3 ms·
This might depend heavily on the country and location, but that's not my experience. I'm not religious, but I know some people who are, and their churches are q
by luckylion 7y ago
This might depend heavily on the country and location, but that's not my experience. I'm not religious, but I know some people who are, and their churches are quite active in their local communities, doing charity work, helping the homeless and the poor in general.
I live in an area that's heavily dominated by protestants, so my experience is mostly with them, I don't know how that's for catholic areas. The Netherlands are famously protestant as well, might be similar.
- fsloth 7y agoOk, cool, I was not aware of this. I thought they were all sadly just waiting to become obsolete. In what area are you in?
- luckylion 7y agoI'm in Northern Germany. The planned/willful obsolescence here mostly applies to the "official" churches imho. The smaller, free ones tend to be a bit more radical and more grass-roots oriented, so they're more hands-on (which probably also has to do with them not having a lot of old wealth and close ties to the state).
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThe churches that are full of people who attend church because their parents did are, as you so well put it, sadly waiting to become obsolete. There are churches, however, where many of the people are there because they genuinely believe it, and they think that they have very good reason to believe it (and they aren't afraid of engaging with atheists who think otherwise), and they try to live out what they believe in real life. If you find a church like that, it feels and acts completely different.
- fsloth 7y agoI recognize this comment may sound derogatory. I merely attempted a poetic reference to the well-documented secularization of North Europe.