After watching the collapse of the Third Place in real time during my life: maybe there was a method to the madness. You realize how utterly herculean a task it is to plan town gatherings and realize that some small (optional but peer-pressured) tithe and bit of prayer isn't much different from going to a Cafe to meet up and paying for a drink.
I almost wish I could like church for those reasons.
I'm actually really confused by this claim, as a person raised in a non-white immigrant household. I bought onto the idea of churches as community because my immigrant churches were full of apple picking, group meals in the church itself, thanksgivings at the pastor's house, etc. But someone recently told me in Catholic mass you don't even get a church-wide breakfast?? WTF? How the hell does community get formed if the actual worshipping actions isn't inherently a community building action? Someone told me the guy can bless you if you don't eat the bread, but you can't even ask for a specific blessing, like "my son needs an A, can I get the whole church to pray for him" style stuff.
I'm way more skeptical of the notion of church as a community now. If all the church community is via volunteer charity actions, just volunteer directly unaffiliated with a religion.
I think that's bizarre though. Mass is the one requirement everyone needs to do together-- obviously, that's the best time to sit with a meal and gossip. Even on important holidays, easter mass etc. are the few times limited practicing catholics will appear. This is the perfect time to ask how they've been, how're the kids, and welcome them with fresh hot food, maybe invite them to the litter picking up effort next week.
I'm extremely skeptical of church as a community building thing now, because based off of my white friends recollection there's very little actual community around worship itself. There are a bunch of volunteer actions outside of it, but just going to worship isn't itself community. This makes me question why we can't have a generic mutual aid group do this instead, like the Anarchist Soup folks.
The Catholic position would be that that isn't what the Mass is for; it's a ritual sacrifice that meets a real spiritual need. Similarly, the priest doesn't need to be especially likeable or even give a homily in order to say a valid Mass.
I think it really depends on the church, and in my case I was talking about African-American dominant churches. So there may be a stronger sense of community there than the White Catholic churches.
For me, it was sort of in-between. There wasn't a church-wide breakfast except for some small snacks during the big days (Easter Sunday and Christmas). But there was plenty of donation drives that would provide food for lower income families in the area. And you very much had a chance to worship and ask for a specific blessing, sometimes in a very public manner (This Boondocks clip is surprising accurate portrayal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtP7cbbAFLA)
> If all the church community is via volunteer charity actions, just volunteer directly unaffiliated with a religion.
That's the thing, I have tried. But in my experience, volunteer work to meet friends is fleeting. You won't be making a few deep connections even if you do your best to come every week, you'll see a revolving door of people who may only come once or twice. At least among my age group, there isn't much consistency in participation.
And that fleeting, revolving door seems to be theme of modern adult life. I don't know what in particular made the same people come to pray for some higher being every week, but it's something I haven't seen in any other attempt to meet people in my adult life.
> How the hell does community get formed if the actual worshipping actions isn't inherently a community building action?
Yep, Catholicism (American white-people Catholicism, at least) is weird like that. Maybe it's different in different places or among different ethnic-majority parishes, but I grew up in New Jersey and Maryland, and was dragged to mass weekly by my (devout) parents. There wasn't really any kind of community there; we showed up, took our seats, did the rituals, and then left and went home.
They also put me through CCD (Catholic version of "Sunday school") for 8 years, and while I want on some (more or less mandatory) retreats and activities with my fellow classmates, I don't recall any of those relationships extending outside class. I didn't end up forging any closer relationships with the other kids who went to my regular school, either. Granted, I may not be typical: I decided I didn't believe when I was in 5th or 6th grade, so I did the bare minimum just to get through it; maybe others tried harder and worked to make it more of a community.
I did work for our church's music director one summer in high school (mostly odd jobs and clerical stuff), and would play trumpet in the church's small ensemble for (rare) special events (regular mass just had a piano/organ player), but I didn't really get much out of that, aside from enjoying playing some music.
> but you can't even ask for a specific blessing, like "my son needs an A, can I get the whole church to pray for him" style stuff.
The church we went to in Maryland did have a small section of time devoted to community prayers. It wasn't specific, like they would just read a list of names (I think you had to sign up in advance to get someone on the list), and after each name, the congregation would respond "Lord, pray for them" or something like that.
> I'm way more skeptical of the notion of church as a community now.
