Churches Are A Close'n - Dangerous Talk

Yesterday, I spent the day finishing out my term as Minority Election Inspector in a Catholic dominated town. This gave me the opportunity to talk to local Catholics. Apparently out of the nine Catholic Churches in the area, at least four and maybe as many as five are closing. My fellow officials were upset about this, but me, not so much.

Apparently young people aren’t going to churches any more. Who would have thought? Lol. Remember, the Church is a business first and foremost and if no one is buying their product (blind faith), then they will have to downsize and close various branches in order to save money.

The church with the school attached is not closing and that is almost certainly because they bring in money from parents who clearly don’t mind their kids being taught by non-certified teachers who may or may not be pedophiles.

Where I live isn’t some non-religion paradise. It is just the average suburb of a large city. This means that churches are probably closing in other suburbs across the nation. That is pretty encouraging.

The fact that so many churches are closing is only a start. What we need is for community centers, schools, libraries, secular homeless shelters, and maybe even an ethical society to open in their place. Whether we like it or not, local churches serve secular functions in small towns and we need to create secular institutions to fulfill those functions without preaching ancient superstitions.

This will be the next challenge for humanists. We need to create secular community institutions to replace churches. They don’t necessarily have t be humanist institutions, but that would be nice.