You don’t even need to involve churches.
There are plenty of valid complaints about (many) American religious institutions, but the constant shoe-horning in of complaints about religion in unrelated posts comes across as bitter and myopic.
Comment on Just 2 people.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
This is an silly post with silly implications, even though I appreciate its rhetorical goals
The really c/mildlyinfuriating fact is there are more empty homes in the US than homeless.
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S. src
You don’t even need to involve churches. You need to hold individuals and businesses who hoard real estate for profit accountable.
I appreciate the background sentiment of this post, but check your predetermined biases before you use the text of this meme to inform your opinion on policy.
rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 7 months ago
A lot of us have been victims of the church(hi); its leaves a bloody trench in its wake.
or tried our hand at activism and been smacked down by religious groups for doing the shit they espouse on paper (not strongly me, in any way I care about) and are understandably bitter.
And it hits harder, because most people grew up hearing these are the paragons of moral virtue, and then then pull this shit.
Plus they won’t shut up and get a ton of special treatment, but almost never use it for good (notice nobody’s talking shit about Harriet Tubman, john brown, or the quakers. Diggers levellers anabaptists, too, not even the ULC or church of Satan). Makes a hell of a target.
rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sure, and that’s terrible, but from a different perspective, most of these beliefs and behaviors you’ve identified would persist without religious institutions and their proponents formalizing them as policy. Religion can give people a way to justify a lot of the terrible beliefs that they had internalized anyway, because it’s part of the dominant culture. But misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and xenophobia aren’t caused by religion or religious beliefs, any more so than atheism or agnosticism causes people to be tolerant or accepting of others in spite of their differences. And that’s a foundational premise to many of the criticisms of religion I see on Lemmy. But it’s just objectively wrong. If you want to look at a historical example of the productive power of religion, look no further than the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which was one of, if not the most significant, political and religious organizations of the Civil Rights movement. It helped to organize people into a fighting force for real progressive change and it did so by way of lines of communication between black congregations across the country. For even more examples of religion as a tool of social progress, I recommend the wikipedia page on Liberation Theology.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 7 months ago
Lemmy has a weird hate-boner for Christianity. It’s like a visceral toxic hatred. Sure it would make more sense for you to take from the top one percent in society to actually solve the problem, but that way you don’t get to punish an entire religious group for their vocal minority 1% who squander wealth and strive for political power, using Jesus as nothing more than a stepping stool
rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
A lot of it probably comes from deeply negative personal experiences, combined with a general propensity for people to apply a categorical belief to particular experiences. People who were treated badly by a particular group of Christians, or people who see and hear about certain Christians advocating for some terrible politician or political goal, are applying a generalized belief to how all Christians act, and potentially to all religion in general. It’s much harder to accept that the world is a deeply complicated and messy place and that religion and religious belief is a much more complex element of human civilization, culture, and personal identity than what many people would care to acknowledge.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 7 months ago
Yeah. I regularly attend multiple churches. There are a few bad eggs, sure, but 99% of people I talk to there are either lovely people or normal people. Same goes for workplaces as well. I don’t see Churches as being worse than any other environment I’ve been in. But when assholes are Christians, they weaponise the Bible to justify being an asshole. If anything I think Christians in general should be more vocal about things happening in churches that are not okay, but there may be a concern of causing division in an otherwise wholesome atmosphere.
I have a close friend who converted to Christianity, and they said that a fault they observe in Christians can be that they’re too nice and too vulnerable, to the point that people can get away with not very nice things.
I think Atheism gets a bad rap these days also. I’m sure most atheists are lovely people, but the people who make it known that they’re atheists, or make it their whole personality, are not.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
(There is also the matter of the logistics of getting homeless people into those homes, but I will not dive into that here.)
And caring for them, because a lot of them can’t function as normal members of society for whatever reason. The real estate is only one piece of this. But yeah, if someone would be willing to pay for all that, it wouldn’t be a problem.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
Correct. The “whatever reasons” you cite include chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, and abusive relationships. These are not unique to homelessness but are disproportionately prevalent in the population and therefore a key obstacle to overcome.
Addressing this takes labor and money to handle, a process that is often undertaken by nonprofits with funding from government, but also from charities and churches.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
Not sufficient funding though, obviously. Sure there’s programs, but there’s usually a gigantic waiting list, or the service is so overcrowded some of the potential clients would rather try their luck on their own. And, if the government is involved, there tends to be a kind of red tape that can only be described as mean-spirited.
Maid on Netflix is a great depiction of what it’s like in the first-world underclass, if anyone is interested.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Mmm I think you’re missing one of the core points of this though: churches have historically and traditionally offered and been used as sanctuaries, often by the poor and downtrodden in a society. In the US these days, you don’t see nearly as much of that. It’s more about evangelism and dogmatism and prosperity gospel. Christians in the US demonstrably doesn’t care that much about poor people these days.
More broadly: as someone who was raised Christian but is now a staunch atheist, I and many others would have far fewer issues with Christians if they would actually fucking practice what their religion preaches instead of whatever some MAGApastor tells you that Supply Side Jesus says.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
I don’t disagree with you per se? I simply haven’t seen empirical evidence to support this statement:
Christians in the US demonstrably [don’t] care about the poor that much these days.
Meanwhile the evidence that the ultra wealthy are actively screwing over the lower class piles up daily. If you have a citation for that thesis above I’d love to talk.
Furbag@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yeah, this was my first thought as well as soon as I read the image. We have tons and tons of literally empty housing units. Even if you take away the ones that are only temporarily vacant while searching for a new tenant, you’re still left with a bunch of housing units that sit empty, waiting to be flipped for a profit by real estate investors.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I don’t follow what’s silly here. These motherfuckers are not taxed and also not obligated to give back and that should matter. Tax them, would be the obvious solution
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
If all churches were to be taxed, the estimated new income would be a paltry $2.4 billion yearly. src
If you have an “obvious solution” to homelessness that can be accomplished with $2.4 billion, please do enlighten us. Otherwise you might want to get comfortable with that “silly” label. 👍
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
When I said “solution”, the problem I was talking about was how unfair it is that religious groups get tax exempt status despite doing nothing to earn that, and a lot to prove they should be taxed. I never said that suddenly we could feed and house all the homeless with those tax dollars
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
Post is about homelessness. Post is categorically not about taxes. So you changed the subject without even indicating you were doing so. 🙄
Awesome cool thank you for your contribution. But yeah glad to see we agree on an entirely tangentially related topic.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 7 months ago
Yeah the moral bit is we know people who hold housing for profit are douches. Churches are worse because they think they’re doing the Lord’s work and love talking about caring for people, but very few actually do any good.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
Cite this and I will change my opinion.
Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Am I reading this right? Are you saying that churches are worse than house-hoarding landlords, just because they think they’re doing good but a lot of them don’t? Even the 18% of churches that rent their buildings from other churches^[1]^ (or the ones that rent non-church properties like theaters or schools,) and thus almost certainly don’t even have a property they could give? Or what about the 48% of churches that run or support a food pantry^[2]^, and are thus doing good?
[1] - christianitytoday.com/…/two-churches-one-roof.htm…
[2] - theconversation.com/nearly-half-of-all-churches-a…
spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 months ago
Correct, that is what they are saying. I understand a significant portion of Lemmy is staunchly anti-religious. But there is a certain level of cognitive dissonance going on here that I hope can begin to be recognized and addressed.