation crap in their sermons and Sunday School. One day after I moved out of mom's home, I went to church one more time, left the church during the service, and never came back. I've had enough. I'd rather stay home on Sundays unless I feel like going out shopping for awhile.
Good thing I left right before they got into Trump/MAGA crap and then close the church down due to lack of attendance.
At this point, social media is taking over anything churches used to do for people and making interactions more convenient, easier to manage, and available at any time. Church isn't needed to get that sense of community anymore and who would want to get up early on a Sunday and get into their best clothing if they don't really have to?
Add to that the way any number of conservative Christians have been displaying their real goals of late, and you've got a recipe for an exodus. Hating people takes time and energy most people I talk to these days just don't really have the enthusiasm for even if they were actually interested in doing so, which they aren't. Going to church involves being guilt tripped into donating money, being told who to hate because Jesus said so, and after COVID it's only no wonder people have figure out it's not doing anything for them. Finding the door has never had so much motivation.
Some Sundays I had to get up early and put comfortable clothes to go to a Museum either when I was a child or for my nephew, you are tricked to spend money there too but at least you can get something valuable. My nephew who will be 17 in August still have the pterodactyl plush toy* I bought him about 10 years ago.
* He wanted a game where you dig a fossil imitation but asthma and fine particules don't get along (vetoed by his mother when I called her).
Atheism's secret advantage: Sunday mornings!
And reason/logic.
And an almost fanatical devotion to...wait...who?
Our pets.
Come in again?
I'll go get the comfy chair.
Don't forget the soft cushions.
Oh, bugger!
I didn't expect that!
Let's see... people's free time is limited these days, what with work and all. Now they've discovered how nice it is to have two days off and sleep in on a Sunday, instead of getting up, dressing up, and spending your entire morning in church. Once out of that habit, they realize, WTF am I doing, giving part of my day off in church and giving money to the church. Time is tight, money is tight. Druther sleep in, have some avocado toast and take it easy. Read the comics with a leisurely cup of coffee or go get yelled at for being a sinner and made to feel awful about yourself? Not much of a choice for me, pass the butter.
I arrive late to FA every Sunday because I sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast followed by coffee and the newspaper. :)
I arrive so late to FA on Sunday that it is already Monday...
You still have newspapers? Ours have shrunk so far they've almost disappeared.
7 days a week for us. Glad to have the Seattle Times, but miss the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (it's online only now). And I also miss the print edition of Dan Savage's "The Stranger."
The TBT only has print versions on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Not long ago, we were a 2-newspaper town.
We used to be a three-newspaper town: the St. Petersburg Times (morning), The Evening Independent (afternoon), and the Tampa Tribune (don't know because I never read that birdcage liner). The Times bought the Independent and later merged it into the Times. Seven years ago, the Times bought the Trib.
Besides the Stranger, we also had the Seattle Weekly. But those two were free.
As soon as I was old enough to drive, I told my parents I was going to church, then drove to a nearby city park and spent an hour reading and leering at the hot joggers. "Bearing false witness" wasn't the worst of the commandments I've broken..
I've tried to break most of them, except the ones I agree with. :)
I wasn't able to read the comics yesterday because my internet was slower than molasses running uphill. 🤬
Just glad my newspaper carries all the comics I read (though I don't understand why they only carry the Sunday edition of "Doonesbury").
Doonesbury is Sunday only. Gocomics Doonesbury for today is from 1999.
"Classic Doonesbury," then? I could've sworn I saw one daily cartoon strip with a recent reference.
IIRC Trudeau went to Sundays only when he decided to work on a failed TV show that starred John Goodman.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3012160/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_27_act
I remember that. Seems a shame it didn't pan out.
I do think the pandemic played a role but mostly in giving people an opportunity to experience their life without regular church attendance. Once people realize that their life is just fine without church, the spell is broken. As far as the question of what church leaders do to bring people back, I actually think we’re at the point where they don’t have that authority anymore. They’re in a no win situation where they need to pander to the extremists who are still attending if they want to stay relevant, but at the same time that will push non-churchgoers even further away. I will of course send my thoughts and prayers to them in this difficult time.
I think a lot of people felt they needed church because they had been conditioned from birth to believe they needed church, and that church attendance somehow equaled morality. Some of the most mean-spirited human beings I have ever known, never missed church.
