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The Church FAQ
- kazinator 2y ago> What denomination used to be there? Oh, baskets of mostly dollar coins, quarters, some dimes, ...
- rfarley04 2y agoI don't want for much and don't need much more money than I currently have, I used to say before reading this
- jasonthorsness 2y agoThe church cost only $75,000; because it is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford,_Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford,_Ohio If you work remotely, this seems a good example of why you might consider moving away from a major city.
- rfarley04 2y agoI live in Bangkok. So I'm over here searching for abandoned Buddhist temples lol
- bawolff 2y agoSo its about 45 minutes (by car) from a city of about 130,000 people. That's hardly the middle of nowhere.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoFor a lot of people, "45 minutes by car to get to a city of any real size" is very much in the middle of nowhere.
- jes5199 2y agoand yet plenty of people have a commute _within_ the city that is longer than that
- TulliusCicero 2y agoOh for sure, but they're still 'somewhere' while commuting.
- jes5199 2y agoI would so much prefer an hour on a rural highway over an hour stuck in city traffic!
- bigstrat2003 2y agoThose people very badly need some perspective, then. That is not remotely the middle of nowhere.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoIt just depends on your perspective. Honestly, Americans are probably more tolerant and accepting of long distances compared to most peer countries. 45 minutes of driving to hit some kind of city is very far most of the time in Japan or most of Europe, where the population density is higher than the states.
- froh 2y agothat again depends on where you are in Europe... in most of Germany you're right. large parts of Norway Sweden Finland? not so much...
- apelapan 2y agoIt is probably true that in a majority of those land areas (Finland, Sweden, Norway) you are more than 45 minutes of driving from the next proper city. However, the proportion of people who live like that is not very high. People mostly live where other people live.
- globular-toast 2y agoI lived in a place that was a 30 min drive from a similar sized place (Cambridge, UK). It totally felt like the middle of nowhere. It's not so much about the numbers but about the feeling of a place: * No transport links means total dependence on car, * No natural features of any note, in particular no rivers or hills, * Unknown to people outside of the very small population that lives there, * Hard to convince people to come and visit you and when they do they're disappointed.
- rsynnott 2y agoAll a matter of perspective, I suppose. I'd call that the middle of nowhere, but I've always lived either in a medium-sized (>1 million people) city or its suburbs. In particular it doesn't seem to have public transport at _all_, at least per Google Maps; I'd consider anywhere where your only option to get to a city was to drive to be serious middle of nowhere, though I gather that this is a more common condition in the US.
- brendoelfrendo 2y agoSee, this in and of itself is an interesting perspective. The US only has 9-ish cities with a population over 1 million (according to Wikipedia and going by the population within city limits, if you go by "urban area" it's more like 45), so I would call a city of over a million people to be a large city, pretty definitively. But then, I never spent much time in million-plus-person cities growing up, so I'm just not accustomed to thinking about them that way. To me a medium-sized city starts around 500,000 people. To provide another possible perspective, this is of course peanuts compared to China, which has 11 cities with populations over 10,000,000 and over 100 cities with populations over 1,000,000 (again, Wikipedia numbers) and a fairly urbanized population as a whole. That's a country where I could see someone calling a 1,000,000-person city "medium-sized," and if anything they might be on the low-end.
- viraptor 2y agoIf you wanted to actually use it day to day though, it would cost so much more. Just the temperature control for such area would be either super expensive or require a complete redesign of the space to split it into lower floors.
- tengwar2 2y agoIt would, but that's partly a matter of size, and a large house will cost a lot to heat or cool as well. I'm in the UK (cool climate), and there are a lot of smaller chapels which have been converted to use as houses quite successfully.
- rsynnott 2y agoWhile he doesn't explicitly say it, I'm going to bet that the renovation, and likely even just the essential parts (roof, rewiring etc) of the renovation cost considerably more than that.
- organsnyder 2y agoYeah, the renovations they describe are easily over $100,000—probably multiples of that. (I live in Michigan, so I'm assuming project costs would be similar to where I am)
- loeg 2y agoYeah, but still. On the coasts that would be a $1.5M+ property.
- astura 2y agoOnly in the most desirable of desirable areas. I live on the east coast (almost literally, only a few blocks from the ocean) and a similar church sold last year in the town next door for just over $300,000.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wewewedxfgdf 2y agoDisappointing he says he is not using it to start a cult. I'd start a cult. Church building first, cult second.
