Summary
Churches across the U.S. are grappling with dwindling attendance and financial instability, forcing many to close or sell properties.
The Diocese of Buffalo has shut down 100 parishes since the 2000s and plans to close 70 more. Nationwide, church membership has dropped from 80% in the 1940s to 45% today.
Some churches repurpose their land to survive, like Atlanta’s First United Methodist Church, which is building affordable housing.
Others, like Calcium Church in New York, make cutbacks to stay open. Leaders warn of the long-term risks of declining community and support for churches.
Unfortunately the internet is now the new 3rd space.
Religion advocated for bad policies in government which dug their own grave.
I don’t feel bad they’re closing down.
The internet isn’t a third place! Not only do you have to pay to access it, but more importantly, it isn’t a physical place. None of us are people here. We’re strings of characters on a screen behind pseudo-anonymous handles. You can’t help me, I can’t help you.
This is not community. It can’t be.
I think you’re a person. You should be more kind to yourself. That kind of talk never gets us anywhere.
Not on the internet. I’m a string of characters. I don’t have a face, I don’t have a voice, I don’t have a body, I am a handle and a comment tree. I cease to exist as soon as you aren’t paying attention to this comment chain. I could be a bot, you have no idea.
The internet can never be community. We are only human when we do human things. This digital space isn’t human at all.
I mean, why are you even here then? Exchanging information IS a human thing, and we’re (probably) all people behind the screens. I agree that physicality is a necessity for a 3rd space, but I disagree that it’s necessary for community.
To say that we can’t help people with our words strikes me as rather pessimistic.
I’m here for fun, not community. None of this shit matters. It’s not real.I don’t know why I’m here. Just to get ganged up on and hurt myself.
i feel the downvotes kinda proved your point…
._. *patpat*
It do be like that sometimes…
But even having fun maybe matters too?
I’m sorry you got ganged up on… I, at least, enjoyed reading your comments.
Edit:
It just occurred to me that tone really doesn’t come across on the internet, and “Why are you even here then?” could be read in an accusatory way, when I really didn’t intend it as such. I meant it in more of an interrogatory sense, and I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was curious. ._.
You have as much right to be here as anyone else!
Tell that to the numerous thriving online communities.
Like this one? You think this is community? You don’t even know anyone’s names.
I mean, does that matter that much? Your irl name is just an identifier that points to you. Just like queermunist is an identifier that also points to you.
I’ve seen you before, I’ve read some of your comments. I wouldn’t say I know you per se, but I at least recognize your name in passing and have an inkling of what to expect from you.
You could almost think of it as we both go to the same school, but have different friend groups so maybe never really interact, but still know each other exists.
And some of the more prolific users I understand a bit more of. And some of the smaller communities I’m part of I know all of the regular users a little bit better.
But you’re right, it’s a bit harder than in person because you can’t put a face or mannerisms to the handle, but I think you can still know people here a little bit.
Also, it seems weird that someone who is openly trans is complaining that we don’t know people’s names rather than us knowing the names people chose for themselves.
I’m fine with my real name, but if the world called me Flying Squid, I’d be cool with that too.
Sorry, Im pretty sure thats all were likely to get. The way things are going well be lucky to have public schools in 20 years, let alone a bunch of new publicly funded community spaces.
The internet can form community but it’s not the same. I’m about to move across the country and crash with a friend I met through the internet; and I’ve only seen her irl twice. That whole friend group are some of my best friends. And they aren’t even the only close friendships I have through the internet.
But also, I’ve done the only socialize online thing and it broke my mind in college and again in the pandemic (which is when I met both friend groups I mentioned earlier). I need physical places where I can interact positively with other physical humans. I need physical places that I can coexist with other people and that’s what an actual third space is. And I’ve seen what only existing on the internet does to people and it’s not good
Yes yes thank you, this is what I meant. I know I pissed a lot of people off by saying that internet communities aren’t real, but what I meant is that they aren’t a replacement for community. The distance, the lag, the lack of a face or voice or body, the time zones, there’s so many elements that make internet “community” into something that I struggle to call community.
If people want to call it community then fine, but it’s not a neighborhood or a workplace or (in the earlier example) congregation.
A third place has nothing at all to do with what is and isn’t paywalled. If I rented a Boeing 787 to take day trips with my friends every day for the next month, that’d still be a third place. It has everything to do with the first place being home and the second being work. It also has nothing, therefore, to do with “community” or “not community”.
Even if we work under your (completely wrong) definition of third places as inherently fostering tight-knit community and not just being a place for you to exist around other people, smaller communities absolutely have the opportunity to do this. Roblox was one of my main third places when I was a kid, and it was a better third place than I could’ve had in real life. I met actual, real friends who I talked to daily for years and who accepted me. Right now I work on Wikipedia, which if you spend long enough there unambiguously has a community among the more experienced editors. I’m even in a Discord server where I joined for the project, ended up joining the team, and now feel like I’m good friends with the people there. Even Lemmy I’d say is small enough to start seeing a lot of familiar faces over time.
The Internet isn’t inherently bad at fostering community. It’s just that the modern Internet places a fuckload of emphasis on being in gigantic, uninteractive pools of people like Twitch chats that fly at a million miles a second and require you to spend $500 for a streamer to blink in your direction; a shitty short-form video service where you can comment and like but aren’t seriously befriending anyone outside of extreme edge cases; a gigantic link aggregator where what you say is almost always drowned out immediately; multiplayer games that have new lobbies every match; etc.
I don’t think the people you meet on Roblox or Wikipedia can be community the way a church can. Even if you want to force the definition of community to include ephemeral, non-physical, and paid places then you have to accept that a church fills a far different kind of communal void than the internet. People at your church can come to your house and help you do stuff. That’s huge! You’d struggle to get any kind of real, tangible help from an internet place. Maybe some money, but that’s it.