Church leaders are doing what they can to bring people back, aligning with a political party that is working to make the USA a theocracy in order to force people into pews. Maybe this is a slippery slope fallacy, but I think that the decisions from the SCOTUS “ lately are leading up to eliminating the first amendment as they have been in contravention of it, and the decisions are methodical in breaking it down. Eventually the laws that are being crafted by groups like Project Blitz will begin to shift from intrusion of religion into public spaces to government coercion of individual actions, ie. forcing folks to attend church services and paying tithes. At the least, they may add a religious tax to our annual income tax responsibilities. I doubt they will stop there.
At some point, sane people are going to actively start pushing back instead of just passively not going to church any more. Up with this, we shall not put!
I should hope so.
But that won’t happen until things start getting uncomfortable for the average person. It may go farther than we would like.
They're taking an authoritarian, top-down approach to winning the culture wars they lost a long time ago. They lost because their arguments did not resonate with enough people to prevail, but since they're operating under divine sanction they deserve to win anyway.
This is pure conjecture, but I suspect there were people who figured out the preachers need them a whole lot more than they ever needed the preachers. Few things ever made me feel better than when I stopped going to church a few months out of high school.
I think the issue is that 34% is voting, and they are represented by 96% of congressional members.
"This is why the government needs religious freedom to force non-compliant individuals to freely exercise their freedom of religion by going to the nearest approved Christian Church, just as our founding fathers wanted." Clarence Thomas, maybe.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6d23ba04298184acb96ee4be7a7f6ef7d177fb462257ed685d29e34e5647eb70.jpg
Clarence Thomas eats worms.
Not yet and that's a problem. Will beer pong man beat him to it ?
Depends on how much of his liver was left after law school.
How many semesters did he gave to retake ?
His daddy bought his diploma, just like every high society prick. He probably got passing grades just for being 𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥. Good thing for him, too; it's probably a major-league bastard to pass the Bar Exam wasted.
Cake or death!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkWbEmtYXs
Justice Three-Fifths.
“Most people can’t bear to sit in a church for an hour on Sundays. How are they suppose to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?” - Mark Twain.
I thought I had read every Twain line about heaven but that one is new to me. Thank you!
Your welcome. All in a day’s Googling. Mark Twain was brilliant and a world gem to this day.
I've read Revelation. Heaven is a place no one in their right minds would want to find themselves.
Heaven is a dung age peasant's idea of paradise- it wouldn't hold a modern Christian's fancy past the first hour, following which it would become indistinguishable from hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqFoiM0zxdY
If nothing else, angels as described in the bible are a hell of a lot scarier than most people imagine. The purest white, fluffy-winged, Pat Boone-looking angels of the American imagination are nothing like the ones described in the Not-really-very-good Book. Not that I'd ever expect American christers to have actually read the damn silly thing.
OT - Just got this from OnlyShit
Dear OnlySky Readers,
We’re writing to share with you that as of tomorrow, our current commenting system will no longer be in service. After receiving and considering feedback from our most engaged commenters, we decided that Viafoura was not meeting the needs of the community.
*Gee it only took almost two and a half 𝐅𝐔𝐂𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 years of complaints ‽ ‽ ‽ 😤🤬*
As a participatory platform, we highly value our commenting community . . .
BULL💩
Yup, got that one too. Talk about closing the barn door 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 all the horses bolted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30fYiwKm4U&t=4s
They closed the barn door after the horses bolted, formed a union, bought out the farm, and razed it into the ground.
Are they replacing it with something else?
If it's Disqus I'm going to die laughing.
Disqus would be a ginormous improvement.
Doubt it will happen though. It would mean the return of memes/GIFs that don't need need to be clicked on to be seen. It would also mean the return of bold/italics/underlining/special character codes/
Yes, but they didn't say what.
Just went and looked around a little and didn't see anything. I'm still logged in to comment.
They haven't bothered sending it to me – or maybe emails take longer to get to NZ.
I haven't got one either. Afaik, I'm still on the list.
Seems they need more money.
Then they shouldn't have fucked us over.
Friendly Atheist *snip* By Hemant Mehta · Over 𝟔,𝟎𝟎𝟎 subscribers
Thinking about it, I realize Hemant didn't leave OnlyShit because of how they treated us. But they probably did lose several thousand clicks a day.