- rfarley04 2y agoIf you're starting a cult, always build instead of buy!
- bigiain 2y agoHmmm, if you're starting a cult as a way to tap into tax exemptions, I suspect your accountants and lawyers would have long heated arguments about exactly how to best structure the church building ownership or lease/rental. Is your cult's meeting place a capex or an opex?
- fraserphysics 2y agoConsider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Mansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Mansion. My great great grandfather lived there till he jumped to his death from Brown's Hotel in London. See Richard Cory.
- timmg 2y agoIf you wanted to start a cult, would you say you wanted to start a cult? "I just want to share my learnings with the good people of Ohio..."
- 2y ago
- schoen 2y ago> Not “Church of the Scalzi,” which is actually the name of a church in Venice, Italy. Oh right, "scalzi" means 'barefoot' (mpl) in Italian! https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scalzo#Italian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scalzo#Italian
- bruce511 2y agoI've noticed something, and I don't know if it's too much of a generalization but I see it a fair bit, so maybe it's generally true. Generally speaking, non-religious people understand church to be a building. Whereas religious people understand that the people are the church, the building is just a building. Now granted some of them are really nice buildings, and some are really old, and you can be both religious and really like the building, but the two concepts are still separate. In other words, to the religious, the use of the building for non-religious purposes is "shrug". Whereas to the non-religious the idea of turning a church building into something else is some kind of desecration. (Obviously this isn't the case for this article, but I noted the first question as him getting that response, and also the immediate rebuttal that he's starting a cult.) Anyway, I thought it an interesting, if tangentially observation. And as with all generalizations there will be lots of exceptions.
- saghm 2y agoIt's possible that this is generally true, but that's definitely not my perception. Growing up I remember hearing about stories like this [0] where people camped out in a church for over a decade to try to stop it from being closed. As someone who isn't religious, I still can't understand the level of attachment to the building itself, and it's hard to imagine that this would happen from people not ascribing some sort of religious significance to the building itself. That said, I know that there are some notable differences between Catholics and other Christians in terms of veneration, so maybe this perception is just due to my growing up in an area where other types of Christianity weren't as common, and elsewhere in the country where Catholics aren't as common, the generalization would hold more true. [0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/massachusetts-church-protest-11-years-running-now-faces-reckoning/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/massachusetts-church-protest-11...
- irrational 2y agoI wonder if it is similar to people who camp out in trees to keep them from being cut down. Maybe it is the same sort of veneration in both cases?
- october8140 2y agoI live in Detroit and don't understand why everyone wants to work remove AND live in the most expensive places in the world. To me working remote means I can live anywhere I want. Why not live where you get a lot more for your money?
- ProAm 2y agoThis is the definition of gentrification. And not a bad thing but this is where it starts...
- crooked-v 2y agoIt's very simple: they like the benefits of living in the expensive places, as distinct from closeness to work in particular.
- abound 2y agoAs a remote tech worker who moved from the Bay to a (much) cheaper place - I agree that the expensive places are expensive for a reason - but if one can articulate what specifically they're looking for, it's almost always possible to find it in a significantly cheaper cost-of-living area.
- mmooss 2y ago> if one can articulate what specifically they're looking for, it's almost always possible to find it in a significantly cheaper cost-of-living area. Isn't that the basic essential of designing tech - the narrower your specs the less expensive your solution, so articulate them very specifically. I don't know that I buy "almost always" though. If your spec is world-class _____, you probably need to be in one of a few cities.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoI'm not sure that's true. I occasionally look around and can't really find anything all that cheap that fits my preferences, but maybe I'm too picky. * Politically blue or at least purple * Reasonably dense/transitable by something other than a car (public transit and/or bike) * Wide variety of restaurants/groceries (mostly in terms of ethnicities/cultures), especially Asian food * Low(-ish) crime rate The third one is maybe the hardest, because it basically requires a substantial population, though number 2 is pretty hard in the US as well.
- acyou 2y agoWait, don't I recognize that name? Wait a second... This is THE John Scalzi? When I was a kid I pulled a paperback off of my dad's bookshelf, Old Man's War. Great, take your brain out trashy sci fi, and I mean that in the most positive way possible, it left a big impression on me. Incredible writer, cool that he is still around and has a blog.
- fishywang 2y agoHe is also one of the authors that (almost) all his eBooks sold on Google Play are without DRM.
