Permanently Deleted
I think it was probably lower in 99, folks were just embarrassed to tell a stranger they didn’t go to church.
:ursus-hexagonia:
“Communism begins where atheism begins” - Karl Marx
A huge part of this is the erosion of all social institutions. I’m originally from a rural southern place, so churches to me aren’t just “place you go to do religious things” it’s more like the central social apparatus for the town. The petite bourgeois, workers, and farmers all end up in the same pews on Sunday. It’s where people meet their spouses. It’s where holiday events are held. The religious part is just an aesthetic for a lot of people.
Also, don’t get me wrong. I’m not necessarily praising this kind of community structure, because the one I attended as a kid was rampant with homophobia and Islamophobia. I’m just hoping to express that churches exist as more than just something like “I believe in this thing so that means I go to this place.” They’re social instutions like other things and neoliberal capitalism does not give a shit. Nothing is sacred. Nothing has territory. People need to be alone, isolated, scared, and constantly generating profit.
The foundational values might be horrible but I can’t help feeling envious of people who are part of a social institution. When you’re young there is school/college but after that there’s nothing. Just work and consumption. Once the labour movement was a social institution but today there isn’t really anything.
