Excellent point. Pipe organs are amazing engineering works. In Bach's day, they were the "Space Shuttle" of that era. The pinnacle of high tech.
Playing one well takes a whole lot of talent, and coordination. Your feet have to work in synch with your hands.
Young people can't even put a spare tire on their car, let alone change the oil. Many can't walk down the street without staring at an iPhone, oblivious to their surroundings!
And back in the day it wasn't uncommon at all for mom and dad, or grandpa and grandma to have a Hammond or Thomas in their living room. And the elevation of the the guitar to the instrument supreme has not helped.
You’ve nailed almost all the reasons. I would add a few:
1) Most “organ” churches have become liberal, and the churches that are conservative in doctrine have become modernist in worship. Organists like Bach, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, and Widor were deeply Christian, and their organ playing and composing were an expression of their loving relationship with Christ. Today, someone who loves Christ that deeply is almost certainly going to go to a church whose doctrine reflects the Bible, and you won’t find that in an Episcopalian, ELCA, PCUSA, UMC, UCC, or half the Catholic congregations, which is where most of the pipe organs are found.
2) Until the early 20th century, the organ was the next best thing to an orchestra, because the only way one could hear music was to play it oneself or hire someone else to play it. Most people today have too much music in their lives, and don’t need a church to supply it for them, which causes #3...
3) In my Music Appreciation course, one of my assignments is for students to go without music for 24 hours. Most of them can’t, and many experience physical withdrawal symptoms. Music is no longer a door to the soul; instead, it is a collection of audio drugs affecting the brain the same way weed or crack or meth or blocks does. And I suspect this is as much true of the praise-and-worship music of many evangelistic churches.
Dear Dinwiddle,
re: “ And the elevation of the the guitar to the instrument supreme has not helped.’
Call that one commercialization. It is more economical to find the particular type of Guitar strings desired when compared to a pipe organ technician or technical crew.
Having had an Ovation 6- and 12-stringer, getting ‘picky’ over which manufacturer and style of strings, sans pickups, was costly enough.
(When I had to put the head of the guitar to my skull to hear how I tuned the strings, it was time to say bye bye to the Ovations.)