• nyctre@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      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.