Yup
Yet no matter how low the numbers sink, the christers will keep insisting that "this is a christian nation." In his landmark "America at 1750" historian Richard Hofstadter analyzed the available data and found that fewer then 15%of the North American population attended church at all regularly at that time, yet they still insist "this was founded to be a christian nation." Myths die hard--especially in a country where people are as poorly educated as most Americans.
Andrew L. Seidel's "The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American" should be required reading in this country's schools.
Absolutely agreed.
"It is not clear if the pandemic is the cause of the reduced attendance or if the decline is a continuation of trends that were already in motion."
It's not COVID. The public face of Christianity is nothing but assholes.
Life is too short to spend it with assholes.
If nothing else, the christers really ought to consider that most church services are more boring that dried spit. Even Hanna-Barbera cartoons are more entertaining (and more intelligent). Paul of Tarsus? Nah, I'll take Peter Potamus any day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YPSY1TH-1Y
https://youtu.be/P0DK-0fIKCw
Hey, don't knock the creators of Scooby Doo! 😁🤓 (My favorite cartoon, if you can't tell. ☺️)
Get attendance up again? Easy. Just do what was done during the pandemic. Fill those pews with puppets.
Of course, preachers won't get much out of them in the way of $$$ but at least they'll be a captive audience.
Oh honey, the pews were always filled with puppets. It’s just the one guy who made it obvious.
OT, how was your daughter's trip to Seabase?
She had a blast. They snorkeled with sea turtles and marlins. They saw a nurse shark or two. My hubs came face to face with a barracuda, but it just eyed him for a minute and left. There was some rain, they even showered in one rainstorm. For the most part they had a lovely time.
My son wanted to go to Seabase. The entrenched leadership’s response was “Traditionally we haven’t done that.”
Our troop liked to pretend it was “boy-led”.
That’s too bad. It is expensive, but do able for most with scout scholarships and fundraisers. Your charter organizations are supposed to help out too.
I see a lot of leadership interfering in the scout experience, trying to be too strict with the rules or claiming scouts is something it isn’t, or just trying to direct the troops in the direction the kids and parents don’t really want.
The high adventure trips really can be the most educational and provide a safer environment to push limits in the kids.
I’m sorry he didn’t get to go, sea base has so much to offer and something for anyone no matter their interests and abilities.
Turns out he wasn't the only one. I've seen images online of other preachers pulling the same stunt.
Their desperation sustains us.
Good puppets, like god christians, mouth exactly what they're programmed to say.
I'd like to sic THESE puppets on those cross-swinging frauds...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF9Lyb5UJHo
Damn, that should've read "frauds." Fixed my gaffe.
Okay, it’s just Covid made it obvious.
" Fill those pews with puppets."
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSGuS6CSEmIwq6OClz16vL3TImRDuFE99lSAQ&usqp=CAU
Oh, no, that's not it. If you follow the sad excuse for a human being, Theophilus/McPherson/Fernandez/whichever name he's using, Sr., we just need another 911.
https://youtu.be/ERG-oAdf8Gc. (timestamp 0:40)
"911 was amazing my friend
there was no
Pew left there was no seatings left
because when 911 hit
a lot of people was going to church"
(He's been especially hateful and horrible lately, this was just from one of his videos today. There are still people dying from 911 complications. I found a Facebook group dedicated to them. A couple have died this month.
I just don't understand how people can be like him at all - or why YouTube keeps giving him a free pass to spew his hatred and nonsense. He's been reported for content in almost every video, yet nothing happens.
He has a son Theophilus McPherson Jr. I have no idea what Jr. is like.)
Can't help but notice there are no comments on this video. Maybe the victims of 9/11 (as well as others) were giving his insanity an earful and he cut them off.
Heh. He hides or deletes all of my comments, can't stand for anyone to see him corrected. He occasionally allows a negative one from someone else, but usually to insult or nuh uh them.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/118056431626453/?ref=share&mibextid=DcJ9fc
The New Victims of 911: Ground Zero Responders
I'm not even going to waste my prayers on them, and if they were interested in thoughtS, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Interesting.
Just got an email from OnlySky saying they’re abandoning Viafloura.
They found something worse?
Nothing since February 2nd.