That just doesn’t feel like community to me.
Real community is when people are in a cult whose authority figures systematically molest children. Got it.
Any other words of wisdom, oh one so ignorant of what a third place is?
Real community is when people can go to each other’s houses and help with difficult chores, or can cook food for each other and eat together, or can take care of one another when they are sick, or hide from government agents who come to kill their neighbors.
Death to Christianity. I am not making any defense of the church. In fact, I literally said we need to replace it. 🙄
Religion in general fosters these sorts of toxic power structures because it’s based on fucking nonsense.
The church kept me from being homeless as a kid and helped our family eat when we didn’t have food.
When the church is gone, some kids who were in the situation I was in will have nothing.
Letting private organizations fill roles that the government should be doing is one of the main reasons we have problems like homeless children that need to be solved in the first place. The church has tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars that could otherwise be going toward programs which reduce childhood poverty (and this of course isn’t taxed). Moreover, churches prime people to believe and act on complete bullshit, which is exactly the kind of environment that fosters right-wing beliefs that are steeped in disinformation and rooted in a deficiency in critical thinking. Right-wing beliefs directly lead to poverty. Alleviating the symptoms of poverty via a cult instead of treating it at the source isn’t the right way to do it.
I think it counts as a third place. All it really takes to be a third place is not being home or work. Whether physical or not is definitely debatable and I think physical third places are a must, but I don’t think a third place being paid disqualifies it.
For one, a lot of folks don’t have to pay for internet. I can go to my local library or community center and be online if needed. There are also some government programs that may provide free internet. But even if it is paid, typical third places have traditionally included settings like cafes, bars, the gym, bookstores, theaters, etc. which are also all pay-to-use environments.
Pay-to-use can not be the basis of community.
Unfortunately we have to pay monthly tribute to our landed lord to be in any community.
Why’s that? Any enthusiast hobby is the basis of community, and that typically includes some degree of material investment into said hobby.
I used to take martial arts classes, which was a great way to meet new people. And we’d have opportunities to get together and meet outside of our regularly scheduled classes, but the unifier that brought everyone together was the class that we were each paying to attend.
I mean, even in the church example, you get guilted for not donating when they pass the collection box around. What difference is there with a community that shames you for not paying?
Sorry, I meant “can not” in the sense that we can’t let that be the basis of community.
Commodified spaces and hobbies alienate people who can’t afford to pay. The church, at least, allows the poor to attend.
I’m not sure if the church “allows” the poor insomuch as they simply need the poor. The vulnerable members of society are really the church’s only vehicle for growth, and so they take advantage of the needs of marginalized people to spread their ideology. Indoctrination masked behind charity. It’s more of an exploitative relationship in that regard.
Secular meeting spaces with no cost would be preferred, and they definitely exist, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a sort of standardized approach across environments and demographics without the dictatorial voice of god (or the state) demanding compliance to the degree the church does, which makes it an institution.
As another example, I also used to be part of a local Cantonese language practice meetup that would meet once weekly at our local mall. It was a small group, but we’d just sit at the food court and practice basic conversations. No barrier for entry, all welcome, but not the sort of thing that would have broad appeal, you know?
That’s a distinction without a difference.
Commodified spaces do not need the poor, and in fact, they want them to go away.
Another public space that’s disappearing as malls close.
Should also add that malls are not public. It may be something that can be typically accessed without paying, but they’ve made it quite clear in the past that it is not a forum for public use. Malls do plenty to kick the “undesirables” out.
There are other public venues we could have used like parks or plazas but it’s hard to accommodate for cold winter weather where everyone wants to be indoors. A library might have worked if it wasn’t social etiquette to not talk in libraries.
I don’t think that’s the case. Every scam needs suckers, that dependence doesn’t make it a good thing.
I know you’re getting dragged in the comments / downvoted, but the premise that the internet is not a fully reasonable ‘third’ place has some rationality, as does the premise that churches have been this ‘third’ place for many. And I think ‘third’ places are where leftist community-engagement thrives, even in religous settings.
I mention leftist simply because many here are commenting from leftist Lemmy instances, myself included. Historically – and for a moment, consider this outside the typically nonreligious, leftist approaches to community building – churches have occupied a helpful, physical ‘third’ place like this for centuries.
When they are healthy, churches have been relationship hubs of solidarity and mutual aid. They have also been regularly used platforms from which to mobilize for social justice and collective action – even today, I know of some churches that are engaged directly in social justice and collective action for queer communities, debt reduction / removal, resource sharing, and more. Liberation theology is gravely leftist, as well, and comes from Latin American churches with leftist clergy and non-clergy at the helm of both theory and praxis. The Civil Rights Movement was borne out of black American churches, and suffrage movements met in churchhouses as much as anywhere else. This list goes on.
Liberation / radical inclusivity activities can spring from any setting where people gather regularly and talk about change. While the internet can make that sometimes easier, it has been historically in-person, where folks gather, that these movements find momentum time and again. ‘Third’ places are historically and functionally physical.
Theory is great for the internet, and even some community-engagement through internet discussions on theory is great. Some, but not all.
Praxis happens offline, though, in anti-technofeudally controlled arenas.
I don’t know how people can insist “the internet is a community!” then then use downvotes as if that shit isn’t toxic to community.
Of course there are no people online. We’re all dogs using the internet while the humans are at work.
Yall are dogs to right?
You pay for nearly every third space.
Bars,bowling alleys, sports leagues, internet, and even churches.
In every space you are a name with a personality