- anyfoo 2y agoHe's not only still around, he still writes awesome books. But yeah, I too was reading without noticing, until I came to the sentence "None of the Scalzis are particularly religious", and thought "wait, Scalzi like John Scalzi? It's not... It is?!"
- colechristensen 2y agoAnother old man’s war series book is going to be released this year
- colechristensen 2y agoon 9/16 "The Shattering Peace" https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765389190/theshatteringpeace/ https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765389190/theshatteringpe...
- snibsnib 2y agoOh wow, i never would have made the connection. 'Lock In' was one of my favorite books growing up.
- jwr 2y agoYes, that's the guy and he has written a lot of good sci-fi since then. He's pretty active on Mastodon too.
- nbzso 2y agoQuestion from Eastern European: Which religion is prevalent in the USA? Masonic orders? Scientology? Atheism? I noticed that there you have more masonic temples than churches in every city.
- jes5199 2y agoculturally-Christian atheists, mostly, followed by a lot of the less-mainline versions of Christianity
- tasty_freeze 2y agoPew polls show about 5% or slightly less identify as atheists. About 30% (including atheists) are non-religious. About 60% identify as Christian. Then a few other groups that are 1-2%: Jewish, Mormon, Buddhist, Muslim. Your statement of "mostly" is an extreme (10x) overstatement. The text above was from memory. I just looked it up and I was pretty accurate: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/ I take umbrage at another aspect of your statement: "culturally Christian atheists". I've heard this pointed specifically at me by people saying things like, "You are Christian, you just don't know it." That say that because I tend to be sensitive/kind/helpful/low ego. Yes, good Christians should be those things, but that doesn't mean that Christianity owns those traits or that those traits didn't exist and weren't valued before Christianity came along.
- TylerE 2y agoIf you asked the typical American protestant (who does NOT go to church every week BTW) if they really believe in the whole god and heaven and hell thing, a lot of 'em are gonna hem and haw. It's closer to a social club than an old school religion.
- jes5199 2y agoI don’t disagree! but among Americans who do not go to church, most of them have parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who attended Christian church regularly, and some of that culture is still prevalent in subtle things like “protestant work ethic”
- NanoYohaneTSU 2y ago[flagged]
- programmarchy 2y agoHe paid 75K which is not bad though.
- mock-possum 2y agoThat’s somewhere in the neighborhood of an entire college tuition.
- wlonkly 2y agoAnd is firmly Generation X, too.
- dang 2y agoPlease don't do this here.
- tomcam 2y agoIf you’re lucky enough to do something like this I can’t recommend it enough. I bought a second house in my neighborhood instead of renting an office and it made work a hell of a lot more fun. Felt healthier too, because I could open windows or take walks.
- berikv 2y agoPlease don’t terrify your contractors. They fix your place, and you want them on your side doing a good job.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoI take "terrify" to mean "they know they will be supervised and their wkrk checked".
- lbotos 2y agoI've "terrified" contractors when I've called them on their BS. I once had a contractor tell me it was okay to notch 50% into a load bearing floor joist. I quickly pulled up the building code and his face went pale...
- dmd 2y agoLike this? https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ffk3azcaww95e1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ff...
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago> a company to develop creative projects that were not my novels This may be related to Netflix movie/series adaptation of "Old Man's War" ? https://reactormag.com/netflixs-adaptation-of-john-scalzis-old-mans-war-is-still-in-the-works/ https://reactormag.com/netflixs-adaptation-of-john-scalzis-o...
- rsynnott 2y ago> and despite the actions of certain science fiction authors in the past offering precedent, I have no desire to start a cult > I want to recondition the old pastor’s study, get the organ functional again, and we want to make the sanctuary level more easily accessible via ramps and such I mean, he _claims_ not to want to start a cult, but I feel like, if starting a cult, these are exactly the sort of facilities one would be recommissioning. Especially the organ. Granted, for a moment I thought this was Charles Stross (the other Very Online sci-fi author), which would be _far_ more worrying, considering.
- beAbU 2y agoHe also mentioned using the basement for "gatherings" and that immediately set off my cult-alarm bells! Pretty jealous to be honest, the building itself looks beautiful.
- c0brac0bra 2y agoI think the frequency of organ-centered cults is lower than you might imagine.
