this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Where do you go every Sunday morning and Wednesday night plus the occasional breakfast and weekend event to meet with a hundred people from all walks of life in the community and plan events to support the town?
If you don't think that a small local church can be a profound force of real, tangible good in a community then you're incredibly ignorant. The church has been the primary social safety net in small towns in this country for centuries, and right now that net is crumbling because religion is dying and nobody is stepping in to fill that social void with something else.
Put up or shut up.
But the good there isnt the church part; its the community anf social ties; being a third space. You could do this about nearly anything else. Hell, for the sake of argument; get a 3d printer and hold a fucking pirate wh40k league, with a book club for the novels and figurine painting workshops, and the audience might be different, but I bet the results would shake out pretty close. Diversify it a little (hold d&d on Monday nights, board games and tacos on Tuesdays) and the results will be even better.
The church has been the safety net because religion gets special treatment, and all the other safety nets get aggressively violently cut to shit (see: 'the black panther party for self defense' for a prime well documented example, or how 'food not bombs' get arrested for terrorism fucking routinely. Watch the biography 'Judas and the black messiah' for how that happens.). This is the exact same reason Iran(and a lot of the middle east) is the way it is; when they killed all the socialists and anarchists, the only organized radicals left to fight a government the people could not abide were the islamofascists, because religion got special status.
Youre not better than the rest of the athletes; you're just cutting corners in the foot race. Possibly on an e-bike. If you're not willing to tear down the institutions that make this so fucking hard, then you're not really aiming for systemic good; youre aiming to keep your monopoly on conscience, with state enforcers floating you wherever youre going on an easy convenient river of blood. Fuck, this even happens in your holy book doesn't it? It's like a whole thing the one time religion doesn't get special treatment?
I know you probably don't mean to do this, but then; what, may I ask, is the symbol of your faith?
You can have all the good sides of religion without the bad sides if only you try. You don't need a god to have a community. But you'd rather focus on helping one of the worst organizations in the world survive than build a better one. As for your question: soup kitchens. Book clubs. Swingers clubs. Sports clubs. Etc. There's literally hundreds of places where that's true.
PS. Loved the little typo/Freudian slip where you said that only someone incredibly ignorant could think that a small church could be a profound place for real, tangible good in the community.
Soup Kitchens and local homeless shelters are awesome. Know what kind of group operates 95% them? Churches. If all these non-religious groups are able to pick up where the church left off, the they need to fucking do it. Because they aren't.
As churches close their doors these local programs are dying. Combine that with the rising cost of living and we're experiencing an epidemic in homelessness and poverty that's untreated in smaller towns. As their shelters and food pantries disappear, they're literally buying people bus tickets to send the poor people to major cities. With the collapse of the Church programs the smaller cities don't have the resources to handle poverty.
I ask again, what organization do you, individually,. actively work with multiple times a week where hundreds of people gather and work to improve the local community? By calling for an end to the church you're calling for an end to everything they do, and I bet you aren't aware of 10% of what they're even up to.
What causes more harm in a small town? Having a church presence even though you don't share their beliefs or shutting down the homeless shelter, food bank, home hospice, free clinic, after-school programs, daycare, and more?
Put up or shut up.
Sigh... You're completely missing the point. Nevermind, have a nice day.