I think it just depends on which religion/denomination, and the conditions in the local area. Some churches might do more to try to build community than others. And some churches might actually do build community, but many people who come for services just don't care to participate for whatever reason.
Personally I don't have a positive view of religion, but I do think it's a shame if some community-building has gone by the wayside due to declining church attendance.
>But someone recently told me in Catholic mass you don't even get a church-wide breakfast?? WTF?
That really depends on your individual parish in my experience. The church I grew up going to had donuts after ever 10:30am mass, and the one I go to now has free breakfast. I've also been to ones that have nothing at all.
It's also extremely common for Catholic churches to hold
a "Friday Fish Fry" every Friday during Lent
More detail downthread, but I don't feel like growing up attending Catholic mass every week did much community-wise. We'd show up, sit down, do the rituals, and head home, without really interacting much (if at all) with fellow parishioners.
Certainly there were people who were more involved -- the church had a youth group, for one thing, and a bunch of outreach programs. But those were the kind of things that you had to specifically seek out, apart from the usual religious services. And if you aren't going to get community-building out of the religious services themselves, then you might as well build community outside the church entirely.
Not saying that all religious/church communities are all the same; my girlfriend in high school was much more involved with her church community (different religion). But her experience seemed to be more of an outlier than the norm.
>but I don't feel like growing up attending Catholic mass every week did much community-wise. We'd show up, sit down, do the rituals, and head home, without really interacting much (if at all) with fellow parishioners.
I felt the exact same way growing up. But that's the thing: while I hated church my parents/grandparents got really involved. It wasn't unusual for my grandparents to meet up with friends after Church at some buffet and talk, and my grandmother was involved in a few non-sunday service activities. My mother met a few friend in the area through church and sang on the choir.
I don't know if they were outliers, but the key here was 1) meeting people in the area (my mom moved constantly and church was one of the first things she joins) and 2) having an easy excuse to do something after church on Sunday. I struggle to do monthly rituals with friends nearby and meanwhile two generations of family could do weekly luncheons after participation in a place that was fine with bringing kids into.
I should note that this might still be a division of the genders, though. My Grandfather didn't do much more than drop off/pick up my grandmother.
Unfortunately in North America at least the dominant churches are politically, ideologically and increasingly "theologically" onside with wars and other fairly awful things that the government is involved in.
Grew up in an evangelical church in Alberta, Canada. It's just gotten more and more political and more and more explicitly right-wing ideological.
That and a lot of the good work many churches do is strings-attached.
That's not to say there isn't amazing charity work being done by many churches and some amazing Christian humanitarian charity work generally. But when I pay my taxes I know that the distribution of the funds is nominally under some democratic and legal governance that is not attached to someone's personal belief system. (Though that is also degrading over time)
(FWIW I've personally donated funds to charities that have church / religious affiliations despite being an atheist. But I'm extremely picky about it)
Sure, some churches are on the side of war. I grew up in such a church. Now I attend one of the "mainline" denominations (which tends to roughly mean Protestant, and not Evangelical). Mainline denominations are usually more politically liberal. Much more likely to find strident anti-war stances.
No, but they are more of a scam than most taxes. Historically speaking, churches haven't exactly abstained from war or pretty much any other atrocity. In terms of our current reality, they are usually not better value for money than taxes. Any time you can point to corruption, misuse of funds, politics or other issues, it is worth remembering that this applies to the churches as well.
Even if this is true "historically speaking", it doesn't have to be true of this guy's local church. Despite the bad press generally, an individual church can still be an unambiguous benefit to its community.
I would be willing to bet that the majority of local (single location, <400 members) churches are like this. Free meals for the community, donating money / labor / resources to homeless shelters, partnering with food banks and soup kitchens, etc are all very common. You just don't hear about it.
The larger and less accountable an organisation is, the more corruption and waste there tends to be. I would agree that donations to a large national religious movement are probably more of a scam than national taxes, but that's not the comparison being made here.
I'm sure the 7 billion dollars worth of equipment won't come back to bite us in the ass, like training Mujahideen between 1979-1989 to fight the Soviets and supplying them with Stingers did
We don't always know what shot down a given aircraft, and one black-market MANPADS is much like another for most purposes, but from a search around at least one Chinook shot down in Afghanistan was thought to be by a Stinger left over from those days. Also spending a fair bit on a buyback program seems like an indication of regret.
