Summary
Churches across the U.S. are grappling with dwindling attendance and financial instability, forcing many to close or sell properties.
The Diocese of Buffalo has shut down 100 parishes since the 2000s and plans to close 70 more. Nationwide, church membership has dropped from 80% in the 1940s to 45% today.
Some churches repurpose their land to survive, like Atlanta’s First United Methodist Church, which is building affordable housing.
Others, like Calcium Church in New York, make cutbacks to stay open. Leaders warn of the long-term risks of declining community and support for churches.
Gotta wonder how things would have shaken out if Mohammad had a son survive long enough to take over.
With Islam, you do have multiple thorough legal traditions to choose from for authority. There’s at least some consistency. Iirc, there’s an entire system of grading Hadith based on how many steps removed they are from the prophet - while your average American Christian believes that Mark, Matthew, John and Luke wrote Mark, Matthew, John and Luke.
Evangelicals don’t have that kind of textual tradition, and what they do have is cockeyed squinting at their Bibles while trying to make it work with their pop culture understanding of theology. The focus on having a “personal” relationship with Jesus + sola scriptura when most of these folks have sub fifth grade reading levels means that whatever feels good at the time is what God wants.
I’ve met a lot of (ex-Soviet, that should be kept in mind) Muslims, most wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this madhhab and that.
And Christian theology, when you don’t reduce it to average American Christians, has a lot of tradition.
What I mean … you typical Salafi is just like that:
Can we just agree that most people with religious identities don’t care about actual philosophy?