- rsynnott 2y agoIs this an organ music joke? (Most cults probably don't have pipe organs, but I feel like it is unquestionably a _plus_ for your cult if you happen to have access to one.)
- biomcgary 2y agoIn the end, I suspect most cults want all your organs.
- hermitcrab 2y agoOr to do something to you with their organs...
- wnoise 2y agoHe also created the Githzerai/Githyanki, so other ways of creating cults seem easier.
- widforss 2y agoThey use the sign outside for the most hilarious messages. On Google Maps you can see two versions, "IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A SIGN HERE IT IS", and "SORRY KIDS SCHOOL TIME AGAIN".
- akie 2y agoIn case you're wondering, here it is: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nbWXb78AHC5oUjTw6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/nbWXb78AHC5oUjTw6
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoIt's really a beautiful building, so glad they kept the stained glass. Great that they were able to repurpose this and didn't tear it down!
- vermilingua 2y agoCompletely off topic, this is the first time I've seen ordinary US streets outside TV/film, it's jarring to see so many flags.
- widforss 2y agoThey certainly like their flag :) Growing up in Sweden, it was mostly immigrants and nazis who used the Swedish flag. Now I live in Norway, which is a lot more nationalistic (just an observation, not a judgement), and there are flags everywhere.
- wscott 2y agoVery small town in the midwest. The US is a big place and this is just one possible look.
- f_allwein 2y agoRelated: beautiful reuse of a former church in Copenhagen. They host events during the day and communal dinners at night. https://absaloncph.dk/en/ https://absaloncph.dk/en/
- lookdangerous 2y agoHmm, a six-necked guitar called the Beast on the Altar. That's a little on the nose.
- magicmicah85 2y agoI thought I wanted a house with land, woods, garden with bunch of carrots and little sweet peas, but now I want a church to maintain.
- mnemotronic 2y agoDo any talking cats live or have their offices there?
- themadturk 2y agoThere are rumors that the church is haunted, but John claims no ghosts have made their presence known.
- hermitcrab 2y ago$75k. Wow. You'd be lucky to buy a 1 bedroom crack den on the worst estate in the UK for that. Given the Methodist's reputation for being dour, I'm surprised how nice it looks inside.
- panzagl 2y agoIn the US, Methodist is a relatively middle-of-the-road denomination, not nearly as dreary as I've seen UK Methodists described.
- dnemmers 2y agoFrom the extensive renovations listed, I’m guessing you can add another $200k onto that price point.
- LoganDark 2y agoLiterally still cheaper than the vast majority of anything that could ever be called or made into a home.
- deckar01 2y agohttps://thechurchstudio.com/about/ https://thechurchstudio.com/about/
- _1tem 2y agoThe idyllic life of small town America?
- twic 2y ago1919. Pfft! My cousin has bought and is converting a church where the oldest bits are 12th century (although the tower is 17th century, and it was extensively redone in the 1830s). At the rate he works, he's probably going to be working on it for the rest of his life.
- throwawayk7h 2y agoNow, where's the sympathy for the effective altruists who bought a castle for the same financial reasons? They were widely mocked for their apparent exuberance.
- krapp 2y agoEffective altruism is a cult and it deserves to be mocked.
- JadeNB 2y agoHe describes the renovations being done taking two years: > A whole new roof, to start; now the building has a 50-year roof, which means it will almost certainly outlive me. The electricity was knob and tube and had to be redone. There was an outside retaining wall that had to be torn out and redone. The aforementioned balcony was actually not safe to be on; it was cantilevered out into space with no support and had a shin-high barrier that wouldn’t stop anyone from going over the side. That was fixed, and new floors and custom bookcases by a local artisan built in so I could have my library. The basement floor was redone; the kitchen space down there gutted and remodeled. We pulled up high-traffic industrial carpet glued to the sanctuary floor and reconditioned the hardwood floors underneath. New HVAC, and improved drainage for the maintenance room. The office and Sunday school room in the basement was turned into a guest suite. The structure was sealed against moisture and the walls were all replastered and repainted. I live in a reasonably large city, and it took me much more than two years just to get some unsatisfactory work done on a couple of rooms. (Much of that time being trying to get the contractor to come finish up the work so I could finally give him money, an inducement which seemed to have startlingly little power.) I'd always thought that was just because I started peri- and post-pandemic, but Scalzi says that this work, too, was done during the pandemic, so that can't be it. I guess I'm just really bad at picking contractors.