The mainline Protestant tailspin will be worse than people imagine. The adult membership is simply coasting on their own childhood upbringing by parents for whom religion and doctrine actually mattered. Going to church is a comforting ritual and calling oneself agnostic or atheist is rather too much of an effort versus maintaining an identity as Christian. But their kids? Not 5% of them give one crap about church. They were raised by parents who didn’t deeply care and preached at by ministers who were simply social workers in frocks.
The destiny of pretty much every Episcopal and PCUSA church outside the south and rural America is to be sold for cool looking condos or converted into mosque or gurujawara...
RE: The destiny of pretty much every Episcopal and PCUSA church outside the south and rural America is to be sold for cool looking condos or converted into mosque or gurujawara...
Here in New York City and the Suburbs, Asian Churches ( e.g. Chinese and mostly Koreans ) are BUYING them up for a song or taking over. This is good news.
This Disco (Used To Be A Cute Cathedral)
What Steve says about it:From Now The Truth Can Be Told Liner Notes & Song-By-Song Essays, Now The Truth Can Be Told Insert Booklet, August 23rd, 1994:
"In the heart of Manhattan stands an old Presbyterian church that was converted in the mid '80s into New York's famed Limelight Club. My on-the- scene investigation began with the required ritual of waiting with the anxious crowd outside the entrance until a neo-nazi type doorman decided my shoes wouldn't scuff up the dance floor. He then escorted my friends and me through the vestibule, past rows of authentic looking crypts, then up to the cashier ringing up fifteen dollar admissions underneath a large cross.
We followed the beat to the sanctuary, just in time to catch a giant video screen being lowered over the pipe organ to show Madonna's latest for the two thousand boogie pilgrims jammed on the dance floor. My mind began to wander (like it always does during Madonna songs), and I started to imagine it was Sunday night, and that the church elders had devised all this as a way to attract new members.